Publishing to Gallery: says "About 5 seconds" (still... after an hour)

[malch]

Hi there,
I have limited experience doing this, but to date, my experiences "publishing" to my MobileMe Gallery, via QuickTime, have been bad ones. This last one took 4 hours (not kidding, but it is a long video), and then, at "About 5 seconds", it hasn't changed. It hasn't quit, hasn't said "Error", hasn't crashed. Just sits there, saying "About 5 seconds". I'd click on the little x in the circle to quit, but after four hours (actually, five now), I'm still hoping to see the 'Done' checkmark.
Maybe Gallery doesn't want an mp4 file? Should I publish to Gallery only via iMovie?
What's the secret here? Is publishing to MobileMe Gallery as flaky as my experience suggests, or do I just need to learn a better workflow. If so, what's the best workflow?
thanks very much,
malch

 

[malch]

Here's a depressing update: I converted the offending from mp4 to .mov (I'm not up on codecs and wrappers, but I thought this might help), and I got a bit hopeful when I told QuickTime to "Share" this new file to my Gallery page, and the Export Progress window said: "44 minutes".
Sounded good to me.
That was about 40 minutes ago. Just checked my computer again (it's a MacBook Pro, by the way, with 4GB RAM, running Snow Leopard), and it's up to 8 hours.
Is it Me that's confused here... or is it MobileMe?
malch