Really new, need help putting video on web.

[doogie88]

Hello,
I am in need of some help, and I have very little knowledge.
My friend has a PC, his roommate has a mac and a Sony Handycam HDR-FX1.
Now, the three of us have limited knowledge.

We want to transfer video from handycam to PC. Make edits, and compress the video, but keep as high quality as possible. We actually want to possibly make two copies, one copy very good quality, another lower quality. He has a 4minute clip on his pc right now and it's 2gigs, obviously way too big for the web.

Right now they are putting the video from the cam to the mac. Then using some mac server to upload the video. Then my friend is downloading it from the FTP.

1. What is the easiest way to get video to the PC?
2. What is the best way to compress the video to make it available for download? I'm thinking 1minute clip at most 50-100megs, as it will be sold and not downloaded often. And clips downloaded more frequently, I guess 1 minute clip around 20 megs. We want the high quality clip to be able to watch it full screen with good quality. Would h264 be what we need?

 

[bkvideography]

use the mac and imovie. make an hdv 1080i imovie project and import away. when your done editing, go to the top of the screen where it says "share". use h.264 and do some research on what settings to use.

....that's my lazy....but correct answer.

 

[doogie88]

use the mac and imovie. make an hdv 1080i imovie project and import away. when your done editing, go to the top of the screen where it says "share". use h.264 and do some research on what settings to use.

....that's my lazy....but correct answer.

Thanks, I've been reading and reading, but since I don't have a mac, and I'm not there, I can't really take a look at things.
What's the quickest way to get it to the PC after that?