I came up with the idea of making a short video each day in my iMovie instead of writing in my journal, but my first movie appears to be 400mb!! Is that a lot?
Not Really. You might expect a 6-minute DV(25) file to run between 1.3 GBs and 2.6 GBs (depending on how the audio is encoded). On the other hand, if you used an H.264/AAC compression format targeted for iPod quality, the same file would likely only be about 72-73 MBs in size. So your 400 MB file is actually of moderate size -- probably the equivalent of a Motion-JPEG (or either a higher data rate MPEG-2 or lower data rate MPEG4/AAC HD trailer) file.
Im pretty stupid when it comes to computers, but isnt that almost half a gigabyte?
Yes.
In which case, I can't really make a video every day, can I?
That would depend on how much storage space you have available and whether or not you re-compress the original compression format as part of the editing process
What do people who make lots of videos on YouTube do?
YouTube files are re-compressted to flash after being upload. YouTube only limits the duration, file size, and, to some degree, and, to some extent, the display dimensions. It does not dictate how how the user elects to distribute the data over time (i.e. the "quality factor" applied by the user).
Surely they cant have THAT much more memory than me.
That is hard to say since you did state how much you have available. I normally keep about 2.5 TBs connected to my computer at all times with and I am neither a professional nor a "power" user. (And I am planning to double this by the end of the 2008 calendar year.) The first rule of working with video content is to have all the storage space available that you can. One "rule of thumb" is to calculate what you think you will need, double it, and then buy twice the doubled amount if you can afford it.
