Hi, i got my Macbook yesterday and tried to render some videos. The 1 hour 720p screenrecord video+audio file size is 120MB. When i render them on iMovie it shows 2.5GB on lowest blurry quality, on Davinci 2GB, on Camtasia 520MB (on Windows Camtasia result is 150MB) is there any video editor that not produce too higher than source files without using Handbrake etc to reduce or any advice?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.3
A 2.5GB file size is very reasonable for a 1 hour video. I wouldn't call it huge by any means, although relatively speaking it is considerably larger than the source file. The source file likely was much more highly compressed than the final product exported out of iMovie. From the description in your post I am assuming that you are exporting as an Mp4 file rather than a pro res .mov file, since the latter is usually about 4x larger than the Mp4.
Try exporting to Email (an export option in the share menu) where you will be given several size choices. Choose Small Size to reduce the resolution and, after exporting to email, drag it out from the email to your desktop. Check the file size with QuickTimePlayer and see if it is a size more to your liking.
As you have found, you will lose quality by compressing down the file size, but that may be O.K. for your purposes.
-- Rich
A 2.5GB file size is very reasonable for a 1 hour video. I wouldn't call it huge by any means, although relatively speaking it is considerably larger than the source file. The source file likely was much more highly compressed than the final product exported out of iMovie. From the description in your post I am assuming that you are exporting as an Mp4 file rather than a pro res .mov file, since the latter is usually about 4x larger than the Mp4.
Try exporting to Email (an export option in the share menu) where you will be given several size choices. Choose Small Size to reduce the resolution and, after exporting to email, drag it out from the email to your desktop. Check the file size with QuickTimePlayer and see if it is a size more to your liking.
As you have found, you will lose quality by compressing down the file size, but that may be O.K. for your purposes.
-- Rich
I'm not sure what is going on there. I think that the problem may be that iMovie does not support the 1440p of your source file, or as it is sometimes known, 2K. So when you export or convert you probably are getting an upscale or downscale that is causing the blurriness and possibly the change in file size. That's just a guess on my part.
You might try contacting Apple Support. The techs there have the capability of remotely accessing your computer that we cannot do here. They can address your issue in a more hands-on manner than is possible on an electronic forum of this type. To contact apple support click on the Contact Support item in the upper right hand corner of this forum’s screen. Navigate to a place where you can enter your phone number.
-- Rich
Hi, If it was a camera recorded video, some GBs should be normal but it's downloaded seperate video+audio files of 720p compressed screenrecord of a lecture similar to ms teams. I'm using only for combining video and audio and sometimes cutting. Original source files size is 120MB total. If i render as 720p +
high=5.79GB
custom lowest 2mb/s it produces as 1.07GB it's not normal, even new video is blurry. I was rendering same type of videos on Camtasia Windows, result size was 200MB which is normal.
As a temporary solution, compressing the video with handbrake m1 beta, but it takes 40 minutes to convert a 1 hour video which is long (imovie renders in 10 minutes as 2.7GB). Compressed result is 150MB.
Checked export to email and it produces similar size 1.9GB for 720P.
here is source info (imovie doesnt have setting lower than 2mb/s but imovie exported video is more blurry than original 211kbit/s):
https://i.ibb.co/YR3wxkL/image.png
When I export a video clip with these settings, the resulting file size is usually just one third of the original file size.
But I have to be careful not to drag an item with a higher resolution as the first item into the time line of the converted video. A high resolution still frame as the first item could increase the pixel size of the rendered video.
The screenshot may have caused a misinterpretation. Video size is 1280x720 (720p), screen window size of quicktimeplayer is 2560x1440
Unfortunately, I don't have any other ideas on this issue. As I mentioned, try contacting Apple Support and see if the techs there can be of help.
Best of luck with this.
-- Rich
Hi, léonie,
A still frame as the first item won't affect the resolution. However, a video frame added as the first item to the project would set the resolution as that of the video clip.
-- Rich
Thank you for the heads up, Rich.
And thank you, Léonie, for the great info that you have provided us all in numerous posts.
-- Rich
macOS Video Editor With Lossy File Size? iMovie video sizes are huge
