How to make smaller movies with iSight camera

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How to make smaller movies with iSight camera

When my girlfriend and I are in different time zones, which is unfortunately quite often, we communicate in part by sending small "movie postcards" to each other. We've been doing this with iMovie and the built-in iSight cameras in our macbooks, up- and downloading the .mov files using Dropbox.

This has worked OK, but the files are quite big, about 100 MB per minute. With slow bandwidths this can be a pain, and the image quality isn't that great, so I'm thinking there must be a better way to do this. Can't the video files be made smaller? Any ideas?

Aluminum MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on Mar 19, 2012 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

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EZ Jim

Level 7

22,590 points

Mar 19, 2012 10:08 PM in response to eplefrikk

(1) Make a Photo Booth test video and try its email feature to see if it gives the file size/quality you need. You may find it is a simpler way to make your email videos.

(2) If you want to stay with iMovie, use the iMovie > Share > Export menu command. My test of a one minute video saved at the smallest ( "Mobile" ) Export size gave a file size of about 7.5 MB. Yours sizes may be slightly different, but Export does allow a choice of several sizes.

(3) If you want to try to resize movies you have already saved, you can do so with QuickTime Pro. If you do not have and do not want to buy QTPro, here are a couple of freeware apps with presets of various sizes you can test to judge their size and compression capabilities:

MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac OS X

Handbrake

This post on a different forum offers some suggestions for how these two work from an experienced user.

(Be sure to update your Snow Leopard OS to the latest version and verify that the app you choose is compatible with your Mac and its OS.)

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

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Answer 2

eplefrikk Author

Level 1

16 points

Mar 20, 2012 8:52 AM in response to EZ Jim

Thanks, Jim! I'll give those a try 🙂

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Answer 3

eplefrikk Author

Level 1

16 points

Mar 20, 2012 4:26 PM in response to EZ Jim

EZ Jim wrote:

(2) If you want to stay with iMovie, use the iMovie > Share > Export menu command. My test of a one minute video saved at the smallest ( "Mobile" ) Export size gave a file size of about 7.5 MB. Yours sizes may be slightly different, but Export does allow a choice of several sizes.

I can't get this to work. The entire Share menu is greyed out for some reason…

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Answer 4

EZ Jim

Level 7

22,590 points

Mar 21, 2012 6:29 AM in response to eplefrikk

eplefrikk wrote: ... The entire Share menu is greyed out for some reason…

(1) Your original post shows you using Mac OS X (10.6.3). If that was true, use the 10.6.8 v.1.1 Combo Update to update to the current Snow Leopard version.

I suggest that you restart Mac first. Then use your Mac's Disk Utility to repair permissions before you download and apply the update. Also, repair permissions again immediately following the system restart that completes the Combo update.

(2) Before you can successfully "Export" an iMovie, your video must be either:

(a) an open project or

(b) a selecteditem in the "Project Library"

For more help, see iMovie this web help page: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2285

(3) If you still cannot access the export settings, repair permissions,

reinstall iMovie, repair permissions again, and test one more time.

(4) If you need to post back for more help, include your iMovie version information. (iMovie > About iMovie)

Also either post which OS X version ( > About this Mac) you use, or

add the current info to your user profile to save adding it to every post.

We will offer more specific suggestions based on the details in your reply.

Message was edited by: EZ Jim

Mac OSX 10.7.3

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