Making a YouTube Video with iMovie

I've just recently jumped on the YouTube Train uploading a few videos here and there. I'm on a Mac, and I have iMovie. I like iMovie, it's fairly similar to FinalCut, Premier and even the AVID software (well, without all the cool stuff you can do with those other apps). But it's linear editing, and once you get the hang of it, it's fine for simple editing. I'm just dropping clips in and using transition effects, titles and adding music...simple stuff.

Anyway, I found a site here that explains how to make a YouTube video that works really well, it's basically what I'll explain below.

A couple things to know about YouTube is that there's a 10 minute time limit, and a 100Mb size limit, and the ratio for the movie is 320 x 240 pixels.

Knowing that, here's what you need to do )oh, I'm using iMovie 5 (HD):

1. Main Menu, file, go to "share"
2. Compress movie for: select Expert Settings, click "share"
3. Name your movie, select where you are going to save it to
4. At the bottom, Export: Movie to MPEG-4, then click "Options"
(NOTE: the next time you do this, if nothing needs to change, there will be an option to chose "Most Recent Settings" underneath the "export" drop down where it says "Use:")
5. New dialog box:
File format: MP4
6. Click the "Video" tab
Video Format: H.264
Data Rte: 2000 kbits/sec
Optimized for: Download
Image Size: 320 x 240 QVGA
Preserve aspect ratio: checked
Select: "Fit Within Size"
Frame Rate: 30
Key Frame: Automatic
7. Click "Video Options" button
Restrict Profile(s) to: Main
Encoding Mode: Best Quality
Click OK
8. Click "Audio" tab
Audio Format: AAC-LC (Music)
Data Rate: 64 kbps
Channels: Mono
Output Sample Rate: Recommended
Encoding Quality: Best
9. Click OK
10: Click Save
11. Wait
12. Upload to YouTube

That's it. That will get you a pretty good quality video. Here are a couple I did for my wife's Pet Portrait Painting. Here's a painting of a dog, and here's a painting of a cat.



I thought this would be a great way to market her website. I took pictures of the painting while she was painting it (trying not to get in her way too much), and then made it into an animation.

Basically, I grabbed the folder with all the pictures in it, and dragged the folder into the place where the clips go...at the bottom. I selected them all, (the duration of pictures was already set to 1 second) and clicked the transition to crossfade and clicked apply. That added a cross fade to all the pictures. The I added titles, dropped that in at the beginning and the end, and made the last picture last longer by dragging the end of it to the right. Then I added music, faded the sound out at the end, and that was it. Pretty simple.

I think YouTube is a great way to promote her website. I've been wanting to do this for a while now, and I think I'll do it whenever she paints something.

My 4 year old stuck her head into one of the pictures while Leigh was painting the cat. She's so funny.

My wife's website is dogonawall.com. She paints pet portraits using acrylic and canvas. You send her a picture of your pet (and some money) and she'll do what she does. Check out the gallery on her site...she's really good.

Jorge