iMovie Settings for Upload to YouTube
If this iMovie tutorial still doesn’t help, I can recommend ScreenCastsOnline. They have excellent tutorials for all your Mac products: iMovie, iPod, iPhone and so forth.
From my experience posting your iMovie video to YouTube requires the following settings to get the best quality you can. You want to send YouTube the highest quality you can while still staying within their video and audio limitations.
Of course the settings I’m providing can be used with any video editing application, but since iMovie is used by so many novice videographers I felt some specific instructions would be useful. If you aren’t using iMovie 6 for this, be sure that your application can export to a .mp4 with H.264 video. Quicktime Player Pro version can also do this.
Since YouTube upload limitations will scale the video to 320 x 240 pixels there is no point to export it at a larger size. Better to apply higher quality settings to your file size limit, which is 100 megabytes set by Youtube.
I am assuming your video has been edited and is ready for export. Follow these steps to have a video that you can upload with confidence to YouTube.
Choosing the best settings for iMovie when exporting for YouTube:
- Under the main menu click the Share menu option.
- Choose the Share option at the bottom of the drop down menu.
- The next window will allow you select from a popup menu. It is labeled “Compress movie for:”. You will chose Expert Settings. Click the share Share button in the bottom right. (see image #1)
- The next window will allow you to choose where to save the video and what to name it. At the bottom of the window you will see a popup menu labeled Export. Choose the “Movie to MPEG-4″ option.
- Click the Options… button to the right to choose specific video and audio settings.
In this window choose the following setting under the video choices. (see image #2)
- Video Format: H.264
- Data Rate: 2000 kbits/sec
- Optimized for: Download
- Image Size: 320 x 240 QVGA
- Check Preserve aspect ration using: Fit within size
- Frame Rate: 30
- Key Frame: Automatic
- Click the Video Options… button and then select the Main checkbox and the Best Quality radio button. Click OK.
- Next choose the following Audio Settings:
- Audio Format AAC-LC
- Data Rate: 64kbs
- Channels: Mono
- Output Sample Rate: Recommended
- Encoding Quality: Best
- Click the OK button and in the next window click the Save button and wait for your high quality video to export.
You can see the latest video I have posted using these settings by viewing my family’s Zip Line in Hawaii.
If you need more help and you like the video instruction method. I can safely recommend ScreenCastsOnline.
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Tagged with: click • experience • expert settings • hawaii • Hobby Experiences • image • imovie • imovie tutorial • Internet-Experiences • ipod • Mac • menu • online video • Quicktime • quicktime player • QVGA • screencasts online • ScreenCastsOnline • Settings • video choices • video quicktime • youtube
Filed under: Hobby Experiences • Internet Experiences
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Thanks, this is just what I was looking for. iMovie is easy to work with but making the connection from iMovie to YoutTube wasn’t as easy. These settings will help. Thanks again.
thanks so much!!! you are a love.
xo nj
You are welcome njk. Please let me know how it goes and post a link to your youtube video back here.
hi. nice blog . thanks.
Thanks for working out the best process!
Hey,
Even though the new iMovie 08 has a youtube setting, this is still useful since we all know iMovie 06 is still the best.
Thank you so much for this helpful and easy to understand tutorial!
Thanks so much for the advice on what setting to use when publishing from iMovie HD to Youtube. I have been battling with this issue for weeks.
Thank you Shell. I’ve been trying zillions of different settings in a failed search for optimum export settings — now I’ll try yours!
The instructions provided here worked very well. Smooth looking videos on YouTube.
I use the same setting which you have recommended, but for some reason, 3 times out of 4, my higher quality videos experience sound-picture out-of-sync issues? Have you experienced this before? Can you recommend anything?
I’m using imovie 08 and when i press okay it will export towards the end and cancel with an error
Thank you so much for posting these instructions. They worked like a charm, unlike the many attempts I had made to guess at the best format & settings.
Something funny is going on. I’ve put together a 10.5 minute movie and have followed your instructions to the letter, and iMovie proceeded to the “compressing movie” stage. At first iMovie gave me ETA of 15 minutes, but then it began adding time to to the estimate. Now, two hours later, that estimate has been climbing steadily and is up to 504 minutes! The progress bar is at about 20%. This should not be happening, right?
If it helps, I’m using iMovie HD 5.0 on a G4 iBook, OS 10.3.9. The movie clips and the export in progress are on an external FireWire drive with 63 GB of free space.
Thanks for any help you can give.
Well, I guess I answered my own question at the end there. Today I got tired of waiting, canceled the export, packed up the FireWire drive & brought it to an Intel Mac. Again it did the expanding ETA thing but it all moved so much faster, it actually got done, and in not too long a time.
So here is my 10-minute video of Brooklynites going berserk with joy over Obama’s victory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Slh2VgNHMLc
This was really helpful – got me the nicest, highest quality output I’ve been able to get for Youtube. Thanks!
Youtube has upped their limits to 200 and 20 min. but iMovie still sets the limit at 100 and 10 min.! Sucks!
Can you update this for recording and editing widescreen 16:9 video? What are the best settings for this?
This was such an incredibly helpful tutorial, it saved me hours.
Thank-you so much!!!
Z
what a godsend.
AWESOME! It worked great, great tip for a former PC guy just learning the Mac ropes!
THANK YOU for this! I was starting to notice how crummy my iMovie videos were looking once I put them onto YouTube. This was EXACTLY what I needed and I will be bookmarking it to help me in the future!
Here is a video I did using your tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQbvFDYnf_U
THANK YOU!
Thank you! I have iMovie 06 and..
I definitely needed those instructions!
HELP!! I am not a technical person–I did this and iMovie keeps crashing about 10 minutes into the export. I have OS 10.5 and iMovie version 08. All the other settings are as you recommend.. any ideas or another good quality compression settings to use??
you have made me a VERY happy girl
thank you!!!!
Thank you soooo much for these tips..Very helpful!!
Um, I’ve a question though, if you can, how do you bulk upload via iMovie?? It’s just I hate having to upload one by one, taking at least 40 mins each.
cool im gonna try this out ill let you know if it works
Thanks for all the tips. I have exported as movie as well. I will compare the results. What would be the difference between exporting with “download’ vs “streaming”. You can see a movie about how to use video to record foreclosed homes at http://energywiseproperties.net. You can record your notes about the house on audio, no need to carry a notepad.
For those with slower computers, change the bit rate to 300 instead of 2000. It’s much faster but still looks great! Thanks so much for posting this. You don’t know how many configurations I’ve tried to export iMovies to try and look good.
Thank you for this instruction. At last I can upload quality videos.
this was so incredibly helpful, thanks!
Thank you Shell, this was really really good
here is my video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdVZoSNiR20
This is very helpful and the imovie looks great… except for one thing. Following your instructions perfectly, the image is now slightly stretched.
As if its on a wide-screen function or something. Any ideas about what may be causing this and how to avoid it?
Thanks for this info. This has been an ongoing problem for a year. I still use Imovie 6,
because I’ve taken it to the next level.
Regards,
Ronald
It’s been 8 hours, and my 41 mgb 3 minute video is still not posted on youtube. It shows in “my videos”. The Imovie6 video is in SD format, not HD.
Enter: ronald9800
Perhaps you can help. I followed your instructions on uploading, but my vdo’s have never taken this long. (Usually an hour to process.)
Thanks- huge help
omg thanks for this!
on the image size.. can I change it to something bigger?? 320 x 240 is a bit small.. if use a bigger size will it still be Youtube friendly?
Did you ever get an answer back on your post? I had the same issue – my video is slightly stretched. I’m not sure how to fix it. I’ve exported the video 5 or 6 different ways and haven’t had much luck. Let me know if you were able to find a solution.
Thank you!
You are a total lifesaver! I’ve been muddling around trying to figure out how to take the raw movie and save it for YouTube. I don’t have the newer iMovie and ended up with a 2GB movie file that YouTube kept quitting on. Your tuturial allowed me to save it in a size that uploads at a quality that’s not half bad. Thank you for sharing this!
You are a star!
Thanks! I’ve been doing youtube videos for a while but they never uploaded at the best quality and I couldn’t figure out which settings I was doing wrong… 200 videos later, your blog post saves the day! You rock!
Thanks for the info! It made the process so much more enjoyable! PS any idea how to put titles on the actual video for the entire time it plays. I got them before and after but couldn’t get it on the video itself.
you. are. a. genuis.
thank you!!!!!!
although i’m doing a stop motion – does anyone know what format i need to change to make it less pixelated? the pics obviously move very fast…
Hi,
I’ve been using the export preset for CD-ROM with iMovie HD (6.0.4, w/ OSX 10.6.7 I don’t like iMovie 11/9.0.2). It gives good enough quality and is a reasonable file size. I’ll try these settings too though since I want to compare them to both what I’ve been doing as well as iMovie 11′s (9.0.2) export to YouTube preset.
Thanks!
John L
Thank you so much!! This saved me today! Thanks a ton for your help!
I join the many folk above in saying THANKS SO MUCH! Finally, I was able to export and upload my iMovie video. I could not have done it without your help! THANKS THANKS THANKS
The County Library on Lindbergh, Melissa hope to see you there!