iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 14. Exporting to YouTube and the Web

If you ask Apple, the DVD has had its day in the sun. The format is more than 14 years old. Nobody puts movies on DVD anymore. Plastic shiny discs that have to be—ugh—mailed? That’s such an old-fashioned, clumsy, physical way to share video.

The real action is on the Internet, that billion-seat megaplex where unknown independent filmmakers get noticed, and where it doesn’t cost you a penny to distribute your work to a vast, worldwide audience.

It’s all about YouTube, baby. One hundred million videos watched per day. It costs nothing to sign up and post your videos there.

You can put your videos up on your MobileMe account, too. MobileMe costs $100 per year ($66 if you buy from Amazon.com), but man do videos look fantastic against the black background of your MobileMe Gallery. Visitors can choose from multiple frame sizes to accommodate Internet connections of different speeds, too. Your fans can even skim your iMovie ’11 movies using your mouse pointer, just like you can on your Mac.

Facebook is no slouch, either. Although its video-sharing tools aren’t as beautiful as MobileMe’s, Facebook has over 500 million members. That’s a lot of people you can impress.

For projects that need a certain sophistication, try the classy YouTube alternative, Vimeo. Vimeo even plays back your movies in glorious hi-def.

Fancy yourself a witness to history? Do some citizen reporting and post your movies to CNN’s iReport website, where one of the CNN networks might ...