iMovie: The Missing Manual

Chapter 15. Share via Email and the Web

If you ask Apple, the DVD has had its day in the sun. Today, the real action is on the Web, that billion-seat megaplex where unknown independent filmmakers get noticed, and where it doesn’t cost a penny to distribute your work.

Email is a distribution option for short movies, but hardly a way to showcase your 1080p feature-length film. For that, you need to turn to online video-sharing services like YouTube. People watch six billion hours of YouTube videos every month. Facebook is no slouch, either. Its video-hosting tools help you quickly share your movie with your closest (or remotest) friends. And for projects that need a certain sophistication, try the classy site Vimeo. Even professional filmmakers use it as a video outlet, so you’d be in good company.

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 pick up your footage and broadcast it to the world. Or, what the heck: Post videos to your own website and share it there.

This chapter covers all the ways to distribute your opus via the Web. And if you disagree with Apple’s take on DVDs and prefer the ease and simplicity of sharing that way, take a trip to Chapter 16.

First, a Word About Sharing Raw Footage

If you’ve ever dusted off a tape camcorder or a DVD video camera full of raw footage from old home movies, you’ve probably had a lot of fun reveling in the memories—seeing, for example, what the ...