You can publish your iMovie project directly to the YouTube website. YouTube is an independent website that freely hosts videos by its community members. To post to YouTube, you must have a YouTube account.
To publish to YouTube:
- Select your project in the Project Library, and then choose Share > YouTube.
- Choose your account in the Account pop-up menu.
- If you don’t have a YouTube account, click Add to be guided through the account creation process on the YouTube website.
- Choose a category from the pop-up menu for the video to be categorized on the YouTube website.
- Fill in the following fields:
- Title: The name of your movie.
- Description: Some information about your movie for viewers to read.
- Tags: Keywords that viewers can use to search for and find your movie.
- Select the mobile or medium size for your movie.
If the larger sizes are not available, the original project media isn’t large enough to render in that size. The largest media size used in the project determines the final movie sizes you can render.
The dots below each device in the table of sizes indicate which movie sizes are recommended for use with that device. Either size is good for streaming from the YouTube website; the mobile size will be easier to watch for people with slower internet connections.
Hovering the pointer over the “i” next to the movie dimensions displays the following information for the rendered movies:
- H.264: The standard video compression that's used in the movie.
- fps: The frame rate of the movie in frames per second.
- Kbps: The maximum rate at which the movie can be streamed over the Internet in kilobytes per second.
- MB: The size of the movie file in megabytes.
- You can limit who can view the movie by making selecting “Make this movie private.”
- Click Publish. iMovie automatically uploads your movie to the YouTube website.
- After the movie has been uploaded to YouTube, the title bar of your project in iMovie displays “Published to YouTube.” It also displays buttons that take you to the movie’s webpage and send notifications to your friends.
To notify your friends of the new movie you’ve published, click “Tell a friend.”
If you make further edits to your project in iMovie after you’ve published it to YouTube, the title bar indicates that your project is out of date and needs to be rendered again. Old versions of the movie are deleted and replaced by new ones when you render it again.
If you want to save the previous version of your movie before you edit it, you can do so by exporting it to the Finder.
Publishing directly to your .Mac Web Gallery:
To share your movies over the Internet, you can publish your iMovie projects directly to your .Mac Web Gallery. After you publish a movie, send its internet address to your friends and family so they can view it.
To publish to your .Mac Web Gallery, you must have an active .Mac account. If you don’t already have a .Mac account, you can sign up for one at the .Mac or MobileMe website.
To publish to your .Mac Web Gallery:
Select your project in the Project Library, and then choose Share > .Mac Web Gallery.
In the “Publish to .Mac” window, fill in the fields:
- Title: The title of your movie.
- Description: Some information about your movie for viewers to read.
- Select one or more movie sizes to publish. The dimensions of the finished movies are shown on the right side of the table.
- Mobile size is recommended for most purposes; the larger sizes may be difficult to watch for people who have slow Internet connections.
Hovering the pointer over the “i” next to the movie dimensions displays the following information for the rendered movies:
- H.264: The standard video compression used in the movie.
- fps: The frame rate of the movie in frames per second.
- Kbps: The maximum rate at which the movie can be streamed over the Internet in kilobytes per second.
- MB: The file size of the movie in megabytes.
- Choose an option from the “Viewable by” pop-up menu to set password protection for your movie, depending on whether you want it to be publicly viewable or accessible by only specific people.
- Everyone: Makes the movie publicly accessible by any visitor to your .Mac Web Gallery.
- Only me: Requires your .Mac user name and password in order for you to see the movie. Sharing your user name and password with others is not recommended.
- Edit names and passwords: Allows you to create user names and passwords that you can provide to others whom you want to be able to access the movie. After selecting this option, click the Add (+) button in the bottom-left corner of the window and then type a user name. Press the Tab key, and then type the password you want to associate with the user name. User names and passwords must be between four and twenty characters long and can include only letters (a through z), digits (0 through 9), the underscore (_) or a period (.), but not more than a single period can be used at the end. Any Web Gallery movies available to this user will be listed to the right of the password. Click OK, and then select the user name from the “Viewable by” pop-up menu.
- Select “Hide movie on Web Gallery homepage” if you do not want the movie to appear on the homepage of your .Mac Web Gallery.
- Select “Allow movie to be downloaded” if you want viewers to be able to download copies of your movie.
- Click Publish. iMovie automatically uploads your movie to your .Mac Web Gallery. After the movie has been uploaded to .Mac, the title bar of your project in iMovie displays “Published to .Mac.” It also displays buttons that take you to the movie’s webpage and send notifications to your friends and family.
- To visit your movie’s webpage, click Visit.
- To notify your friends and family of the new movie you’ve published, click “Tell a friend.”
- If you want to remove your movie from .Mac, choose Share > “Remove from .Mac.”
If you want to save the previous version of your movie before you edit it, you can do so by exporting it to a folder in the Finder.