Creating a Video and Sharing with iLife and YouTube

If you’re looking to edit a video and share it with your friends and you have a Macintosh, look no further than the software that comes with your Mac…the iLife suite of applications. In fact, it’s one of the great reasons to get a Mac.

No software should be necessary other than iMovie to do the editing and uploading. Make sure you have the most recent version of the iLife application that includes:

• iMovie – for editing and creating videos
• GarageBand – for creating custom music and podcasts…and learning how to play piano or guitar
• iPhoto – for managing and editing photos and images
• iTunes – for managing and editing music and audio
• iDVD – for burning DVDs

This software is a place where the Mac shines. It’s super easy to use, it all works together, and it’s included with every Macintosh ever sold.

As always, if you’re updating from an older version of iLife, be sure you have a full and complete backup of your entire hard drive before you install the new software.

To share the video, post it on YouTube…then Macs, Windows PCs, or even iPods/iPads/iPhones, etc. can view it easily with the only limitation being that it must fit into 10 minute segments.  It is super easy to share simply by sending the link to the video to whomever. You almost never want to send the actual movie file via email or even a service like yousendit.com. In fact, if you’re ever thinking about e-mailing someone a movie file…please…don’t! Go to http://www.youtube.com and do a search to see if it is already available on YouTube first and send the link. Often large attachments really mess up people’s email boxes…if they go through at all.

If you need to do any conversions of video format that aren’t handled already by iMovie, I highly recommend products from iSkysoft. Their iTube Studio application (about $30) downloads YouTube and Facebook videos to your Mac and converts the video to a format you can replay or use in a presentation.  (Note: iTube Studio works only with the Safari browser.) You can try their video Downloader for FREE.

Their Media Converter application is also extremely useful for converting video formats (about $38).