[roloru]

I have an iMovie HD project that is large, 18.22 Gig. I've cut the movie down to 15 minutes and moved all non-used clips to the trash, then emptied trash both in iMovie and the hard drive. I expected the resulting file to be about 3 Gig, which is usually what 15 minutes of film takes up. Unfortunately the file size was unchanged. I then "compressed" it and the Zip file is still 18.04 Gig. I'm trying to free up space on my hard drive; what's happening and how can I accomplish my purpose?

[rab777hp]

Export it as a quicktime movie.

[roloru]

Thanks for the reply, but I'm confused. Export it where - to my hard drive? Can I then trash the original file and still have the quality of the original film in the new QT movie, whose size I assume will be measured in only MB rather than Gigs? And is it then burn-able to a DVD just the same as the original movie was? Thanks for more help.

[rab777hp]

Yeah, to your drive- it will be a lot smaller, you can always add it into iMOvie or iDvd in the future for future use

[roloru]

And one final question: is it then safe to completely trash and get rid of the original 18 Gig project?

[rab777hp]

Sure- you still have the movie of it, the quicktime file is just the movie, contains everything, in movie form

[roloru]

Many thanks for the help.

[smax013]

roloru said:

Can I then trash the original file and still have the quality of the original film in the new QT movie, whose size I assume will be measured in only MB rather than Gigs?

Depends on what level of quality you select for the QT export. Generally, if you reduce the size, then it will likely reduce the quality some. At a minimum, you are compressing it, which can affect the quality some. Or you could be reducing the resolution (i.e. how big of a picture size it will be).