[mingchichow]

What is the best way to send a movie via e-mail so it comes out clear. When I send a movie from
Imovie4 it first compresses it. I then get a fuzzy movie when I download it to email. I am running a G4 400 and a Sony miniDVD camera.

[Graeme_Smith]

If you have QuickTime 7 H.264 is great. But QuickTime 6 users will need to do the free upgrade to open H.264 movies.

[VidPro]

The best bet is to not e-mail the file at all, as a respectable quality movie will be too big to either send or receive, as most ISPs limit the size of e-mail attachments you can have.
What I do is either put the movie at a better quality setting on .Mac or a free web based storage such as http://www.Dropload.com where you can make available a file of up to 100 MB and friends and loved ones, (or anybody else you notify) can download them at their leasure, though it is deleted after one download, or http://www.yousendit.com which has a 1 GB limit and allows multiple downloads. The intended recepients have to access the file within one week in the case of both Dropload.com and YouSendIt.com as then they are deleted even if not accessed. Being free services, this time limit is within reason .Mac just limits your total storage, not the duration. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[VidPro]

/forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif I should have added that on .Mac, they can either just view the video, or download to their hard drives. The other services are strictly download only.

[mingchichow]

Thanks.
It looks like if I want to have a good quality movie, I will have to put in on another site for people to go to. To send anything via email would just take up to much space.

[VidPro]

You're welcome.
As I said, many ISPs limit their attachments (many to less than 2 MB, which is not much when talking about movies), so this gets around that problem.
The other thing I do that I didn't mention, is that for better quality, I use Apple's Compressor to do the work on full quality iMovie exports, which gives much sharper movies than iMovie can with its canned compression settings. I'm not sure about the expert mode ones, because with Compressor available, I didn't have to play with those settings, but I do know someone who has tried, and they take a long time to work, so if you try different settings, you can give up days if not weeks of computer time to the encoding process.
Of course FinalCut Pro, which came with Compressor is a much more complete editor than iMovie, but I still sometimes just work in iMovie for very simple projects, I haven't tried FinalCut Express, but I hear that is pretty good, too. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

[mingchichow]

Much appreciated.