Using Different Formats

When it comes to saving and sharing your movies, you have a lot of options. Digital video gives you the opportunity to make one file of your movieor several. You have a lot of flexibility in deciding what format is best for your audienceor you can choose multiple formats. You can also choose to make a different version for each format you choose. For instance, you could make a 2-minute movie to share on the Web and a 30-minute version to play on a CD or DVD. It's quite common to make two or more files of a movie for sharing in different ways.

Note

If you save the same two-minute movie in multiple formatsfor instance, an email version and a higher-quality version to play on your computerremember that each file requires disk space. (They are not the same file.)

Many people want to save movies to DVD. With Movie Maker, you can't burn movies to a DVD, but it you can burn them to a CD (if you have a CD burner). Most recordable CDs are 650MB in size, so if you want to put your movie on a single CD, you'll need to make it no more than 650MB.

To make a DVD, you need additional software, which you can download for a 30-day free trial from several editing software makers' websites. (Chapter 10, "Resources for Learning," provides details.)

Tip

Remember that using a DVD is not the only way to see your movie masterpiece on TV. You can share a movie by making a miniDVtape and connecting your camcorder to your TV. (This method saves a lot of room on your hard drive.) Of course, if you want those cool DVD menus, DVD is the way to go.