Burning iMovies to CD

If you have a CD burner and want to share your iMovies via CD, you can simply save as a CD-ROM movie, which generates a QuickTime movie file that you can then burn to CD. If a person is on a Mac, she can see the movie without installing special software. Many Windows PCs have QuickTime software installed, but if it's not on your recipient's computer, she can download it free from www.apple.com/quicktime/download.

Another fun option for burning iMovies to CD is called Video CD, where you can actually put the resulting disc in most DVD players. The quality is only a little better than VHS, but you can fit about an hour 's worth of video on the disc and it's cheaper than burning DVDs.

Task: Exporting iMovie for CD-ROM

If you want to share the CD-ROM iMovie, you must investigate how to burn a CD that's compatible with the computer owned by the person you're sharing the iMovie with. If you burn your CD on a Mac, it's compatible with other Macs. But if you want to share it with someone on a Windows PC, you must learn how to burn a PC-compatible CD-ROM or a hybrid CD-ROM that works on both Macs and PCs. We'll take a look at burning with Roxio's Toast (www. roxio .com), a popular program that enables you to burn in just about any format you want.

To export an iMovie for CD-ROM:

1. Choose File, Export, and then choose To QuickTime from the Export pop-up menu.

2. Choose the CD-ROM option in the Formats pop-up menu (see Figure 17.14).

   Figure 17.14. Exporting an iMovie for delivery on CD-ROM.

   

3. Click Export and save your file in a location on your hard drive where you can find it later.

4. Using your CD-burning software (such as Toast), drag your CD-ROM movie file into the program and burn a data CD (as opposed to an audio/music CD). Choose a format that's compatible with the computer of the person you're burning it for, such as the Mac OS/PC Hybrid CD option in Toast, which makes the CD-ROM compatible with either Mac or PC.