Section B.7. Exporting Troubles

B.7. Exporting Troubles Now suppose that you're able to edit the video successfully, and even edit it into a masterful work of art. The big moment arrives: You're ready to play the movie back onto the tape, or export it as a QuickTime movie, so that you can then play it for friends and venture capitalists. Here are a few things that can go wrong. B.7.1. You Live in Europe If you bought your DV camcorder in Europe, it has probably been, as the Internet punsters say,"nEUtered." That is, it's been electronically rigged so that it can't record video from a FireWire cable. Your PAL-format camcorder isn't broken. In fact, it's simply the victim of a European law, enacted under pressure from the motion picture industry, that any camcorder that can accept a video input signal is, technically speaking, a video recorder, not a camera. Video recorders are subject to a huge additional tax. Camcorder manufacturers, in an attempt to keep their consumer product line inexpensive, responded by taking out the digital-input feature from the built-in software of inexpensive DV and Digital8 camcorders. (More expensive DV camcorders don't have this problem.) If you're clever with electronics, you can surf the Web in a quest for black market Web sites that explain how to un -disable FireWire recordinga simple procedure involving a technician's remote-control unit. Video repair shops in many European cities will perform this task for a small fee, too (but don't expect to see ads for this service). Otherwise, you have no choice but to limit your iMovie productions to QuickTime movies (instead of videotape), or to upgrade to a more expensive camcorder. B.7.2. Export to Camera Fails to Stop Exporting Selected Clips You don't have to export your entire movie once it's finished. If, in the File Share dialog box, you turn on "Share selected clips only," iMovie is supposed to export only the clips that you first highlighted (as long as theyre adjacent in the Movie Track). As of version 5.0.1, however, iMovie HD sometimes fails to stop the export after the last clip. The export continues to the end of the project. The only way to halt the exporting is to click Stop. (Consider adding a 5-second black clip after the last selected clip to give you a clean stopping point.) Clicking Stop can sometimes cause weird problems later. You should quit iMovie HD, then reopen the project. Now, selected clips in the Clips pane (not the Movie Track) do stop exporting correctly, although the export order is unpredictable. If you need to export just one or two clips that are now in the Movie Track, Option-drag (to duplicate them) to the Clips pane, then export from there. B.7.3. Export to HomePage Doesn't Have Fast Start Fast Start is the QuickTime feature that allows your movie to start playing in your audience's Web browser before the download is complete. Unfortunately, Fast Start doesn't work when you export an iMovie HD movie to your HomePage. For now, the solution is the shareware program called Lillipot. It lets you add Fast Start to your movie before you upload it to your HomePage. Lillipot is available from the "Missing CD" page of www.missingmanuals.com. B.7.4. Exporting DV Widescreen Doesn't Make a Widescreen Movie Sometimes, when you export your DV Widescreen project to QuickTime, the exported movie is not, in fact, widescreen. Once again, the culprit is usually out-of-date iMovie HD plug-ins you've bought from other companies. Old versions can prevent iMovie HD from automatically exporting widescreen projects to widescreen movies. Tip: Don't be confused by the dimensions shown in the Movie Share dialog box. For widescreen projects, the text is wrong. It says the exported CD-ROM movie will be 320 x 240, for example, when in fact it will be 320 x 180.