(photo by
D'Arcy Norman)So, you've recorded a whole bunch of beautiful video clips with one of our new pocket video cameras, and you want to upload them to iTunes U or share them online in some other way... but those files are so big! What's a person to do? Obviously, you want your files to be a bit smaller for quicker uploading and downloading, but you still want the quality to be high enough that the video looks decent.
You could import each file individually into iMovie and then follow the instructions for
How to prepare an iMovie or Windows Movie Maker project for upload to iTunes U under the "iTunes U Help" tab on Media Services'
Online Help page. However, that would be time-consuming and would only be worth it if you needed to edit the clips or put them together into one longer movie file. Let's say, in this case, you just want to use the clips as they are but make them all a bit smaller, as a batch.
Enter
iSquint. It's simple, fast, and doesn't have lots of confusing options. For most purposes, you can just make a couple easy choices like choosing "TV" or "iPod" (I also recommend checking the box for "H.264 Encoding"), and iSquint will make perfectly watchable--but much smaller--video files out of your big behemoths.
Need a similar option for the Windows platform? Try
FormatFactory.
Both iSquint and FormatFactory are linked on our
Online Help page, along with other helpful information. Click the "iTunes U" tab, then, under "For Everyone," click on
Free software for creating and converting audio and video.
