Step 7: The Video Factor

Early on in this process, a decision needed to be made on what form the final video product should take.  Should I upload the videos on Youtube, and let the family access them?  Should I store the videos on a USB memory stick, and mail them out to family members?  Should I create a DVD of the videos and mail them out?

The final decision was DVDs, for several reasons:

1. The Youtube option heavily involves uploading between 17 and 20 GigaBytes - just not going to happen with our network speed.
2. 32GB USB memory sticks are $25 - $30 each.  I need 18 of them.  Did I mention Bules Vintage Films is a low budget operation?
3. DVDs are cheap. 

Plus, many of the films contain multiple subject matters.  Distributing them as individual files for a computer to read doesn't allow me to define the multiple subjects contained in each video.

And finally, Mom Bules can't even spell USB..and she's going to read them on a computer?

DVDs it is.

Next question:  What should be the digitization quality of the final video products?  Now that the video "projects" work is complete, they need to be converted to a final video format.  If the digitization quality is set too low, then the videos will make the films even worse than they already are.  Too high, and the video files take up too much space (after all, they are only 8mm films).

So disk space becomes another factor.  One standard DVD can hold 4.5Gbytes of DVD-formatted videos.  Adding up all of the video file sizes, it looks like we'll need at least 4 DVDs.  I want to keep it at that level, and not require more than 4 DVDs per set.

The app iMovie can convert the video projects into a variety of video format types and qualities.

iMovie Video Formatting Options

I tested the Medium, Large, and HD options on the same video.  Medium offered an obviously lower-quality video product.  Too many digital artifacts and a rather high fuzzy-ness factor.

The Large and HD version seemed about the same to me, no need to go to HD quality, since it created much larger file sizes.

So the step is to convert (or "share" in iMovie terms) each video project into a "Large" video file.