settings advice in iMovie

First post here, thanks for reading.

As a new iMovie user (and new Mac user) I am struggling to get as good a result with iMovie as I a had been getting with Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie Maker has a "best quality to fit" and then you can specify a maximum file size. This has usually rendered pretty good results.

With the iMovie settings, I end up with smallish files that look pretty poor. I'm messing with the settings but honestly I'm clueless.

I'd really appreciate somebody just giving me some guidelines on what to set each parameter to get the best video results and still stay within, say, 50 meg, which is the max Network Solutions will allow me to upload to my site.

I tape a lot of musicians, mostly guitar players, so video quality is important to get the value of what they're playing. Really appreciate any advice. I did some searches on the forum and got a little lost in the volume of stuff, maybe somebody could just send me to an old thread.

Thanks a ton!

carrtunes

www.carrtunes.net

Under the Share menu are several options. Only one of them has the ability to tweak parameters that allow you set the size of the resulting file. At that, you don't set the size directly, but alter the data rate.

The option I'm talking about is labeled "Export using QuickTime...". Since there is much to explain, I wrote an "iMovie Export Guide" to address these details. Click on the 'iMovie 08' link on the guide.