Reducing the length of some footage and uploading to You Tube

hi a i am a newbie here and was wondering if some one could advise me how i can dramatically reduce the length of a movie i made whilst still hanging on to the unneeded clips? The footage is an hour long and despite the fact i shortened it to 5 mins by putting all the clips i didnt want back on the pane, I cant upload it to youtube which constantly rejects it for being too long.It claims its over an hour long when it isnt????Thats after I compressed in to Quicktime using various formats/codecs.,Even the basic one gets turned away
Someone suggested i drag the Quicktime footage back inot another iMovie project and start again but I movie rejected that,Thanks

What version of iMovie?

It sounds like you have exported the movie as a QuickTime file. Open it in QuickTime and do a Command-I (show info) on the file. How long does it say it is? How large is the file?

xstep said:

What version of iMovie?

It sounds like you have exported the movie as a QuickTime file. Open it in QuickTime and do a Command-I (show info) on the file. How long does it say it is? How large is the file?

Click to expand...

yes the shortened version is a QT dv file and far too big and long :
27.91 gbs, 1 hr 10 mins long and i am using iMovie 5

donmaico said:

yes the shortened version is a QT dv file and far too big and long :
27.91 gbs, 1 hr 10 mins long and i am using iMovie 5

Click to expand...

A 28GB file is 26GB larger than YouTube allows you to upload. When you do a Command-I in QuickTime player, what codec is used for the movie? You originally said the project was 5 minutes, a lot less than an 1hr & 10mins. What's up with that?

See my iMovie export guide regarding how to export to other more efficient codec such as H.264.

I'm not sure I'm understanding how you shortened your movie. Did you drag a five minute selection from the complete footage in the bottom Events pane into the Project pane on top? It sounds like you've exported the entire movie instead of just the five minute portion.

xstep said:

A 28GB file is 26GB larger than YouTube allows you to upload. When you do a Command-I in QuickTime player, what codec is used for the movie? You originally said the project was 5 minutes, a lot less than an 1hr & 10mins. What's up with that?

See my iMovie export guide regarding how to export to other more efficient codec such as H.264.

Click to expand...

I used this recommendation but it didnt work ie iMovie wouldnt accept the QT file

"If you want to keep just the clips that are actually in the movie, 'share' your shortened iMovie as Quick Time 'Full Quality' and save it to a convenient place such as the desktop.
Once that has been created, open a new iMovie and drag that new quicktime movie clip into it. Your movie will be one long clip."

I then tried out several codecs including this recommendation:
iMovie Settings for Upload to YouTube: iMovie Tutorial
and also compressed for web streaming which dramatically reduced the size of the file
In every case the file was rejected for being too long despite the fact i left just two clips totaling 5 minutes on the clips viewer (the rest having been returned to the clips pane),Its noticeable that the playhead continues playing way beyond the two clips as if the removed ones were still there

Oneironaut said:

I'm not sure I'm understanding how you shortened your movie. Did you drag a five minute selection from the complete footage in the bottom Events pane into the Project pane on top? It sounds like you've exported the entire movie instead of just the five minute portion.

Click to expand...

Basically my original movie was about 1 hour an ten minutes long including several photos etc.What i susequently did and in order to get it accepted by you Tube, was remove the vast majority of the clips and move them back to to the pane leaving just two behind which totalled 5 minutes running time.What seems to be happening,though, is that because i saved the original film the movie runs as if those clips were still there and therefore when i "share" it , it carries the same time lapse with it, ie 1 hr and 10 mins

It sounds that the current project is somehow corrupted. Rather than mess with it further, I would try creating a new project and importing those clips of interest. They are already in your current project which is a container folder.

YouTube is limited to 10 minute segments and the total file size can't be bigger than 2GB.

xstep said:

It sounds that the current project is somehow corrupted. Rather than mess with it further, I would try creating a new project and importing those clips of interest. They are already in your current project which is a container folder.

YouTube is limited to 10 minute segments and the total file size can't be bigger than 2GB.

Click to expand...

not sure how i could do that .i opened a new project then clicked import , then clicked on the original movie and got a message saying it couldnt import, Quicktime couldnt parse it -1409.I then tried to open both movies so i could drag the clips I wanted but with no success