Streaming Large Movies

Reader Michael Quinn has a lot of questions regarding a single movie. He writes:

I have a 1.75GB MPEG-4 Quicktime Movie file. If I subscribe to MobileMe and upload it using iDisk, will friends and family be able to see it? If so, could they stream it, or would they have to download it? Or, is this file too large for them to access at all? If MobileMe can't do this, is there any other movie/video hosting app that could?

If you dropped it in you iDisk's Public folder your friends and family would be able to download it but not stream it. But let's back up a second. That's a honkin' big movie and one that, in its current form, I wouldn't advise streaming. First of all, it could take a long time to start streaming to your viewers. And, perhaps more importantly, if a lot of people access the thing, you could easily run over your MobileMe monthly data transfer limit (that limit is 200GB of data transfer for a standard MobileMe account).

If you want to go with MobileMe I'd severely slim down that movie. One good way to do that is to import it into iMovie '09, pull it into a project, and then choose Share -> MobileMe Gallery. In the sheet that appears you can choose a size that will work better for streaming--Tiny (176 x 144), Mobile (480 x 272), Medium (640 x 360), or Large (960 x 540) for a 720p HD movie.

From the sound of your question, you don't yet have a MobileMe account. If the MobileMe Gallery feature is the single thing that's pushing you toward this $99-per-annum service, perhaps you could save some money by creating a YouTube account and posting your video to that fine free service using the Share -> YouTube command. As with MobileMe Gallery you have options for creating movies of different sizes and you needn't grant the general public access to your movie. Just make it a personal movie and then grant access to your family and friends.

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