Can we beat the video format / hosting site dead horse a little more?

[NM_Shooter]

I have some old home movies on DVD that were originally created with iMovie.  I'd like to rip them to MP4 (or???) and find a way to post them to the web so that other family members can view. 

Can somebody throw me a clue on how to do this and preserve video quality?  What tool / site should I use to do this?

Thanks...

[Native_NM]

I use QuickTime Pro for a lot of simple projects and it works pretty well. I have Adobe Premiere also.  The learning curve is higher but it does rip nicely. I also used Divx Pro and had good luck.


For a single-time project look for an evaluation edition of software.  They give you a limited license to evaluate the product. 

[peternap]

None of the good NLE's are cheap Shooter. I use CS6 mostly and you really don't want to know what that costs.

For about a hundred bucks you can get Avid Studio which is a great , not quite professional editor.

There is a learning curve and the more it costs, the harder it is to use.
I've never used Imovie but try to upload them directly to Youtube or Vimeo. Even though they don't advertise it, they can accept a lot of different formats and apply their own compression.

If that doesn't work, Handbrake, which is free, should be able to convert them without any quality loss.

[Ernest T. Bass]

I've mentioned before that I always use the free mpeg streamclip.. I generally use the h.264 codec for web. Play with the data rate to get the file size/quality balance. For HD I generally go from 5-10 mbps, but SD footage could be much lower without looking terrible.

[peternap]

I've mentioned before that I always use the free mpeg streamclip.. I generally use the h.264 codec for web. Play with the data rate to get the file size/quality balance. For HD I generally go from 5-10 mbps, but SD footage could be much lower without looking terrible.

Mpeg Streamclip is good and will be easier for him to use than Handbrake.
I've found a lot of the hosting sites cut the video's to 4mbps before recompressing.