mp4 or mov format when making home movies using iMovie?

[edavt04]

Hey guys!

I love making short (5-7 min) family movies on my Mac I typically make them in both mp4 and mov format and back them up with my 3 external hard drives.
Now, I'd like to also [reserve them (for archival purposes) on M-disk. Would you recommend me to preserve them in mp4 format, or in mov format?

I realize MOV takes up MUCH more space. My other concern is COMPATIBILITY with other things.
Thx!!

 

[ColdCase]

The old rule of thumb is always archive with the highest resolution, lowest compression you can afford as you never know when you are going to want to use it for source material in another project.

Now, if you do have the original media stored on a drive and backed up, then there is no real need to archive the .mov version as you can always create it from the original.

You may want to think about archiving only the original media and project files (the iMovie library I think) instead of the final movie as you can always recreate the edited movie version and export it in whatever format.

Depends on your personal preference, if your family is anything like mine, they are not into high quality video editing or high quality video, so I archive the mp4 versions so they have an easy way to watch them along with the original media in case I want to use the footage in another project. I went to FCPX to take advantage of its powerful tagging and media management features. Somehow I've gathered thousands of hours of home video over the years and there are times I'd like to find all the clips a certain person shows up in