How to Publish a YouTube Video using a Canon PowerShot and iMovie

I am no expert but I've been wanting to posts videos to YouTube for some time now. I am posting this in the hopes of saving someone else the grief of banging their heads against the wall. Once you figure it out, it's easy.

I absolutely did not want to have to buy or download any extra programs. I didn't want to buy a camcorder. I wanted to use what I had. I downloaded the video from my camera to an Apple PowerBook using OSX 10.7.5.

The Camera

I have an inexpensive Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS Digital ELPH. I bought it a year or so ago for less than $200. It takes decent pictures and I've found I can make movies with it! I did have to buy another larger memory card. I picked up an 8 GB card at Fred Meyers for less than $10. My movies are less than 15 minutes so that's plenty of memory. I do have a little tripod.

Video Editing Software

I bought iWork several years ago so I have iMovie 11. It's kind of clunky, funky, but gets the job done. I did suffer through a few videos on how to use it. At this point I am just a hack able to delete bits and pieces and export the video. But later on, I can add fancy stuff.

There is more than one way to get your video to YouTube. The most successful way for me was to go to the iMovie menu:
Share
Export using QuickTime.

Here are the QuickTime settings recommended by YouTube:

Video Settings:
Compression: H.264
Frame Rate: 30
Data Rate: automatic
Key Frames: automatic
Frame Reordering: unchecked

Audio/Sound:
Format: AAC
Show advanced settings & choose constant bit rate as encoding strategy

Choose original size of the video. For my Canon 1300 it is 640x480 VGA
Prepare for internet: fast stream

These settings will export in .mov format which is acceptable to YouTube. It took my 9:37 minute video about 30 minutes to convert. It was a big file.

YouTube

Go to your YouTube account and choose upload and follow the prompts. My .mov file was over 248 MB; I don't know if that is normal or not. But it did upload in less than 30 minutes – successfully! Don't be discouraged if you have problems. Just go to the help section, Google the error message, work through it. Good luck and have fun!

Still shot of the video shot from my Canon Powershot.
I'll be posting the video with my review of VeganCuts August 2013 Beauty Box.