Combining Movie Segments

It's often a good idea to break up a longer movie into smaller segments, working on 10- or 20-minute chunks at a time. But when 10 minutes of footage takes up nearly 2 GB, you simply may not have enough storage space, even with today's bigger hard drives.

To combine movie segments:

1. Export each segment to DV tape using the steps on the previous pages. It's helpful to add a few seconds of black frames to the end of each segment, then rewind the tape a bit so the next segment plays right on the heels of the previous one.

2. Create a new iMovie project by choosing New Project from the File menu. Make sure you have enough hard disk space to accommodate the segments you wish to combine.

3. Switch to Camera Mode and import the segments. Depending on how you've split the segments, you may only have to add a simple transition between them to create a unified whole (Figure 14.3).

   Figure 14.3. Combining a Fade Out and a Fade In transition elegantly bridges these two long segments.

   

Tip

• If you're confident that you've finished editing the segments individually, consider importing them as long clips instead of letting iMovie try to split out each scene. In iMovie's preferences, turn off Automatically start new clip at scene break (Figure 14.4).

  Figure 14.4. To import your segment as one long clip, turn off the option labeled Automatically start new clip at scene break.

  

Are You Really Ready?

The downside to this approach is that you need to make sure your movie segments are finished (or close enough to being done), because when you re-import them into iMovie, you won't have the clips of unused footage from the individual projects at your disposal.

However, you can always bring in selected media footage using the Import File command under the File menu.