Section 14.12. iMovie HD | Switching to the Mac[c] The Missing Manual

14.12. iMovie HD

If you have a digital camcorder (MiniDV, Digital8, or high-definition format) and a few hours of free timeall right, a few weekends of itiMovie helps you make astonishingly high-quality , fully edited movies. Digital video is great; you can transfer the footage back and forth between the Mac and the camcorder a hundred times, but you'll never see any deterioration in quality.

14.12.1. Phase 1: Set Up iMovie

The first time you run iMovie, it asks you whether you want to open an existing iMovie file (called a project ) or start a new one. After that, each time you launch iMovie, it automatically opens up the movie you most recently worked on.

If you click Create Project, you're asked to select a name and location for the movie you're about to make. (You can ignore the "Video format" pop-up menu; iMovie autodetects what kind of camcorder you have once you begin importing footage.)

Figure 14-15. Here's iMovie in a nutshell . Save your project onto the drive that has the most space (if, indeed, you have more than one), because digital video files are enormous . They require 3.6 MB of hard drive space per second or 13 gigabytes per one- hour tape. Choose a monitor resolution that's 1024 x 768 or larger (using, for example, the Displays panel of System Preferences). Poor iMovie can't even run at any lower setting.

Once you've saved your project, you finally arrive at the main iMovie window (Figure 14-15).

14.12.2. Phase 2: Import Camcorder Footage

After you've shot some footage, connect the camcorder to the Mac using a FireWire cable. If you have the proper cable, one end (the six-pin connector) fits your Mac, and the much smaller end (the four-pin connector) goes into the FireWire connector on your camcorder, which, depending on the brand, may be labeled FireWire, i.Link, DV In/Out, or IEEE 1394.

Put the camcorder into VTR mode (also known as VCR or Playback mode). If necessary, click iMovie's Camera button, identified in Figure 14-15.

The Monitor window says, "Camera Connected." Now you can click the Play, Rewind, Fast Forward, and other buttons on the screen to control the camcorder. Scan your tape to find the sections that you'll want to include in your edited movie.

Every time you click the Import buttonor tap the Space bariMovie imports the footage you're watching, saving it as a series of digital-video movie files on the Mac's hard drive. For each scene, iMovie creates what looks like a slide in the Clips pane, as shown in Figure 14-15. That's a clip a single piece of footage that makes up one of the building blocks of an iMovie movie. Its icon is a picture of the first frame. On the clip's upper-left corner, you can see the length of the clip expressed as "seconds: frames" (there are approximately 30 frames per second in North American video or HDTV; 25 in the European format).

14.12.3. Phase 3: Arrange the Clips

As you're building your movie, you can store your clips in either of two places: the Clips pane or the storyboard stripthe Movie Track , for want of an official nameat the bottom of the window (Figure 14-15). You put clips on the Clips pane before deciding what to do with them, and drag them down to the Movie Track area once you've decided where they fit into your movie.

The Movie Track can appear in either of two ways, depending on which tab you click (the film strip or the clock, respectively):

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Automatic Scene Detection

If you let the tape continue to roll, you'll notice that each time a new scene begins, a new clip icon appears in the Clips pane.

iMovie is studying the date and time stamp that DV camcorders record into every frame. When iMovie detects a break in time, it assumes that you stopped recording, if only for a momentand therefore that the next piece of footage should be considered a new shot. It turns each new shot into a new clip.

If you'd prefer manual control over when each clip begins and ends, choose iMovie Preferences, click Import, and turn off "Start a new clip at each scene break."

Clip Viewer . In this view, each clip appears as an icon, like a slide on a slide viewer. Each is sized identically, regardless of length.
Timeline Viewer . Here, each clip is represented by a horizontal bar that's as wide as the clip is long. Parallel bars below the clips indicate the soundtracks playing simultaneously .

You can do several things to a clip, whether it's in the Clips pane or the Movie Track. For example:

Select a clip . Click a clip's icon to view its first frame and, down below the Movie Track, some statistics (for example, when the scene was filmed).

To highlight several consecutive clips in the Movie Track, click one clip, and then Shift-click the last one. You can also drag diagonally across a batch of them.
Play a clip . To play a highlighted clip, press the Space bar. You can also drag the playhead (see Figure 14-15) to view earlier or later parts of the clip. By pressing the right and left arrow keys when playback is stopped, you can view your clip one frame at a time, as though you're watching the world's least interesting slideshow.

Tip: Adding the Shift key to your arrow-key presses is often more usefulit lets you jump ten frames at a time.

Reorganize the clips . You can drag clips from cubbyhole to cubbyhole on the Clips pane. In fact, you can even drag a clip (or even a mass of highlighted clips) onto

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Why Emptying the Trash Doesn't Restore Disk Space

When I emptied the trash, the little "free disk space remaining" counter didn't change at all! I had 532 megs available before I emptied the Trash, and the same amount after!

In iMovie HD, you can use the Revert Clip to Original command any time, even after emptying the Trash, even months or years later. You can also add back a missing chunk from the middle of a clip that you'd previously lobotomizedagain, even after emptying the Trash. You can chop, truncate, split, and shorten clips to your heart's content, and at any time, restore what you'd eliminated. (In previous iMovie versions, emptying the Trash meant that portions you cut from clips were gone forever.)

These features work because iMovie quietly preserves the entire copy of every clip you import. If you split a clip in half, drag the second part to the Trash, and then empty the Trash, you don't get back one single byte of disk space. iMovie is hanging onto the entire original clip, just in case you change your mind someday.

The only time emptying the Trash actually frees up disk space, in fact, is if you've put an entire clip into it. (Even then, you may have to empty the Finder Trash to complete the transaction.) If even one frame of it appears in the Timeline, iMovie still preserves the entire original clip on your hard drive.

So what if you've imported a 40-minute tape all in one clip and you intend to work with only the first five minutes' worth? Will that iMovie project occupy 40 minutes' worth of space on your hard drive forever?

Yes, unless you export the entire movie project as a full-quality DV clip and then reimport it.

an occupied cubbyhole. iMovie automatically creates enough new cubbyholes to hold them all, and shuffles existing clips out of the way if necessary.

Trash a clip . You can get rid of a clip either by selecting it and then pressing the Delete key or by dragging it directly onto the project Trash icon (once again, shown in Figure 14-15).

The iMovie Trash has a lot in common with the iPhoto Trash, the Finder's Trash, or the Windows Recycle Bin: it's a safety net. It's a holding tank for clips, photos, and sounds that you intend to throw out. They're not really gone, though, until you use the File Empty Trash command.

To open the Trash window before you empty it, click the Trash icon or choose File Show Trash.
Trim a clip (Clips pane, Clips viewer) . Unless you have some godlike ability to control precisely when the subjects of your lifeyour pets, your children, your geysersare at their most video-worthy, you probably don't need to preserve every frame of your captured footage for future generations.

To target some footage for deletion, click a clip, position your cursor within the Scrubber bar, and drag horizontally until the triangle handles surround the footage you want to keep (Figure 14-15). If you choose Cut or Clear from the Edit menu, iMovie promptly trims away whatever was highlighted between the triangles . (If you choose Edit Crop instead, iMovie deletes whatever was outside the highlighted portion.)
Trim a clip (Timeline viewer) . Drag the edges of a clip's colored bar inward to shorten it from either end. (Drag outward again if you change your mind.)

14.12.4. Phase 4: Assemble the Movie

Drag the edited clips out of the Clips pane and into the correct order on the Movie Track, exactly as though you're building a storyboard or timeline. (To magnify the Timeline Viewer for a better look, drag the slider at the lower-left corner of the window. It adjusts the relative sizes of the bars that represent your clips.)

As you work, you'll want to play back your movie to check its flow. You may discover that, in the context of the whole movie, some clips are too long, too short, in the wrong order, and so on. To play back your entire Movie Track, press the Home key, which means Rewind. When you tap the Space bar, iMovie plays your movie from the beginning, one clip after another, seamlessly.

Or just click the Play Full Screen button (the darkened triangle to the right of the round Play button). It makes the playbackeven if it's already underwayfill the entire computer screen. To interrupt the movie showing, press Escape.

14.12.5. Phase 5: Transitions, Effects, Titles, Audio, and Photos

Professional film and video editors have at their disposal a wide range of transitions special effects that smooth the juncture between one clip and the next. For example, apart from a simple cut , the world's most popular transition is the crossfade or dissolve , in which the end of one clip gradually fades away as the next one fades in.

iMovie offers a long list of transitions, of which crossfades are only the beginning. To see them, click the Trans button (Figure 14-16).

Figure 14-16. Click the name of the transition you want. Use the slider above the Transitions palette to specify how many seconds long you want the crossfade to last. Once you've done so, drag the name of the transition into the Movie Track, between the two clips. They scoot apart to make room for the new transition icon that appears.

When you drag a transition into your Movie Track, the Mac now creates the crossfade renders itby superimposing the end of one clip with the beginning of the next. When the red progress bar is finished, click in your timeline just before the transition, press the Space bar to play, and marvel in your new ability to make home movies look pro.

Tip: You can continue working on other parts of your movie, or even switch into another Mac OS X program, while the rendering is going on.

To delete a transition, click its icon in the timeline and then press Delete. To edit it (by changing its length, for example), click its icon, return to the Transitions palette, make the adjustment, and then click Update.

14.12.5.1. Effects

The Effects button summons a pane full of additional visual effects. Most are designed to create actual special effects that simulate fog, rain, earthquakes, lightning, flashbulbs, and bad LSD. (Most are weird and distracting. Use sparingly.)

To apply an effect, first specify which lucky region of footage you want to be affected. (iMovie can apply effects only to entire clips, so it may have to split your clip at the endpoints of the selection, and then apply the effect to the central clip.)

Then, on the Effects pane, specify when the effect should begin and end (use the Effect In and Effect Out sliders), its intensity, and so on. Finally, click Apply. As usual, the rendering telegraphs its progress with a miniature red progress bar on the selected clip.

If you click a clip and then press the Delete key, you're saying: "Throw away the effect. Bring back my original, unmodified clip." To adjust the start time, stop time, or other parameters of a special effect, you must first delete the effect altogether, and then reapply it using new settings.

14.12.5.2. Titles and credits

To add rolling credits, opening titles, subtitles , or MTV-style music video credits to your masterpiece, start by clicking the Titles button. A list of title animation styles pops up. In the tiny text box underneath the list, type the text you want to appear. (Some of the effects, like Rolling Credits, offer pairs of text blobs; see Figure 14-17.)

If you want to insert this title at the end of a clip, so that the text appears on a black background, turn on the Over Black checkbox. If you'd rather have the text appear on top of the video, leave that box unchecked. (Superimposing a title usually breaks the clip in halfthe part with the title superimposed is now one clip, and the unaffected part is separate.)

Click the Preview button to see what the title will look like. Adjust the timing slider above the list, and then drag the name of the title type (such as Centered Title) into the Movie Track.

To eliminate a title, click its icon in the timeline and then press Delete. To edit, click its icon, make changes in the Titles palette, and then click Update.

14.12.5.3. Audio

The top horizontal band of the Timeline Viewer displays the video component of your movie. For the most part, you won't do much with this strip when you're editing audio; its primary purpose is to show where you are in the movie.

The two skinnier horizontal strips underneath it are your playground for audio clips (Figure 14-18). Both audio tracks play in tandem. Each can hold sound from any of these sources:

iTunes tracks . When you click the Audio button, iMovie shows you your complete iTunes music collection, including playlists, making it easy for you to choose background music for your flick. Double-click a song to listen to it; drag its name onto one of the audio tracks to use it in your movie.

Narration . This can be anything that you've recorded with your microphone. Drag the Playhead to a spot just before you want the narration to begin, click the round Record Voice button on the Audio pane, and begin to speak. You can watch the video play as you narrate. (If the level meter isn't dancing as you speak, check the selected sound source in the Sound panel of System Preferences.)

Figure 14-17. After you've typed in a couple of pairs, click the + button to tack on yet another pair to your credits. The program automatically adds the dots and lines up the names (just like real credits!), or places the subtitle beneath the main title, as shown here.

Sound effects . From the pop-up menu at the top of the iMovie Audio pane, choose iMovie Sound Effects. Now you can add any of iMovie's sound effects (laughing, crickets , and so on) to your movie just by dragging them into an audio track.
MP3, WAV, AAC, and AIFF audio files . Import these popular music formats using the File Import command.
Music from a CD . You can insert a standard audio CD and transfer a song into iMovie to serve as the music for a scene. (Its contents appear in the Audio palette, and iTunes usually opens automatically to help you catalog the CD.) As usual, drag the name of a song to an audio track to install it there.
Your camcorder audio . You can turn the ordinarily invisible audio portion of a video clip into an independent sound clip, which you can manipulate just like any other kind of sound clip (great for creating voice-overs, echoes, audio flashbacks, and so on). To do that, highlight the audio clip and then choose Advanced Extract Audio.

Tip: You can use the three checkboxes at the right end of these tracks to control which ones play back. When you want to watch or listen to only one track, turn off the other two checkboxes.

Figure 14-18. The Timeline Viewer reveals your two parallel audio tracks (shown split in half here, to fit on the page). Feel free to drag audio clips between the two sound tracks. And don't miss the Edit Volume slider, which lets you create audio adjustments along a sound's length.

Fortunately, you can do more with your audio clips than just insert them into the Timeline Viewer:

Whole-clip volume adjustments . To make a selected clip louder or quieter, use the Clip Volume pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen. You can make it so quiet that it's absolutely silent, or you can boost it up to 50 percent louder than the original.
Volume adjustments within a clip . You can also make the volume of a clip rise and fall along its length. For example, you can "pull back" the music when somebody is speaking, and then bring it back to full volume in between speeches.

When you choose View Show Clip Volume Levels (Shift- -L), a horizontal line appears on every audio clip, stretching from edge to edge (and your video clips, too). This line is a graph of the clip's volume.

Click directly on the line and drag upward or downward to produce a temporary volume fluctuation.

Note: When Show Clip Volume Levels is turned on, you can't drag clips' edges to shorten or lengthen them in the Timeline Viewer.

14.12.5.4. Photos

You might want to import a graphics file into iMovie for any number of reasonsto use as a less distracting still image behind your titles and credits, for example, or to create a video photo album. If you keep your pictures in iPhoto, a great feature awaits.

Figure 14-19. To set up a Ken Burns effect, click Start. Use the Zoom controls until the photo is as big as you want it at the beginning of its time onscreen. Drag inside the Preview screen to adjust the photo's position. Then click End, and set up the picture's final size and position. (Shift-drag to constrain your dragging to perfect vertical or perfect horizontal adjustments.) In short, what you've done is set up the starting and ending conditions for the photo.

When you click the Photos button (Figure 14-19), you're shown the contents of your entire iPhoto Library. Using the pop-up menu, you can even limit your view to the contents of one iPhoto album or another.

Once you've pinpointed the picture you want, use the controls at the top of the Photos palette to specify the amount of time the photo will remain on the screen, and whether or not you want the Ken Burns effect , where the "movie camera" pans and zooms smoothly across photos, in essence animating them and directing the viewer's attention. (Ken Burns is the creator of PBS documentaries like The Civil War and Baseball , which use this effect in abundance .)

Finally, drag the photo out of the thumbnail palette and into the Movie Track. The other clips scoot out of the way to make room, and the photo becomes, in effect, a new silent video clip with the duration you specified. (If you turned on the Ken Burns effect, iMovie takes a few moments to render the animation. The familiar red progress bar inches across the face of the clip.)

Note: If you don't routinely keep your photos in iPhoto, you can also import a graphics file, or even a QuickTime movie, right from your hard drive by choosing File

Import.

Share, pick how youd like to export the movie (back to your video camera, say, or as a QuickTime movie that you can send by email or play off your hard drive), set any options, and click Share.

Then wait while iMovie does its business. It could take hours, depending on the length of your movie and the export format you chose.