Edit Video Clips

Clips often contain more footage than you want to use in your movie. You can preview a clip and select just the best part of it.

To display and preview a clip

1.

Click on a clip in the Clips Pane to show its preview in the Monitor. A blue Scrubber Bar (representing the duration of the clip) appears below the Monitor. The Scrubber Bar contains the Playhead, a white triangle that indicates the current frame of the clip. As you drag the Playhead, you'll notice the last two digits in the time counter (next to the Playhead) go from :30 to :00. That's because the last two digits represent frames (not seconds), and digital video contains 30 frames per second.

2.

Click the Play button to preview the entire clip. Or drag the Playhead to a point in the clip you want to see.

Trim or crop selected clips

Many clips are longer than necessary and should be trimmed or cropped.

Trimming and cropping video clips in iMovie is non-destructive. See page 144.

• Trim: Remove selected video frames at the beginning or end of a clip.

• Crop: Remove all frames in a clip other than the selected frames.

To trim a clip

1.	Beneath the Scrubber Bar, locate the "crop markers," two small triangles (circled, right). They become visible on the left side of the Scrubber Bar when your pointer gets close to the Scrubber Bar. Drag the crop markers (shown below) to select the part of a clip that you want to remove. The selected section is highlighted in yellow.
2.	To remove the yellow highlighted frames, go to the Edit menu and choose "Clear." Or press the Delete key.

To crop a clip

1.	Drag the crop markers to select a range of frames in the clip that you want to keep.The selected frames are highlighted in yellow.
2.	To remove all of the frames that are not yellow highlighted (the ones on either end), go to the Edit menu and choose "Crop."

After you edit a clip to the duration you want, drag it from the Clips Pane to the video track in the Timeline at the bottom of the window (as explained on the following pages) so you can make a rough cut of your movie. A rough cut is the first stage of editing a movie in which you assemble the clips in the order you want to use them in the Timeline before you add transitions or effects. Later you can fine-tune the duration of clips with additional trimming directly in the Timeline (see pages 142143).