Clip Viewer


The Clip Viewer (see Figure 13.2) is an alternative to the Timeline Viewer, representing another way of looking at video clips that some people might prefer. In the Clip Viewer, video clips are treated more like icons. You can easily click and drag an individual clip to position it differently and thus have a different order for your video production. We'll take a closer look at the clip viewer in just a few minutes.

Figure 13.2. The Clip Viewer offers an alternative way to look at your clips.

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If you're new to digital video, try imagining iMovie as your "word processor for video." You can re-arrange, delete and add material, but instead of working with paragraphs, you're working with video clips!


Other Important Controls for the Timeline

At the very bottom of the iMovie window in Timeline view is a row of controls (refer to Figure 13.1).

The first control is a slider labeled Zoom that allows you to zoom in on the Timeline to see more detail. As you add more and more scenes to the Timeline, the proportion of the whole that each takes up shrinksand so do the rectangles representing those clips. Use the Zoom slider to focus in one part of the Timeline by selecting a clip and dragging the Zoom controller to the right.

Next is the Speed slider, labeled with icons of a rabbit (or hare) and a turtle (or tortoise), which may call to mind Aesop's fable about the fast hare and the slow tortoise. (To refresh your memory, the slow-but-steady tortoise wins the race.) This slider controls the speed of the selected clip. If you want a clip (or other element in the Timeline) to be sped up or slowed down, drag the slider toward the appropriate side.

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If a slider control button moves sluggishly when you try to drag it, you could instead click on the spot along the slider path where you want to set it. The button will jump precisely to that spot with ease.


Near the middle of the bottom row are controls for audio. Checking the box for Edit Volume will produce a volume level in each of the elements in your Timeline. You can then adjust the volume of each clip or sound file so there aren't unpleasant volume changes. The slider next to the check box controls the overall volume of the movie. There are some additional features of the Edit Volume checkbox, that we will discuss in Chapter 16, "Using Still Photos, Music, and Sound Effects in iMovie."

Trash and Free Space

The bottom controls row also includes a couple of helpful things to manage your iMovie project: the free space indicator and a miniature trash can so that you can easily get rid of video clips that you don't need any more.

Task: Create a New Project

Before you can begin working on making iMovies, you must know how to create a new project. iMovie makes this easy by bringing up a special screen (shown in Figure 13.3) if you don't already have a project started.

Figure 13.3. A startup screen appears if you haven't already started a project.

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To create a new project:

  1. Start iMovie. If you get the window shown in Figure 13.3, click the Create Project button.

    If you don't get this window when you start iMovie, you can choose File, New Project from the menu bar to get the same thing.

  2. When you create a new project, iMovie brings up the Create New Project dialog sheet, to ask you where you want to put the project on your hard drive (see Figure 13.4). Type in a name for your movie and click Save if you want iMovie to simply save the file directly to the hard drive.

    Figure 13.4. The Create New Project dialog.

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    When iMovie creates a project, it puts all of your video material in one location on the hard drive, sort of like a suitcase, making it easy to store everything for your iMovie in one place. When you capture video, all of the clips end up in the project; and even though there are separate files, everything stays together.


  3. You might want to switch to a more convenient location than the one iMovie suggests (such as the desktop), by clicking the pop-up menu at the top of the Create New Project dialog sheet. This will open a view of your hard drive so you can choose where to save the project.



Sams Teach Yourself Mac OS X Digital Media. All In One
Sams Teach Yourself Mac OS X Digital Media All In One
ISBN: 0672325322
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 349

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