Chapter 14. Working with Video in iMovie

The focus of this chapter is working with video, from importing video clips to moving them around within iMovie. You'll learn the way that a camcorder can be connected to your Mac and the process of capturing video through that connection. (Capturing video, simply put, is the process of importing digital video footage from a camcorder into a computer.) You'll also learn some of the basics of video editing and working with film clips.

Importing Video from a File

In a few minutes, we'll get into the process of actually capturing video from your camcorder into your Mac using iMovie. But for now, let's import a file that has already been captured into iMovie. Doing so gives us a file to play with for now.

iMovie is designed primarily to work with video that is captured directly from a camcorder on a Mac, but it is possible to take video from a PC and use it in iMovie. One way to do this is simply to ask whoever is giving the video to you from a PC to save it in DV format (NTSC or PAL or SECAM, depending on what country you live in), to a portable FireWire hard drive, and to import it from there.

To get to the sample file, you must find a movie file on your hard drive. (Some versions of iMovie come with tutorial files containing video, but you may have to search your drive for any file ending in .mov to find something to work with for practice. I'm going to demonstrate with the iTunes 2 splash screen located in the iTunes folder in the Applications Support folder of the Library on my hard drive.)

To search your hard drive, make sure you are in the Finder. (You'll know because the menu next to the Apple menu will say Finder.) Then, open the File menu and choose Find. You'll need to click the Add Criteria pop-up menu and choose Kind in order to search only for movies.

1. Open iMovie and choose File, Import from the menu bar. The Import File sheet will appear from the top of the iMovie window.

2. Click the pop-up menu at the top of the dialog box and navigate to the movie file you located earlier.

3. Select the movie file and click Open (see Figure 14.1). iMovie opens the clip and when it is done, you'll see it in both the Monitor and the shelf, as shown in Figure 14.2.

   Figure 14.1. The Import File dialog box.

   

   Figure 14.2. A clip selected in the shelf, previewed in the Monitor.

   

Connecting Camcorders

Nowadays, virtually every video camera that you can purchase in a store includes a FireWire connection, which you may remember from Chapter 7, "Choosing Peripheral Devices." FireWire is the magic behind being able to make your own digital movie and DVD projects.

Understanding the FireWire Cable

When you want to connect your digital camcorder to your Mac, you must use a FireWire cable. A camcorder often comes with such a cable, but you can also purchase it separately.

The cable that you need to use has two different kinds of connectors: a smaller end that's known as a 4-pin connector and a larger one on the other side that's known as a 6-pin connector. The smaller, 4-pin connector is the kind most often found on camcorders, and the larger 6-pin connector is most often found on computers.

After you connect the FireWire cable to your computer, you can connect the other, smaller end into the camcorder. The location of the FireWire port on a camcorder varies, but it's usually located behind some kind of protective cover. Figure 14.3 shows the smaller 4-pin end of a FireWire cable and the corresponding port on a digital camcorder.

Task: Connecting Your Camcorder

In this section we are going to go through the process of how you set up iMovie and connect a camcorder so that you can capture video.

1. Turn on the camera, and insert the smaller (4-pin) end into the FireWire connector on the camcorder. (Insert a tape that you've recorded video on into the camcorder if you haven't already.)

2. Insert the larger (6-pin) end into the FireWire connection on your Mac.

3. Open iMovie and choose File, New Project to create a new project.

4. Click the Camera/Edit Mode switch in iMovie to switch to the camera (DV) mode (see Figure 14.4).

   Figure 14.4. Switching to Camera (DV) Mode.

   

   When you plug in most cameras on your Mac, iMovie will automatically switch to Camera Mode, but you can always use the switch mentioned previously if it doesn't happen.

   
   

After you've connected your camera, iMovie displays a message confirming that your camera is connected, as shown in Figure 14.5.

It's easy to record video to a tape and then forget to rewind itso you might put the tape in your camcorder and press Play to preview it, but not see anything or see a blank blue screen! The material is still there, earlier on your videotape; you just have to rewind to get to it. The only ways you can actually erase video from a digital videotape are to record over it or subject the tape to strong magnetic fields. For the latter, consult "Task: Subjecting Your Tape to Strong Magnetic Fields." Just kidding.