Moving Around in a Clip

One of the most enjoyable parts about playing with footage in iMovie is the way that you can easily move around in a clip in the same way that you might use the remote control on your VCR or DVD player to find a spot in a movie. In iMovie, as you're editing your creation, you'll often want to move through various parts of individual clips or the overall movie as it takes shape. Instead of playing through the entire movie, you can quickly get to the spot that you want, with a control called the playhead , which is located at the bottom of the Monitor window (see Figure 14.13).

Figure 14.13. A close-up view of the playhead along with the timestamp for that spot in your video clip.

Task: Go to a Specific Spot in a Clip

To prepare for this task, if you don't already have the clip from the previous task open, open it so that you can have something to work with.

To go to a specific spot in a clip:

1. Click on the playhead, and hold down the mouse button.

2. Drag the playhead horizontally to the left or right to find the spot that you want. Notice how the number of minutes and seconds are displayed next to the playhead as you drag it, indicating how far into the clip you are. Try dragging the playhead to a precise time, such as 5:00 (5 seconds).

Task: Adjusting a Clip in the Shelf

After you've captured video, the first thing that you must do is to acquaint yourself with the clips you've captured to get an idea of what you have to work with. Playing with clips in the Shelf is a good way to accomplish this.

1. Select a clip in the Shelf by clicking it; the selected clip turns blue.

2. Move the mouse over the text in the clip and click. The area behind the text turns white and you can type a new name in for the clip (see Figure 14.14).

   Figure 14.14. Renaming a clip: 1) select a clip; 2) click on its name; 3) replace the sample text with new text.

   

Another way to see the clip name is to double-click a clip in the Shelf, which brings up the Clip Info dialog box.