5.5. Three Ways to Trim a ClipTrimming out the deadwood from your clips, so that you're left with only the very best shots from the very best scenes, is the heart of iMovieand video editing. Note: The following three techniques work as they did in previous versions of iMovie, with one huge exception: these are now nondestructive techniques, just like the edge-dragging business described earlier. For example, after you've shortened a clip by hacking a piece off the right end, you can later change your mind, even if you've emptied the Trash and let a year go by. You can restore some or all of the missing footage just by dragging the clip's right edge to the right in the Timeline Viewer. 5.5.1. Highlighting FootageiMovie works just like other Mac programs: You highlight some footage, then use the Cut, Copy, or Paste commands to move it around. All three of the following footage-trimming techniques, for example, begin with highlighting , or selecting, a portion of your footage. Here's how you go about it:
Tip: Here's a quick trick for highlighting only the first portion of a selected clip: Shift-click within the Scrubber bar at the point where you'd like the selection to end . Instantly, iMovie highlights everything from the left end of the clip to the position of your click.
After you've just dragged or clicked a handle, the arrow-key skills you picked up on page 123 come in extremely handy. You can let go of the mouse and, just by pressing the left and right arrow keys, fine-tune the position of the triangle handle on a frame-by-frame basis. (You can tell which triangle handle you'll be moving. It's darker , and it's marked by the Playhead, as shown in Figure 5-6. To move the other triangle handle, click it first.) Continue tapping the left and right arrow keys until the Monitor shows the precise frame you wantthe first or last frame you'll want to keep in the clip. Remember, too, that if you press Shift -right or left arrow, you move the triangle handle 10 frames at a time. Between the 10-frame and one-frame keystrokes, you should find it fairly easy to home in on the exact frame where you want to trim the clip. Tip: After you've highlighted a stretch of the Scrubber bar, you can adjust the selected portionmake it bigger or smallerby clicking or dragging again beneath any unhighlighted portion of the Scrubber bar (to the right or left of the selected region). Either way, the end of the yellow bar jumps to your cursor as though attracted by a magnet . And either way, you avoid having to redo the entire selection, since one of your two endpoints remains in place. As you drag the triangle handles, keep your eye on two readouts. First, your precise position within the clip or assembled movie appears just above your cursor, in seconds: frames format. Second, a notation appears beneath the Movie Track that identifies the amount of footage between the handles. It might say, for example, "Frames selected 0:03:15 of 6:00:02 total." That is, you've selected 3.5 seconds of a 6-minute movie. Being able to see exactly how much footage you're about to cut (or preserve) can be extremely useful when the timing of your movie is important, as when editing it to accompany a music track or when creating a movie that must be, for example, exactly 30 seconds long. Tip: If you've really made a mess of your selection, click just below the Scrubber bar, on the brushed aluminum iMovie background. The program deselects your footage so that you can try again. 5.5.2. Snipping Off One End of a ClipHaving mastered the art of selecting a portion of a clip, as described in the previous section, you're ready to put it to work. Suppose, for example, that you want to shave off some footage from only one end of your clip:
Tip: You can also press the Delete key, or choose Edit Clear, to get rid of the selected video. The difference is that the Delete key and Clear command dont put the cut material onto your invisible Clipboard, ready for pasting, as the Cut command does. On the other hand, the Delete/Clear command doesn't replace what's already on the Clipboard, unlike the Cut command. 5.5.3. Cropping Out the Ends of a ClipIf you want to trim some footage off both ends of a clip, it's quicker to highlight the part in the middle that you want to keep :
Note: After you use the Crop command, the megabyte number underneath your project Trash icon usually increases . That's because, behind the scenes, iMovie hasn't actually thrown away the footage pieces you've just carved off. It's hanging onto them in case you decide to use the Edit Undo command or the Advanced Revert Clip to Original command.
Either way, the name of the newly created clip will help you identify it. If the original clip was called "Cut Me Out," the new, split-off clip is called "Cut Me Out/1." Tip: Just a reminder: Whenever you cut material out of a clip, you can always restore it. Once the clip is placed in the Timeline, just tug outward on the edge where the cut occurred. iMovie smoothly "un-hides" the footage you had cut away. |