Section 11.5. Managing Movies Imported From Your Camera

11.5. Managing Movies Imported From Your Camera

Digital camera movies were once a novelty that few cared about. Today, though, they've become a convenient way to record video without lugging around a camcorder. Most current digicams can capture movies with standard TV-screen resolution (640 x 480 pixels), standard TV smoothness (30 frames per second), and sound. (Some, in fact, can capture movies with even higher resolution and greater frame rates.)

When you import your photos into iPhoto, the program cheerfully adds those video files to your library, denoted by a little camcorder icon and duration indicator.

But iPhoto doesn't provide any tools to edit the video, to combine it with other snippets, or even to watch it. When you double-click an imported movie, iPhoto hands it off to QuickTime Player in a separate window.

iPhoto doesn't update the movie thumbnail when you edit and save the file, either. You may have cut out the opening scene of a clip in QuickTime Player Prosay, Aunt Betty tripping over the garden hosebut she'll still be there in your thumbnail library, even though that particular moment of video is now on the cutting-room floor. The only workaround is to save the cleaned-up version to your hard drive, then import it back into iPhoto.