Making Simple Adjustments to a Dynamic Slide Show


Christopher's dynamic video is much simpler than Jennifer's. His objective is only to create a fun home video from the stills he shot at the party, so he's happy to use the automatic Ken Burns Effect in iPhoto. But with a little additional focus, he found that he could make a pretty remarkable slide show with iMovie.

He started by dragging shots from his Birthday Party album into iMovie and used pretty much the same Ken Burns Effect move in each, with some slight variations. He wants only a basic title at the start; after that, simple dissolves between some of the shots are more than adequate. All of this is already in place in the iMovie project you'll work with in this part of the lesson. But Christopher wants to do a couple of quick tweaks, such as adjusting slide duration, which will give you a chance to see how to reedit a project. You'll also add music to Christopher's slide show.

1.

Open the file Birthday Party, which is in the Start_Birthday_Project6 folder (in the Lesson6 folder).

As you can see, most of the still shots have been converted to video clips and are already assembled in the workspace. Notice that the opening title is in place at the start. The Clip view is handy for reviewing and arranging still images and slide shows (which is why it's very clear and similar, in fact, to the way shots are represented in iPhoto).

Kind of like in iPhoto, if you don't like the order of any shots, you can move them around by clicking and dragging them to a new location in the workspace.

For this project, however, change to the Timeline view of the workspace.

2.

Click the little clock on the top left of the workspace.

Timeline view is good for dealing with issues typical of moving videothe length of shots, the positions of moments relative to running time, relative durations, and, of course, music.

Additional controls are available when you're in this view. In particular, the Zoom Timeline slider appears, which controls how much of the sequence you can see at one time in the workspace. Push the Zoom slider all the way to the left, and all your shots are reduced so they fit in the window.

3.

Adjust the Zoom slider as needed to see your shots.

4.

Christopher doesn't like the second shot (the first one after the title), so select it and press Delete.

5.

Christopher thinks the Ken Burns move is too fast on shot 4, so select the shot.

6.

Click the Photos button.

The shot will reappear in the small window in the upper part of the Photo pane, ready for adjustments.

7.

Change the duration of the Ken Burns Effect.

It should be much longer for such a long pantry 6 or 7 seconds.

8.

Click Update.

iMovie will rerender the new duration.

Except for this updated shot, every transition has a transition effect across itmostly cross dissolves, but a few fade-out/fade-in pairs.

9.

Add 20-frame cross dissolves to the beginning and end of this updated shot.

Adding a cross dissolve is the same as adding a fade, except it affects both the end of one shot and the beginning of the next. Drag the effect into the space between two shots.

iMovie always tells you the total length of your video (called the total running time). At this point in your reedit, the running time of the sequence should be around 1:25, give or take. It's displayed below the timeline or clip workspace, at the bottom center of the iMovie window.



    Apple Training Series(c) iLife 05
    Apple Training Series: iLife 05
    ISBN: 032133020X
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 141
    Authors: Michael Rubin

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