| With many movie projects, you want control over every step of the editing process: timing cuts to match audio, trimming clips with precision, and fine-tuning your soundtrack until everything sparkles. But sometimes you just want fast results. It's Sunday afternoon, and your visiting relatives are (finally!) preparing to go home. You shot some video of the kids at the beach earlier that day, and you want to send everyone home with a freshly burned DVD. You can't spend hours in the editing roomyou want a movie now. The Magic iMovie feature is for you. Choose a few options, then sit back and watch. iMovie HD imports video from your camera, adds an opening title, tosses a transition between each clip, adds a soundtrack from your iTunes library, and then ships the finished product off to iDVD. It's editing on autopilot. You can edit a Magic iMovie in any way you want, so you might also use the feature to create a rough cut. After iMovie HD gets you partway there, take the wheel and drive the rest of the way. Is it magic? Hardly. But Magic iMovie is a fast way to spray some finish on your footage. Notes To use Magic iMovie, you must be using a DV or HDV camera; you can't use an iSight or MPEG-4 camera with Magic iMovie. And if you just want to copy a tape to a DVD and don't need transitions, titles, or a music soundtrack, check out the OneStep DVD feature in iDVD (page 299).
Making a Magic iMovie To make a Magic iMovie, connect and turn on your DV or HDV camcorder (page 226). Then put iMovie HD to work. Step 1. | Choose Make a Magic iMovie from the File menu, and give your new movie project a name. If necessary, specify the desired video format (see page 224).
| Step 2. | Specify Magic iMovie settings.
 | | | Step 3. | (optional)
Specify music soundtrack settings and click OK.
 | Step 4. | Click Create.
 iMovie HD captures your video and prepares the movie.
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Tips for Making Magic Get a Head Start If you're using Magic iMovie to give you a head start in editing and you plan to trim clips afterwards, consider unchecking the transition option. That way, iMovie HD won't waste time creating transitions that you'll end up deleting anyway. Tweaking Markers Normally, the Magic iMovie feature places a DVD chapter marker at the beginning of each clip. If you don't want to divvy up your movie into that many chapters, remove some or all of the markers by using the iDVD pane in iMovie HD (see page 266). Adding Magic to a Movie You don't have to use Magic iMovie with a brand-new movie project. If you use the Make a Magic iMovie command when an existing project is open, iMovie HD simply adds the magic movie to the end of the existing project. Similarly, you can add a Magic iMovie to a different project by copying and pasting its clips. This can be a fast way to put together a montage destined for a different project. Create a new project, then make a Magic iMovie. Then, open a different project, switch to your Magic iMovie project, and choose Select All from the Edit menu. Finally, drag the clips from the Magic iMovie to the timeline or clips viewer of the new project. Note Copying clips from one project to another can take several minutes and devour disk space. After the transfer is complete, consider deleting the original Magic iMovie project file to free up disk space.
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