Chapter 3. iMovie

Chances are that your first home movie experiences were similar to oursyou shot some video tape, connected the camera to the TV, watched it once, then never looked at it again. In fact, we just stopped carrying our video camera with us on trips because it was big and heavy and we knew that we would never get around to looking at the footage again when we returned home.

Why did this happen? Because it's boring to watch unedited movies! We see beautifully edited movies every dayat movie theatres, on TV, and on the Internet. We've become too sophisticated as viewers to enjoy sitting through unedited home movies that for the most part look like hmm, what's a good phrase to use herehome movies.

Although its new name is iMovie HD, for simplicity's sake we affectionately call it iMovie in this chapter.

That's where iMovie comes in and dazzles. Get rid of the boring and repititous shots. Toss the scenes that have bad lighting. Add titles and a music soundtrack from iTunes. Create special effects and put Hollywood-style transitions between scenes. iMovie makes all of this incredibly fun and easy.

When you connect a digital video camera to your computer with a FireWire cable and launch iMovie, you're ready to create home movies that you won't mind watching again and again.

The best part is that iMovie makes it easy to share your movies with others in a variety of ways. Create small movies files that you can email or upload to a .Mac Homepage. You can even use your movie to create a professional DVD that plays on any computer or almost any DVD player.

This is the FireWire icon.

If you didn't get a FireWire cable with your digital video camera, check the box your Mac came inoften there is a FireWire cable in it. If you don't have a cable, buy one at your local electronics store or order it from one of the many dealers online (search for "firewire cables").

If you're serious about making iMovies or if you just can't control yourself after making your first iMovie, buy an extra, very large hard disk to use when working with video. You'll be surprised how fast you can fill a dedicated 80 GB disk when you start making movies.

Digital video (DV) requires a lot of disk spaceone minute of DV footage uses about 220 MB of hard disk space. A four-minute iMovie that contains soundtracks, transitions, and titles may use 4 to 6 gigabytes of disk space.

Once you've seen what a difference editing can have on the audience reaction to your "home movies," you'll be inspired. If you don't have a digital video camera, consider getting one. Teamed with iMovie, even the least expensive video camera is enough to create fabulous movies that can amaze you and your friends.