Section A.7. Window Menu | iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual

A.7. Window Menu

This window is fairly standard in Mac OS X programs. Its commands let you minimize iMovie (hide its window by collapsing into a Dock icon), or bring all iMovie windows out from under any window that's covering them up.

The one potentially puzzling command is Resize to Show Full DV. It's a reference to the fact that you can resize iMovie's window by dragging its lower-right corner. But as you do so, you make the Monitor window grow or shrink proportionally. As a result, the Mac has to work harder during playback (to compute the shrunken or enlarged playback image), and you may not be seeing all of the quality of your original digital video (DV) footage.

This command, then, makes the entire iMovie window snap to its preferred size , bigger or smaller than you've got it now, so that the Monitor window itself is 640 x 480 pixels, which is the "full DV" proportions referred to by the menu command. On a big screen, this usually means that the iMovie window gets much smaller than you'd like it; now you don't have nearly as much timeline to work with. But at least you're now seeing the video at its optimal size.

Figure A-4. You can resize iMovie's window, sure but because the Monitor window always occupies a fixed portion of the greater iMovie window, changing the window's size winds up shrinking or enlarging the original DV picture.
Want proof? Option-drag the lower-right corner to reveal the Monitor's current dimensions. If it ain't 640 x 480, it's not life size.

This command is dimmed if your monitor's resolution is set to 1024 x 768 pixels (the standard size for iBooks, among others)iMovie needs a bigger playground for this particular featureor if the window is already exactly the right size.

Tip: If you press the Option (Alt) key as you drag to resize your iMovie HD window from the bottom right corner fo the window, your Monitor goes black and reveals its current size, in pixels (see Figure A-4). That can be a handy reality check if your playback isn't looking as good as it could be.