Section 9.6. Importing QuickTime Movies


9.6. Importing QuickTime Movies

iMovie can import more than still images. It can also import existing digital movies, which you can then incorporate into your footage.

Maybe you've created such QuickTime movies yourself, using other Macs or other software. Maybe you've grabbed a QuickTime movie from a CD-ROM or Web site. Or maybe you've used the Movie mode of your digital still camera to "film" some short scenes.

In any case, here are three ways to get digital movies into an iMovie project:

  • If they're lying on your hard drive, drag their icons directly into the Clips pane or Movie Track of the iMovie window.

  • Choose File Import (Shift- -I). In the Open File dialog box, navigate to and open the QuickTime movie you want to import.

  • If you used iPhoto to import the movies, you'll find them nestled among the still photos in iMovie's Photos pane. See Figure 9-9 for details.

  • With movies stored in iPhoto, you can also drag the thumbnails out of that program's window and into the Clips pane or Movie Track of iMovie. (Of course, you have to first position the windows so that you can see both at once.)

It may take iMovie some time to process the incoming movie. Behind the scenes, it's converting the QuickTime movie into DV format, just like the clips that come from your camcorder. A progress bar keeps you posted.

When it's complete, a new clip appears in your Clips pane, which you can manipulate just as you would any movie clip.

9.6.1. Using the Imported QuickTime Clip

Most of the world's QuickTime movies aren't big enough, in terms of frame size , to fill your entire monitor. In fact, most of themlike all the ones on the Webplay in a window only a few inches square. Therefore, when you play back an imported QuickTime movie, iMovie does what it hopes is the right thing: It blows up the QuickTime movie until the footage fills the entire iMovie playback screen (640 x 480 pixels for standard definition).

But enlarging any graphic on the computer usually winds up degrading its quality. The bottom line: QuickTime movies you import into iMovie may look coarse and blotchy unless they were at least 640 x 480 to begin with.

Figure 9-9. Any digital movies that you've imported using iPhoto show up right here among the still photos in the Photos panel. The little camera icon lets you know which ones are movies.
You can double-click one of the thumbnails to play the movie right in placea neat trick.
Of course, you can't apply the Ken Burns effect to one of these digital-camera movies. You can, however, drag one of these into place on your Movie Track, where it becomes a standard video clip.

9.6.2. Grabbing Clips from Other Projects

Remember, you can also grab a clip from one iMovie project and use it in another. Just click it in Project A, choose Edit Copy, open Project B, choose Edit Paste, and wait as iMovie, behind the scenes, duplicates the massive video file. (See Section 5.3.1 for caveats regarding the Copy command.) In iMovie 6, you dont even have to close Project A before switching to Project B; they can both be open simultaneously .




iMovie 6 & iDVD
iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual
ISBN: B003R4ZK42
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 203
Authors: David Pogue

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