Although iTunes and iPhoto have a consistent interfacesimilar, in fact, to the Mac OS itselfiMovie is unique. The nature of creating motion pictures dictates some different tools in the interface and a few pretty interesting capabilities.
TIP There are reasons other than organizational ones to keep your movies in the Movies folderthe most important involves easy connectivity with iDVD. Take a look at the iMovie interface. Over the next few lessons, you'll explore this tool in more detail, but for the moment let's focus on a few key regions.
The Clip View button (above) and the workspace presented in the Clip view (below). This view gives you a good way to visualize the pieces of your project as you assemble them. It also notes the name and duration of each clip. The Timeline View button (above) and the same workspace shown in the Timeline view (below). You can still see the clips, but the duration of each is represented by the size of the box. In this graphical view, it's easy to see how long a shot will play, or where you are watching within a given shotboth key aspects of moving images versus still ones. In the Timeline view is a vertical line called the playhead, which shows the frame in your sequence that you are seeing in the Viewer. A good way to play your sequence is to drag the playhead to the beginning of your project and click the Play button under the Viewer. For many projects, the video camera is your primary source for material. In this lesson, however, since you're not working with video, you'll access all your raw material via the row of buttons beneath the Clip pane. These are particularly important for accessing raw material from the other iLife applications as well as for providing key tools in the construction of your video. |