Chapter 4: Making Magic with iMovie

In This Chapter

Taking stock of the iMovie window

Importing and adding media content

Using transitions in your movie

Putting text titles to work

Sharing your movie with others

Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, and Ridley Scott — those guys are amateurs! Welcome to the exciting world of moviemaking on your Mac, where you call the shots. With iMovie, you can try your hand at all aspects of the movie-creating process, including editing and special effects. Built with ease-of-use in mind, iMovie lets you perform full-blown movie production on your Macintosh with a minimum of effort.

Don’t let iMovie’s fancy buttons and flashing lights fool you: This application is a feature-packed tool for serious movie production. The iMovie controls work the same as many top-notch, movie-editing tools that professionals use. From basic editing to audio and video effects, iMovie has everything that you need to get started creating high-quality movies.

The iMovie Window

If you’ve ever tried a professional-level video editing application, you probably felt as though you were suddenly dropped in the cockpit of a jumbo jet. In iMovie, though, all the controls you need are easy to use and logically placed.

Video editing takes up quite a bit of desktop space. In fact, you can’t run iMovie at resolutions of less than 1024 x 768, nor would you want to.

To launch iMovie, click the iMovie icon in the Dock. (It looks like a star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame.) You can also click the Application folder in any Finder window sidebar and then double-click the iMovie icon.

To follow the examples I show you here, follow these strenuous steps and create a new movie project:

1. Click the File menu and choose New Project (or press Ô+N).

iMovie displays the sheet you see in Figure 4-1.

2. Type a name for your project.

3. Select the aspect ratio (or screen dimensions) for your movie.

You can select a widescreen display (16:9), a standard display (4:3), or a display especially suited for an iPhone (3:2). If compatibility with the familiar SDTV format is important, I always recommend that you choose standard (4:3) ratio; choosing 16:9 for an SDTV set will result in those familiar black “letterbox” bars at the top and bottom of the screen.

4. Click a thumbnail to select a theme to apply to your finished movie.

If you choose a theme, iMovie automatically adds the transitions and titles that correspond to that theme. (Normally, this is what you want to do. However, if you want to add transitions and titles manually, click the Automatically Add Transitions and Titles check box to deselect it.)

If you decide not to use a theme (by selecting the None thumbnail), iMovie can still add an automatic effect between clips. Click the Automatically Add check box and click the pop-up menu to choose the desired effect.

5. Click Create.

You’re on your way! Check out Figure 4-2: This is the whole enchilada, in one window.

The controls and displays that you’ll use most often follow:

♦ Monitor: Think of this as being just like your TV or computer monitor. Your video clips, still images, and finished movie play here.

♦ Browser toolbar: This row of buttons allows you to switch between your media clips (video clips, photos, and audio) and the various tools that you use to make your film. The selected items fill the right side of the browser pane below the monitor.

♦ Event pane: All the video clips that you use to create your movie are stored in the Event pane. I show you what each of the panes in the iMovie workspace looks like when you tackle different tasks in this chapter.

♦ Project pane: iMovie displays the elements that you’ve added to your movie project in this pane.

♦ Playhead: The red vertical line that you see in the Event and Project panes is the playhead, which indicates the current editing point while you’re creating your movie. When you’re playing your movie, the playhead moves to follow your progress through the movie.

♦ Editing toolbar: This strip of buttons allows you to control editing functions such as cropping, audio and video adjustments, voiceovers, and selecting items.

♦ Camera Import window: Click this switch to import DV clips from your DV camcorder or iSight camera.

Those are the major highlights of the iMovie window. A director’s chair and megaphone are optional, of course, but they do add to the mood.

A Bird’s-Eye View of Moviemaking

I don’t want to box in your creative skills here — after all, you can attack the moviemaking process from a number of angles. (Pun unfortunately intended.) However, I’ve found that my movies turn out the best when I follow a linear process, so before I dive into specifics, allow me to provide you with an overview of moviemaking with iMovie.

Here’s my take on the process, reduced to seven steps:

1. Import your video clips either directly from your DV camcorder, iSight camera, or your hard drive.

2. Drag your new selection of clips from the Event pane to the Project pane and arrange them in the desired order.

3. Import or record audio clips (from iTunes, GarageBand, or external sources, such as audio CDs or audio files, that you’ve recorded yourself) and add them to your movie.

4. Import your photos (directly from iPhoto or from your hard drive) and place them where needed in your movie.

5. Add professional niceties, such as voiceovers, transitions, effects, and text to the project.

6. Preview your film and edit it further if necessary.

7. Share your finished film with others through the Web, e-mail, or a DVD that you create and burn with iDVD.

That’s the first step-by-step procedure in this chapter. I doubt that you’ll even need to refer back to it, however, because you’ll soon see just how easy it is to use iMovie.

As you might imagine, this chapter simply can’t hold a full description of every setting and every procedure within iMovie ’09 — but luckily, my good friend Dennis Cohen has done exactly that in his new book iMovie & iDVD ’09 For Dummies (Wiley Publishing). Dennis will take you from basics to all the in-depth features of these two iLife applications!

Importing the Building Blocks

Sure, you need video clips to create a movie of your own, but don’t panic if you have but a short supply. You can certainly turn to the other iLife applications for additional raw material. (See, I told you that integration thing would come in handy.)

Along with video clips you import from your DV camcorder, iSight camera, and hard drive, you can also call on iPhoto for still images (think credits) and iTunes for background audio and effects. In this section, I show you how.

Pulling in video clips

Your Mac is probably equipped already with the two extras that come in handy for video editing — namely, a large hard drive and a FireWire port. Because most mini-DV camcorders today use a FireWire connection to transfer clips, you’re all set. (And even if your snazzy new DV camcorder uses a USB 2.0 connection, you’re still in the zone, although you may need to modify the steps I provide in this section for your particular device.) Oh, and if your Mac has an iSight camera on board, you’re a self-contained movie studio!

Here’s the drill if your clips are on your FireWire-equipped mini-DV camcorder:

1. Plug the proper cable into your Mac.

2. Set the DV camcorder to VTR (or VCR) mode.

Some camcorders call this Play mode.

3. Click the Camera Import button (labeled in Figure 4-2).

iMovie opens a new window.

4. Click the Camera pop-up menu (at the bottom of the Import window) and select your DV camcorder or iSight camera.

Playback controls appear under the Camera Import window, mirroring the controls on your DV camcorder. This allows you to control the unit from iMovie. Keen! You also get Import All and Import Checked buttons as a bonus.

To capture video from your iSight camera, click the Video Size pop-up menu to choose the dimensions of the clip; then click Capture. On the sheet that appears, choose the location where the video will be saved, and choose whether to add this video to an existing event or create a new event. Click Capture to start recording, and click Stop when your video is complete. (You can skip the rest of the steps in this section, which deal only with DV camcorders.)

5. To import selected clips from your DV camcorder, set the Automatic/Manual switch to Manual.

To import all clips, set the Automatic/Manual switch to Automatic, and click Import All.

6. Click the check boxes next to the clips that you don’t want to import to deselect them.

7. Click the Import Checked button.

8. Click the Save To pop-up menu and choose the drive that should store your clips.

You can choose to add the new clips to an existing Event or create a new Event. Heck, if the event spanned more than one day, you can create a new Event for each day. (How do they think up these things?)

9. Click OK and admire your handiwork.

iMovie begins transferring the footage to your Mac and automatically adds the imported clips to your Event Library.

If your clips are already on your hard drive, rest assured that iMovie can import them, including those in high-definition video (HDV) format. iMovie also recognizes a number of other video formats, as shown in Table 4-1.

Table 4-1 Video Formats Supported by iMovie
File Type	Description
DV	Standard 4:3 digital video
DV Widescreen	Widescreen 16:9 digital video
MOV	QuickTime movies
HDV & AVCHD	High-definition (popularly called widescreen) digital video, in 720p and 1080i
MPEG-2	Digital video format used for DVD movies
MPEG-4	A popular format for streaming Internet and wireless digital video

To import a movie file, follow this bouncing ball:

1. Choose File⇒Import and choose Movies from the submenu.

2. If you’re importing 1080i video clips, choose the quality setting.

The Large setting will save you a significant amount of hard drive space, but the Full setting preserves the original resolution and detail. (If you’re not importing 1080i video, use the default Large setting and click OK. The Full setting demands all the CPU and RAM resources your Mac can offer, so don’t expect to do much else while importing.)

3. Click the drive that should store your clips in the sidebar and then navigate to the desired location.

4. Specify whether you want to add the imported video to an existing Event or create a new Event.

If you choose to add the video to an existing Event, click the pop-up menu and select an Event.

5. Specify whether you want to copy the video (leaving the original movie intact) or whether the original movie should be deleted after a successful import.

6. Click Import.

Alternatively, you can also drag a video clip from a Finder window and drop it in the Project pane.

Making use of still images

Still images come in handy as impressive-looking titles or as ending credits to your movie. (Make sure you list a gaffer and a best boy to be truly professional.) However, you can use still images also to introduce scenes or to separate clips according to your whim. For example, I use stills when delineating the days of a vacation within a movie or different Christmas celebrations over time.

Here are two methods of adding stills to your movie:

♦ Adding images from iPhoto: Click the Photo Browser button in the Browser toolbar (or press Ô+2) and you’ll experience the thrill that is your iPhoto Library, right from iMovie (as shown in Figure 4-3). You can elect to display your entire iPhoto Library or more selective picks such as specific albums or Events. When you find the image you want to add, just drag it to the right spot in the Project pane.

♦ Importing images from your hard drive: If you’re a member of the International Drag-and-Drop Society, you can drag TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PICT, PNG, and PSD images directly from a Finder window and drop them into the Project pane as well.

Importing and adding audio from all sorts of places

You can pull in everything from Wagner to Weezer as both background music and sound effects for your movie. In this section, I focus on how to get those notes into iMovie and then how to add them to your movie by dragging them to the Project pane.

You can add audio from a number of sources:

♦ Adding songs from iTunes: Click the Show Music and Sound Effects button in the Browser toolbar (or press Ô+1) to display the contents of your iTunes Library. Click the desired playlist in the scrolling list box, such as the Dinah Washington playlist I selected in Figure 4-4. (If you’ve exported any original music you’ve composed in GarageBand to your iTunes Library, you can use those songs in your own movie!) You can add a track to your movie by dragging the song entry from the Music and Sound Effects list to the desired spot in the Project pane.

♦ Adding sound effects: Yep, if you need the sound of a horse galloping for your Rocky Mountain vacation clips, click either iMovie Sound Effects or iLife Sound Effects in the scrolling list box. iMovie includes a number of top-shelf audio effects that you can use in the second audio track on the timeline viewer. This way, you can add sound effects even when you’ve already added a background song. Again, to add a sound effect, drag it to the perfect spot in the Project pane.

If you have several gigabytes of music in your iTunes Library, it might be more of a challenge to locate “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin, especially if she’s included in a compilation. Let your Mac do the digging for you! Click in the Search box below the track list and begin typing a song name. iMovie narrows down the song titles displayed to those that match the characters you type. To reset the search box and display all your songs in the Library or selected playlist, click the X icon that appears to the right of the box.

♦ Ripping songs from an audio CD: Load an audio CD and then choose Audio CD from the scrolling list box. iMovie displays the tracks from the CD, and you can add them at the current playhead position the same way as iTunes songs.

♦ Recording directly from a microphone: Yep, if you’re thinking voiceover narration, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Check out the sidebar, “Narration the easy way,” for the scoop.

You can fine-tune both the audio within a video clip or the audio clips that you add to your project. With the desired clip selected, click the Inspector button in the Editing toolbar (it bears a proud letter i) and click the Audio tab. The Audio Adjustments window that appears includes an array of audio controls that allow you to change the volume of the selected clip or to give that audio priority over other audio playing simultaneously (such as a sound effect that needs to be clearly heard over background music and the video clip). If your clips dramatically vary in volume, click the Normalize Clip Volume button and then select each clip that you want to set to the same volume; click Normalize Clip Volume again for each clip. You can also set an automatic or manual Fade-in/Fade-out for the audio. When you’re done tweaking, click Done. (Oh, and don’t forget that you can always return the clip to its original volume; just open this window again and click Revert to Original.)

Building the Cinematic Basics

Time to dive in and add the building blocks to create your movie. Along with video clips, audio tracks, and still images, you can add Hollywood-quality transitions, optical effects, and animated text titles. In this section, I demonstrate how to elevate your collection of video clips into a real-life furshlugginer movie.

Adding clips to your movie

You can add clips to your movie by using the Project pane and the Event pane. The Dynamic Duo works like this:

♦ Project pane: This displays the media you’ve added to your project so far, allowing you to rearrange the clips, titles, transitions and still images in your movie.

♦ Event pane: This displays your video clips arranged by Event (the date they were shot or the date they were imported), acting as the source repository for all your clips. Movies pulled into iMovie, imported into iPhoto, or added manually from the Finder appear here.

To add a clip to your movie:

1. Move your mouse pointer across clips in the Event pane to watch a preview of the video.

2. When you’ve decided what to add to your project, you can either add the entire clip or a selection.

• To select an entire clip, right-click the clip’s thumbnail and choose Select Entire Clip from the menu that appears.

• To select a portion of a clip, drag your mouse cursor across the thumbnail. A yellow frame appears around your selection. To change the length of the selected video, drag the handles that appear on either side. If you make a mistake while selecting video, just click any empty space within the Event pane to remove the selection frame and try again.

3. Drag the selection from the Event pane to the spot where it belongs in the Project pane.

Alternatively, you can press the E key or click the Add to Project button (the first button in the Editing toolbar).

Do this several times, and you have a movie, which you’ve created just as the editors of old used to by working with actual film clips. This is a good point to mention a moviemaking Mark’s Maxim:

Preview your work — and do it often.

iMovie offers two Play Full screen buttons: one under the Event Library and one under the Project Library. Select the project or Event you want to play and then click the corresponding button (or press Ô+G). You can also choose View⇒Play Full Screen to watch the selection. Press the spacebar to pause, and press Esc to return to iMovie. You can also move your mouse to display a filmstrip that you can click to skip forward or backward in the project or Event.

To play a selection from the beginning, press \ (the slash that leans to the left). (If you’ve ever watched directors at work on today’s movie sets, you may have noticed that they’re constantly watching a monitor to see what things will look like for the audience. You have the same option in iMovie!)

While you’re watching video in the Event pane, you may decide that a certain clip has a favorite scene or that another clip has material you don’t want, such as Uncle Ed’s shadow puppets. (Shudder.) iMovie ’09 features Favorite and Rejected frames, allowing you to view and use your best camera work (and ignore the worst stuff). To mark video, select a range of frames or an entire clip and then click the Mark as Favorite button in the Editing toolbar. Click the Reject button to hide the selected video or frames from view. (You can always unmark a Favorite or Rejected scene using the Unmark button in the Editing toolbar.)

Removing clips from your movie

Don’t like a clip? Bah. To banish a clip from your movie, follow these steps

1. Click the offending clip in the Project pane to select it.

2. Press Delete.

Alternatively, you can right-click the clip (or a selection you’ve made by dragging) and choose either Delete Entire Clip or Delete Selection from the menu that appears.

If you remove the wrong clip, don’t panic. Instead, use iMovie’s Undo feature (press Ô+Z) to restore it.

Reordering clips in your movie

If Day One of your vacation appears after Day Two, you can easily reorder your clips and stills by dragging them to the proper space in the Project pane. When you release the mouse, iMovie automatically moves the rest of your movie aside with a minimum of fuss and bother.

Editing clips in iMovie

If a clip has extra seconds of footage at the beginning or end, you don’t want that superfluous stuff in your masterpiece. Our favorite video editor gives you the following functions:

♦ Crop: Removes unwanted material from a video clip or still image, allowing you to change the aspect ratio of the media

♦ Rotate: Rotates a clip or image on its center axis

♦ Trim: Trims frames from a video clip

Before you can edit, however, you have to select a section of a clip:

1. Click a clip or image in either the Project pane (where changes you make are specific to this project) or the Event pane (where edits you make are reflected in any project using that footage).

iMovie displays the clip or image in the monitor.

2. To select the entire clip or image, simply click it.

3. Drag your mouse cursor across the thumbnail to select the section of the media you want to edit. (Note that some editing functions, such as Crop and Rotate, will automatically apply to the entire clip.)

The selected region is surrounded by a yellow frame. You’re ready to edit that selected part of the clip.

Note the handles that appear at the beginning or ending of the selection. You can make fine changes to the selected section by dragging them.

♦ To crop: Click the Crop button in the Edit toolbar to display the frame in the Monitor pane and then click Crop at the top of the Monitor pane. Drag the edges of the frame and the handles to select the section you want to keep. To preview your selection, click the Play button at the top of the monitor. When you’re ready, click Done, and everything but the selected region is removed.

♦ To rotate: Click the Crop button in the Edit toolbar and then click one of the two rotation buttons (which carry a curved arrow icon). Each click rotates the media 90 degrees in that direction. Click Done when the clip or image is properly oriented.

♦ To trim: Choose Edit⇒Trim to Selection. iMovie removes the frames from around the selected video.

Edits that you make to one clip or still image can actually be copied to multiple items! Select the edited clip and click Edit⇒Copy from the iMovie menu. Now you can select one or more clips and choose Edit⇒Paste Adjustments to apply Video, Audio, or Crop edits. (To apply all three type of edits, just choose All.)

Transitions for the masses

Many iMovie owners approach transitions as visual bookends: They merely act as placeholders that appear between video clips. Nothing could be farther from the truth, because judicious use of transitions can make or break a scene. For example, which would you prefer after a wedding ceremony — an abrupt, jarring cut to the reception or a gradual fadeout to the reception?

Today’s audiences are sensitive to transitions between scenes. Try not to overuse the same transition. Also weigh the visual impact of a transition carefully.

iMovie includes a surprising array of transitions, including old favorites (such as Fade In and Dissolve) and some nifty stuff you might not be familiar with (such as Cube and Page Curl). To display your transition collection (Figure 4-5), click the Show Transitions button on the Browser toolbar (or press Ô+4).

To see what a particular transition looks like, move your mouse pointer over the thumbnail to display the transition in miniature.

Adding a transition couldn’t be easier: Drag the transition from the list in the Transitions Browser pane and drop it between clips or between a clip and a still image in the Project pane. In iMovie ’09, transitions are applied in real time.

Even Gone with the Wind had titles

The last stop on our iMovie Hollywood Features Tour is the Titles Browser, shown in Figure 4-6. You’ll find it by clicking the Title button on the Browser toolbar (which bears a big capital T), or by pressing Ô+3. You can add a title with a still image, but iMovie also includes everything you need to add basic animated text to your movie.

Most of the controls you can adjust are the same for each animation style. You can change the font, the size of the text, and the color of the text.

To add a title manually:

1. Select an animation thumbnail from the Title Browser pane and drag it to the desired spot in the Project pane.

2. Click a background thumbnail to select a background for your title.

3. Click the Show Fonts button in the monitor window to make any changes to the fonts or text attributes.

4. Click in a text box to type your own line of text.

5. Click the Play button to preview your title.

iMovie displays a preview of the effect in the monitor with the settings that you choose.

6. Click Done.

The title appears in the Project pane.

Sharing Your Finished Classic with Others

Your movie is complete, you’ve saved it to your hard drive, and now you’re wondering where to go from here. Click Share on the application menu bar, and you’ll see that iMovie can unleash your movie upon your unsuspecting family and friends (and even the entire world) in a number of ways:

♦ iTunes: Send your movie to your iTunes Library as a movie.

♦ Media Browser: Make your iMovie project available within other iLife ’09 applications, in five different sizes suited to different display devices.

♦ YouTube: Yep, you read right, you can send your iMovie directly to the YouTube Web site! Can it get more convenient than that? (I think not.)

♦ MobileMe Gallery: Share your movie with the world at large by posting it within a Gallery on your MobileMe Web site. (I provide more MobileMe details to chew on in Book V, Chapter 4.)

♦ Export Movie: Create a copy of your movie on your hard drive in one of five different sizes.

♦ Export using QuickTime: Create a QuickTime movie with your project using the QuickTime encoding engine (allowing greater control over the export process and the attributes of the finished movie file).

If you use this option, any computer with an installed copy of QuickTime can display your movies, and you can use QuickTime movies in Keynote presentations as well.

♦ Export to Final Cut XML: If you’d like to transfer your iMovie ’09 project to Final Cut Pro, use this option to create a compatible XML file.

When you choose a sharing option, iMovie displays the video quality for the option and makes automatic changes to the movie attributes. (For example, choosing Tiny reduces the finished movie as far as possible in file size, and the audio is reduced to mono instead of stereo.)

Need to take a movie offline or stop sharing it? You can remove a project from iTunes, your iLife Media Browser, your MobileMe Web site, or the YouTube Web site from the Sharing menu as well. Just click the corresponding Remove menu item. (Of course, you can share the project again at any time.)

If you’re worried about permanently reducing the quality of your project by sharing it in a smaller size, fear not! When you choose a sharing option to export your movie, your original project remains on your hard drive, unchanged, so you can share a better-quality version at any time in the future!

After you adjust any settings specific to the desired sharing option, click Publish (or Save) to start the ball rolling.