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Making Movies with iMovie HD

Feb 2, 2007

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Macintosh iLife 06, The

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The Essentials of Movie Making

Editing video is one of the most complex tasks you will perform in iLife. Not that it’s technically difficult—iMovie HD, FireWire, and the latest video formats have made it easier than ever.

But editing video can be time consuming and labor intensive. Bringing media into iMovie HD, fine-tuning the length of clips, timing shots to match a music track, adding transitions and effects—it all takes time. But as a creative exercise, video editing is hard to beat.

If you’re new to video editing, start small. Create a short movie—between 30 and 90 seconds. Try your hand at a simple music video: some video, some still photos from iPhoto, and a music soundtrack from iTunes. Your first effort shouldn’t be an epic; it should be a short story, or even a single well-wrought paragraph. That’s the best way to learn the art and science of editing—and to appreciate its magic.

Video Editing: The Big Picture

Import Assets

Bring in video from a camcorder and, optionally, add photos and music from iTunes.

Trim the Fat

Use iMovie HD’s crop markers and Crop command to discard unwanted portions of clips.

Sequence Clips

Drag clips to the timeline viewer and clip viewer to add them to your final movie. Trim clips as needed to fine-tune their length.

Polish

If you’ve added music or other audio tracks, you’ll want to fine-tune audio levels for each track.

Add Eye Candy

Create transitions between clips, and add titles and any special effects.

Export

Record your movie back to tape, send it to iDVD, GarageBand, or iWeb; or export it as a QuickTime movie for playback on an iPod or other device.

A Short Glossary of Video Terms

aspect ratio The relationship of height to width in an image. A standard-definition TV image has an aspect ratio of 4:3—four units of width for each three units of height.

clip A piece of video footage or a still image. A finished movie generally contains multiple clips, sequenced on the timeline.

FireWire The high-speed interface used to connect video gear, such as a miniDV camcorder, to the Mac. Also used for other devices, including hard drives and, of course, the iPod.

frame A single still image in a movie clip, and the smallest unit of a movie clip you can work with. One second of video contains 30 frames.

HDV Short for high-definition DV, an up-and-coming video format that stores ultra-sharp video on standard miniDV cassettes.

miniDV Often abbreviated DV, a video format that stores high-quality video and stereo audio on a tiny cassette. The miniDV format has been a major factor in the digital-video revolution.

playhead iMovie HD’s equivalent to the blinking cursor in a word processor. As a clip plays back, the playhead moves to show where you are in relation to the entire movie or video clip.

rendering The process of creating frames for a transition, title, or effect.

transition A special effect that acts as a segue between two clips.

track An independent stream of audio or video. iMovie HD lets you have one video track and two separate audio tracks.

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