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Exhaustive Tutorial for iMovie

This tutorials and all the details are written by Kelly Swee. Thanks, Kelly!

Starting Your Project (Command N)

After importing it into the mac, you will find your imported videos under the events library. To start, go to File ▸ New Project. The new project is found in the Project Library. Select and drag the video clips from the Event Library into the Project Library.

Addition of Audio (Command 1)

Click on the icon or shortcut key Command 1 to add audio tracks. You may choose a range of audio tracks from the default files, iMovie' 08 Sound Effect and iLife Sound Effects . There are so many different sound effects that you can choose from. I would advise taking some time off to go through them and get familarized so that you could refer to them as you shoot and edit videos from different ocassions. You may also obtain tracks from your iTunes and Garageband.

Addition of Photos (Command 2)

Click on the icon or shortcut key Command 2 to add photos. Do remember to import your desired photos into iPhoto so that you may obtain them from this function. Images from your Photo Gallery can also be added to your iMovie project.

You will notice the image that you add into your iMovie project will move. The default setting is Ken Burns, which is a function whereby motion is added to a still image. The result is akin to a camera panning and moving over the image.

You may change the setting, by going to Edit ▸ Project Properties or shortcut key Command J. Go to Initial Photo Placement. The option Fit would mean that images added into the iMovie Project would remain still.

For my personal preference, I like to add the Ken Burns effect into my images so that the video will look pleasing and entertaining with a suitable audio track added. It's pretty interesting because you get to manipulate with how you want the motion to be added to your still image. Do some experimenting to get the hang out of it.

Here's an example:

However, it really boils down to what kind of video you want to create with the raw images or videos you have.

Addition of titles (Command 3)

Just click on the icon or Command 3 to choose a range of titles. Drag the desired titles into your iMovie project. You may add the words into your video, so as the video is played, the words are displayed. You may also create a title on its own, which is seen as with a black background.

Sometimes it's pretty weird. I still have not figure it out. For example, you have already added a title that lasts for 3 seconds to the clip of duration of 5 seconds. You would like to add a second title to the remaining of the video clip or a title that comes right after the previous one but it seems impossible.

However, it is possible to add as many titles as you want in a video clip. What I have been doing is to add the title to the proceeding clips, type in the words I want, after that click Done. Then I drag the title into the specific part of the previous video clip.

Addition of transitions (Command 4)

The addition of transition is simple. just drag the transition in between of two frames. However, the addition of transition would cause the scenes at the end of the video clip frame not to be shown. One option is to not to trim the video clip to perfection first but to leave some loose ends. Trim the clip to perfection only after the transition is added.

Miscellaneous Part

Editing your Audio Tracks

The addition of your audio track into the project simply involves dragging the audio track in to the selected frame. Do remember that the audio track must be imported into your iTunes library.

To edit the audio track, click on the track and right click to select the option Trim. You will see this. To play it, press Spacebar, so select the part of the audio track you want and click Trim and it's done!

However, there were some circumstances where I could not extract the part of the audio track. For example, your video clip is only 30 seconds long, while you want the chorus of the song, which is usually found somewhere in the middle of the audio track. The audio track will always start from the beginning, which means that you will not be able to select the chorus for your video clip if you were to just drag the audio track into the scene and stop there.

Example:

Only the front part of the audio track can be edited, while the rest (unhighlighted) cannot be selected.

For me, there are two ways that I would do.

I would drag many Titles into my project. Go to Titles and select any titles. Just keep dragging till your project's duration is slightly longer than the duration of the song. Next, you can drag the audio track into the project. The entire audio track is seen now. Do the same as mentioned before, click on the audio track and right click to select Trim. You can see the entire audio track being highlighted. You can select your desired part now!

After you are done, you will return to your project and move the track to your video clip. As for the rest of the empty titles, just click and hold shift to select them and delete all of them at once. You are done!

For example:

Now the entire audio track is selected.

The other possible way is to edit your audio file before adding it into your video clip. It could be rather tedious but if the sound editing software that you are using is easy to manage, this could be one good way for you.

There are a number of sound editing softwares (trial versions for simple editing) which you could download online. I have used Wavepad, Goldwave and Audacity.

I thought Wavepad was not user friendly for mac but it is pretty alright when I used it in Windows.

I switched to using Audacity, which I am quite comfortable with except that there are certain files that fail to be opened.

Goldwave trial version is only valid with 50 tries. I used that last year, and from what I can remember it was pretty similar to Wavepad except that there were more functions than the latter. One of which was reducing the vocals from an audio track. However, the reducing vocals would cause a slight difference to the the original track as some of the music as to be removed as well.

Audio Skimming

When I first started my iMovie'08, the audio skimming was turned on. That could be a default setting. This means that as you move your the cursor through the video clip, both the moving images with the accompanying audio would be displayed. Haha, I found that pretty disturbing.

You can choose to turn it off, by going to View ▸ Audio Skimming or shortcut key Command K or by pressing this small button.

Duration of the transition (Command R)

I found the default setting of 12 seconds too short, causing the transition to appear so quickly and in a non-obvious fashion, so I usually changed it to 20 seconds. Select the transition, then go to Edit ▸ Set Duration or shortcut keys Command R.

Categories: Video, Walkthroughs
Tags: iMovie, Tutorial

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