This command opens the About box, containing the requisite Apple legal information. There’s really only one good reason to open this window: It’s the easiest way to find out exactly which version of iMovie you have.

Opens the Preferences window (Figure A-1). No, your eyes do not deceive you. iMovie’s preferences consist of two checkboxes, nothing else. If you thought this must be a mistake, it’s probably because you’re accustomed to applications that have dozens of preference settings. In iMovie, there really are just two.

Figure A-1. You can get to this box quickly by pressing ⌘-comma, which isn’t so hard to learn considering it’s also the keystroke that opens the Preferences box in iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, and most other Apple and Microsoft programs. What isn’t typical, though, is how bare iMovie’s preference settings are.

Here’s what they do:

This command takes you to a web form on Apple’s website where you can register complaints, make suggestions, or gush enthusiastically about iMovie.

Services are like mini tools in OS X for doing simple tasks on things like pictures, snippets of text, or other random things on your Mac. There aren’t any built for iMovie, so this menu won’t help much. But if you want to know more about it for other uses, choose the Services Preferences to see what’s offered there.

These aren’t iMovie commands—they’re OS X’s.

In any case, they determine which of the various programs running on your Mac are visible onscreen at any given moment. The Hide Others command is probably the most popular of the three. It zaps away the windows of all other programs—including the Finder—so that the iMovie window is the only one you see.

This command closes iMovie after offering you the chance to save any changes you made to your project file. The next time you open iMovie by double-clicking its icon, the program reopens whatever project you were working on.

Creates either a new movie or a new trailer project, ready for filling with video snippets from the Event browser.

Creates a new event in the Event list, which you can do before you import any video. This also lets you reorganize your events just how you want them (Review Event Footage).

This is just another way to bring up the Import screen you read about on From an iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.

Libraries, explained on Move Individual Clips to Another Event, contain both events and projects. The idea is that you can keep different libraries for different parts of your life, like home and work. Use this menu to open past libraries, make new ones, or open libraries others have shared with you.

If you want a selected library to get out of your way in iMovie, use this command. It’s grayed out if you have only one library open.

These commands also work only with more than one library open. Select any event, project, or clip and you can copy it to another library (so it lives in both libraries) or move it (so it leaves one library and lives in the new one). You can also use these menus to create a new library.

iMovie sticks imported video into events—which you can choose as explained on Review Event Footage. You may sometimes find it useful, however, to combine several events into one, like an entire family reunion you originally broke into events for each day.

To use this command, first highlight the events you want to merge. (Click one, and then ⌘-click each additional one.) Then choose this command. iMovie names the new event after the first event you folded into this one, going alphabetically.

Sometimes you might end up using footage from one library in a project that’s stored in another library. Because iMovie edits by reference (The Concept of iMovie Projects), your project won’t have the footage it needs if the original library isn’t available. This would happen if you copied a library to another computer, for example, and then deleted it from the first computer.

Choose Consolidate Project Media so all the files iMovie needs are available in the same library where you stored the project itself. Select Consolidate Library Files to do the same thing for all of a project’s files, not just footage.

What fun is iMovie if you can’t share your work with the world? This menu contains all the same sharing options as the big Share button in the iMovie toolbar. Each is explained in Chapters Chapter 15 and Chapter 16.

If the constraints of the trailer-builder are holding you back, this option turns a trailer into a normal movie project, but the trip is one-way—you can’t later change the project back into a trailer.

This handy option lets you click a clip in the storyboard and then jump to the corresponding raw footage in the Event browser. Seeing the original clip gives you a lot more information; for example, you can see how much of the clip you’ve used or whether or not you’ve used pieces of the clip elsewhere in the project (as indicated by the orange stripes).

Although iMovie hides all the individual video files in a big, single library file (explained on Project Properties), you can still get access to them. Select any clip and choose this command. Your Mac opens a new Finder window and highlights the file.

When you first open iMovie, the software offers to import and update projects and events from a previous version of iMovie. Because this process can take a long time, you can skip this step. If you decide to import all of these events and projects later, use this menu command.

To delete most things in iMovie, like transitions, titles, or sound clips, you just click the item and then press the Delete key. All you’re really doing when you delete these things is to remove them from your project. But that’s not the same as moving things to the trash.

The trash is for things that take up space in your iMovie library, like projects, events, and imported video. When you move them to the trash, they go in one of two places: the internal iMovie trash you never see, or the Macintosh Trash in the Finder. Say Goodbye to Rejected Footage explains the process.

In iMovie, you can take back not only the last edit you made, not only the last 10, but an infinite number of steps, all the way back to the last time you opened iMovie. The ability to change your mind, or to recover from a particularly bad editing decision, is a considerable blessing.

The wording of this command changes to show you which editing step you’re about to reverse. It might say Undo Adjust Volume, Undo Split, and so on.

We’re only human, so it’s entirely possible that sometimes you might want to undo your Undo.

For example, suppose you just used the Undo command a few times, retracing your steps back to a time when your movie was in better shape, and then decide that you’ve gone one step too far. That’s when the Redo command is useful; it tells iMovie to undo your last Undo, so you can step forward in time, redoing the steps you just undid. (If you haven’t yet used the Undo command, then iMovie dims Redo.)

You can use the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands just as you would in any other program: to move stuff around. You can cut, copy, and paste whatever you select: entire filmstrips or just chunks of them.

For example, you can cut a selection from a clip and paste it into another spot, or you can copy a selection and paste it into another project.

Cut, Copy, and Paste also work when you edit text, such as the names of your clips or the text for your credits and other titles.

Once you painstakingly edit the look of a clip (to correct its color, for example), a photo (to direct a Ken Burns effect, for example), or some audio (to boost the volume, for example), you can rapidly enhance a bunch of other footage the same way. Just copy the first clip, and then, after selecting the other clips, use the Paste Adjustments commands. You have a lot of options:

More ways to get rid of stuff. If it’s anything in a project, Delete removes it (but not from your Event library).

In the Event browser, this command says Reject instead of Delete, but only because rejecting, in iMovie, is the first step toward deleting footage for good. Say Goodbye to Rejected Footage has the details.

When you animate a picture-in-picture clip, you do it with keyframes (Adjust the PiP Size and Position). This command deletes those keyframes so you can start over.

In the Event browser, makes an exact copy of whatever project or clip you selected.

Use this to select everything, at least everything in one part of iMovie.

When you hover your mouse pointer over a clip, this surrounds the whole thing with a selection border.

You have even more options available to you under Edit→“Select in Movie.” If you want to make changes to all your transitions, for example, you can use this command to select all your transitions first. Use this to select all video clips, transitions, photos, maps, and backgrounds.

Removes any selection.

Inserts a selected clip (or a selected part of a clip) in the Event browser to the end of your movie.

Inserts a selected clip (or a selected part of a clip) in the Event browser as a connected clip (Reverse a Clip’s Playback Direction), starting at the position of your playhead.

Splits the clip under your playhead and inserts the Event browser selection between the two pieces.

iMovie’s preferred transition is the cross dissolve. How do you know? It’s the only one that gets its own menu item and keyboard shortcut, saving you a trip to the Transitions library.

If the clips you import into an event have custom names to tell them apart, you can use the Find command (or the search field at the top of the Event browser) to search for these clips by name. Most often, this is useless because cameras tend to name clips with meaningless combinations of numbers or letters.

This is a standard menu item in all OS X apps. It makes your computer read back selected text with one of the built-in text-to-speech voices. If you haven’t noticed, there’s not a lot of text in iMovie to dictate.

You’re creating a subtitle for an interview with the CEO of “I’ve Got a ¥en™” Productions. But how the heck do you type the ¥ symbol—or the ™ symbol? Easy. Choose this command and then double-click the symbol you want from the palette arrayed before you.

There are three categories of footage in iMovie: favorite footage, rejected footage, and unrated footage (neither favorited or rejected). Select a clip in the Event browser and choose one of these three to decide a clip’s fate. (Or use these to change its fate if you categorized it wrong.)

Resize Clips in Place explains how video markers work. This command adds a marker at the playhead.

After you click a video marker to select it, this command removes it.

This does the same thing as the Enhance button in the iMovie toolbar. The software analyzes your selected clip and improves its appearance and sound automatically.

These three video effects are explained on Move and Trim a PiP Clip. These commands split a clip at the playhead, apply the chosen effect to the second piece, and transition smoothly into the effect you chose.

Does the trick explained on One-Step Effects.

This completely silences a clip, or restores the volume setting if you’d already muted the clip.

Use this command to trim excess footage off a storyboard clip, the part of the clip that follows the playhead’s current position. If you have selected part of a storyboard clip, this cuts off everything outside the selection border.

It’s often convenient to chop a clip in half; this command splits a clip at the playhead.

If, having split a clip as just described, you want to rejoin the pieces, place them consecutively in the storyboard, and then use this command. (You can’t join clips that were never part of one clip to begin with.)

This handy command takes the sound from the selected project clip and puts it in as a sound effect (Detach Clip Audio), still synced up with the clip. The source clip itself is now soundless.

These next four menu items in the Modify menu are covered in detail starting on One-Step Effects. Go there to learn what each of these does.

If you’ve made any speed changes to a project clip (Fast/Slow/Reverse), this undoes them all.

You’ll use this command to fix any event footage that just didn’t happen when iMovie thinks it happened.

Starts previewing a clip from the playhead.

Plays whatever you’ve selected, from the beginning of the selection.

Previews a set of event clips or a project from the start.

Fills your screen with a preview of whatever you’re working on (event footage or a project).

By default, iMovie lumps all the footage in an event together. This command visually distinguishes them by the days they were filmed, using the embedded date and time.

When you’re playing something, turn this on and iMovie will go back to the beginning and play it again automatically.

As explained on How Events Work, this command lets you view event clips in a different order.

This is how you can visualize the audio in your video and sound clips, as Chapter 11 explains.

If you don’t like seeing the orange stripes telling you what footage you’ve already used, this makes them go away.

When you turn this option on, a balloon pops out of the playhead when you move it over event footage, displaying the clip’s file name.

If you want your project clips to flow more like text in a word processor, making use of vertical screen space, turn this on. (Hide/Show Clip Audio explains how it works.)

Shows longer or shorter filmstrips representing your footage (Phase 1: Review Your Clips).

Displays all your event clips as single frames. (This basically zooms all the way out.)

Snapping is when the playhead is “magnetically” drawn to nearby markers or clip ends, saving you tedious hand-positioning. You’ll need this feature if you want to follow the useful advice on editing to a beat (Edit to the Beat).

When you skim (see Skim Filmstrips), iMovie plays the audio simultaneously, which may sound fragmented and disturbing. Turn off this option if you’d rather skim in silence.

These commands give you access to the same parts of iMovie that the Library and Theater tabs in the middle of the iMovie toolbar do.

You’ve seen the Adjustments bar a million times by now. It’s where you make all kinds of adjustments, like video and audio effects. This command does the same thing as clicking the Adjust button in the iMovie toolbar.

If the Libraries list on the left side of iMovie is cramping your style, make it go away with this command.

This command offers direct access to any of the Content libraries that live in the lower-left corner of iMovie when you’re editing a project: Transitions, Titles, Maps & Backgrounds, iTunes, Sound Effects, and GarageBand.

This option opens the Clip Trimmer tool described on Use the Clip Trimmer.

This command opens the Precision Editor tool described on The Precision Editor.

The really cool Sports theme provides you with a team roster you can customize with player names and other information. This is where you edit the roster. Customize Transitions That Are Maps explains.

Shows the voiceover tool, covered on Narration.

This changes the Viewer to show information about your project. You first see basic information about the video quality, length, and share status of your project. Click Settings in the Viewer (Figure A-2) and you can adjust the following:

Figure A-2. Your project’s settings determine basic behavior for your movie.

This command flips the top and bottom halves of the editing screen, so that the storyboard is now on the bottom. The advantage is that there’s no Viewer window taking up the bottom of iMovie’s screen, so you get a more expansive workspace.

If you’ve monkeyed with your window layout in iMovie using any of the previously described commands, this command returns it back to the way it looked on first launching iMovie.

Uses iMovie in the full screen format available to all apps in OS X.

This search box does two things when you type in text:

Choose this command to open the iMovie Help Center window, where you’ll see a list of help topics (Figure A-3).

You can use the Help Center in either of two ways:

Either way, you’ll probably find that iMovie’s online assistance offers a helpful summary of the program’s functions, but it’s a little light on “what it’s for” information, illustrations, tutorials, speed, and jokes.

Figure A-3. The Help Center’s first screen offers a large, browsable outline. Most people, however, start by typing a phrase into the search box. (If you do, double-click a topic in the search results to read the corresponding help page. Click the Back button at the top of the screen to return to the list of topics.)

This is really just another link into the Help Center, but a particularly valuable part of it. It takes you to a table showing about 50 keyboard shortcuts in iMovie. (They’re among the listings in Appendix C of this book.)

This takes you to a handy web page Apple designed to list all the cameras iMovie supports. You can use this to plan your next camera purchase.

Opens your web browser and takes you to Apple’s iMovie help website. Which, by the way, is a pretty great resource for asking questions and getting answers.