Introduction

I love that I’ve been able to write a book about projects in iMovie.

Editing video, after all, is a project in many ways. It often requires a good deal of time and attention to detail. It’s something you elect to do, probably in your spare time, because you want to document what happened at an event, or preserve memories, or communicate something in a way that text or photos alone are incapable of doing.

And I also love that I’ve been able to write a book about projects in iMovie. If you plucked a much younger me from the days when I first began editing video and showed me today’s iMovie, my brain would have had trouble processing what I was seeing (not to mention dealing with the fact that somehow I had been pulled through time). For as little as $15, or free when you buy a new Mac, you have the capability to edit high-definition video in real time, using a friendly interface that genuinely makes editing fun.

And let’s not even speculate how my brain would have reacted to editing HD video on the iPad, using iMovie for iOS.

Most of all, I love living in a time where these capabilities are available to millions of people who are willing to set aside some time and creativity. The future really is the best project.

About the iMovie Projects

I call it The iMovie ’11 Project Book because I present the information in the form of projects: simple tasks you can do quickly that highlight an important concept or technique, and which you can build upon for your own video editing projects.

I’ve divided the book into the following seven chapters:

• A Primer on Shooting Video. It doesn’t matter the equipment, the experience, or the budget—shooting poor footage leads to mediocre movies. Here are some tips for improving the experience in the field.

• iMovie Fundamentals. Learn the building blocks of importing, editing, and working with features such as iMovie’s movie trailers.

• Organize Your Video Library. Video projects start with lots of clips, which can easily get lost or overlooked when it’s time to start cutting them together. Learn how to store, move, and mark footage, and how to use keywords to find clips quickly.

• iMovie Beyond the Basics. Replace clips, build a photo slideshow, correct color, adjust audio...find out how much more iMovie can do to make your video projects more interesting and enjoyable.

• Creative iMovie Projects. Using the skills you’ve learned, stretch iMovie’s creativity by making a travel highlights movie, a sports highlights movie, a music video, green-screen special effects, and a soundtrack using GarageBand.

• Share Your Movies. Don’t let your videos sit inert on a hard drive. Burn them to DVDs, share them on the Web, or transfer them to an iOS device, including the Apple TV.

• Edit Video on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. You no longer have to wait until you get back to your Mac to edit video. Learn all about working with the iMovie for iOS app.

Although I’ve included a lot of great information, this book isn’t an encyclopedic look at iMovie. Jump in, enjoy yourself, and create something.

A Note About Conventions

When describing a command, I often need to direct you to a menu item. Since your eyes would glaze over if every mention was like, “Choose the Large item under the Viewer submenu of the Window menu,” I use a hierarchical shortcut that follows how you’d click the menu items: “Choose Window > Viewer > Large”.

I also frequently mention settings in iMovie’s preferences window. Rather than direct you to the command each time (choose iMovie > Preferences), I’m more likely to just write “In iMovie’s preferences...”

In terms of interacting with the software, the convention for describing the arrow you manipulate around the screen is a “mouse pointer,” even though in many cases you may be using a laptop trackpad or Apple’s Magic Trackpad instead of a mouse. Similarly, I talk about “clicking the mouse button,” which translates to single-clicking the button on the mouse or trackpad.

Lastly, I often refer to the “contextual menu,” which is a pop-up menu containing commands that apply to the element you’re working with. To access the contextual menu, either hold the Control key and click the mouse button or right-click the mouse.

Getting iMovie ’11

Unless you haven’t purchased a Mac in over a decade, you currently own a version of iMovie. Apple has shipped iLife (which also includes iPhoto, GarageBand, iDVD, and iWeb) free with every new Mac since 2003, and has included iMovie on new Macs since iMovie 1.0 appeared in 1999. Look for iMovie in your Applications folder; it may also already be in your Dock. However, I can’t automatically assume you have iMovie ’11, the latest version, introduced in 2010. Most of the material in this book still applies if you’re running iMovie ‘08 or iMovie ‘09.

However, if your latest version is iMovie HD 6 or earlier, nothing will be familiar. Apple completely rewrote iMovie for the ‘08 version, setting aside the old program in favor of a new approach. iMovie HD still works on modern Macs, although it’s no longer actively supported by Apple.

There are three ways to get iMovie ’11:

• Buy a new Mac. This can be an awfully expensive way to buy a piece of software, but you get some very nice hardware thrown in with the deal. Seriously, if you’re contemplating a new Mac purchase anyway, the most recent Macs offer powerful processors, fast graphics processing (which can improve performance in iMovie), and the latest version of the iLife suite.

• Buy iLife at retail. For $49 from Apple, or from Amazon.com and other resellers, you get a boxed version of the suite on a DVD.

• Buy iMovie from the Mac App Store. Introduced in late 2010, the Mac App Store is an application on your Mac that lets you purchase software as direct downloads from Apple. (If you don’t have the App Store application, make sure you’re running Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later; from the Apple menu (), choose Software Update and install the latest version.) What’s great about the Mac App Store is that you can buy iMovie ’11 by itself for just $15. iPhoto ’11 and GarageBand ’11 are also available for the same price, but iWeb and iDVD—which haven’t been updated since iLife ‘09—are not. If you’re looking to upgrade from iLife ‘08 or earlier, go for the boxed set.