In today’s world almost every household has a video camera. Many of us even carry our video cameras with us everywhere we go in the form of the iPhone 4 or other smartphones. The ubiquity of the video camera has led to an explosion in video recording. This is perhaps no more evident than when browsing sites like Facebook or YouTube, where people post millions of videos per day. Indeed, it seems as if everyone is recording everything now. And although traditional camcorders have continued to shrink in size, making them easier to carry and events easier to record, the quality of their raw recordings has continued to improve. That means that no matter what we’re recording today, it’s probably going to look pretty good.

But if you’re looking at this book, you’re a person who knows that a video can be so much more than just a pretty good dry, static recording of an event. With a little work, it can become a film that conveys humor, romance, adventure, or even fear.

Films are so powerful that they’ve permeated every part of our lives. Indeed, they became the dominant art and entertainment form from the middle of the twentieth century onward. But until relatively recently—about the turn of this century—filmmaking was the domain of Hollywood with its big studio budgets. All that changed when Apple unveiled the first iMovie software in 1999. Suddenly, a legion of amateur filmmakers (many moms, dads, and kids among them) armed with a video camera and iMac could create films with effects, titles, and scores that would have been technically impossible just a few years earlier.

In the 12 years since iMovie’s original release, Apple has continued to refine the app to such a degree that now some people I know in Hollywood even use it to edit television shows. But the main benefit of iMovie’s evolution has been to you, or rather, the filmmaker inside of you. The things iMovie ‘11 allows you to do are simply jaw dropping. You can create productions that actually rival the ones you see on TV nowadays. You can apply complicated special effects with just a few clicks of the mouse, create movie trailers of such quality they could easily be shown in front of a Hollywood blockbuster, and touch up video clips that before would have been beyond saving.

If you’re reading this, you’re a person who enjoys recording video but who wants to get more out of it. You’re also probably at least somewhat familiar with Apple’s iMovie app, but maybe you’ve played around with it, and getting to know everything it can do seems too daunting. Not to worry; this book is for you.

Using iMovie ‘11 is a combination of reference and tutorial. It goes in depth to explore everything iMovie ‘11 can do. In nontechnical, nongeeky terms, we’ll guide you step by step in editing your home videos so you can make them the best films they can be. Whether you want to make a two-minute trailer or a two-hour film, after you’re done reading this book and watching its video tutorials...well, Spielberg had better watch out!

Also, keep in mind that this book isn’t written for film school auteurs or Mac tech heads. You don’t need to know anything about filmmaking or editing. You’ll learn all of that stuff in this book. That’s because this book is written for the moms and dads and grandpas and grandmas who want to show off their family videos. It’s written for the budding filmmaker in high school who uses YouTube as his theater and the small business owner who wants to learn how to edit her own commercials to distribute online. It’s written for the person who knows just how powerful, fun, and amazing filmmaking and editing can be. In other words, it’s written just for you.

Don’t be intimidated by video editing either. There’s no right way or wrong way to do it. And there are no hard and fast rules about what a good film should be like. As a matter of fact, the only should for people who enjoy recording video is that they should have an understanding of the tools available to them to make their videos the best they can be—and iMovie ‘11 gives you all those tools in a tidy little package.

You’ve got the Mac, you’ve got the camera, and you’ve got the app—now get this book. It ties everything together and helps make organizing, navigating, editing, and sharing your videos more fun than you ever thought possible.

Using iMovie ‘11 is the book you’ve been looking for to help you take your videos to the next level.

How This Book is Organized

This book introduces you to Apple’s iMovie ‘11 video editing app and shows you how to get the most out of it. It tells you what to expect from iMovie ‘11 and what its limitations are, and it talks about best practices for assembling your video clips into a film. Using iMovie ‘11 teaches you how to import your video, how to use the app’s many tools to create a film, and how to easily share your films with your friends and family—and even the entire world. Using iMovie ‘11 offers you the following:

• It shows you how to arrange iMovie’s interface to best suit your workflow.

• It focuses on the simple, yet powerful tools that allow you to edit and assemble your video clips into a movie. You’ll even learn how to create special iMovie projects like themed movies and movie trailers!

• It details all the available features in iMovie ‘11, including the new audio editing abilities, one-step effects, and maps and animation tools.

• It explains key concepts for novice users. No knowledge of filmmaking or editing is required. You’ll wonder why anyone pays for film school.

• It offers walk-through tutorials that guide you step by step.

• It shows you how to share your movies via YouTube, Facebook, and more...all without leaving the iMovie app!

Using This Book

This book allows you to customize your own learning experience. The step-by-step instructions in this book give you a solid foundation in using iMovie ‘11, while content, including video tutorials and audio sidebars, provides the following:

• Demonstrations of step-by-step tasks covered in the book

• Additional tips or information on a topic

• Practical advice and suggestions

• Direction for more advanced tasks not covered in the book

Here’s a quick look at a few structural features designed to help you get the most out of this book:

• Chapter objective—At the beginning of each chapter is a brief summary of topics addressed in that chapter. This objective enables you to quickly see what is covered in the chapter.

• Notes—Notes provide additional commentary or explanation that doesn’t fit neatly into the surrounding text. Notes give detailed explanations of how something works, alternative ways of performing a task, and other tidbits to get you on your way.

• Tips—This element gives you shortcuts, workarounds, and ways to avoid pitfalls.

• Cautions—Every once in a while there is something that can have serious repercussions if done incorrectly (or rarely, if done at all). Cautions give you a heads-up.

Special Features

More than just a book, your USING product integrates step-by-step video tutorials and valuable audio sidebars delivered through the Free Web Edition that comes with every USING book. For the price of the book, you get online access anywhere with a web connection—no books to carry, content is updated as the technology changes, and the benefit of video and audio learning.