When you open iMovie, you see a toolbar with three options: Video, Projects, and Theater. Chapter 18 describes the Video Browser; Chapter 24 covers iMovie Theater. For now, pay attention to the Projects link (Figure 19-1).

To create your first movie, click Projects. That takes you to a screen that says “Tap + to start a new movie or trailer.” Do that and then choose Movie from the next screen.

Once you choose Movie, iMovie opens a theme screen so you can choose from the eight offered. The theme you choose will determine which titles, transitions, and other elements your movie uses.

Figure 19-1. Left: The Projects view will be empty when you first get started. Tap the + button to create your first movie. Right: Once you have a few projects and trailers under your belt, you can tap one of the thumbnails to preview it or to do more editing.

All eight of the themes found in iMovie for iOS match ones found in iMovie for the Mac. That’s a good thing. If you want to edit a single project both at home and on the fly—between your desktop Mac and an iDevice, in other words, just choose a theme common to both machines.

Don’t stress out when you choose a theme; you can always change it later. To do that, tap as you edit a project; iMovie displays all eight themes again. Pick a new one. iMovie automatically updates all the theme-specific elements in your film, like the titles and background music.

Once you select a theme and click Create Movie, iMovie takes you to the Timeline screen so you can start building your movie. Since you haven’t selected any clips yet, the screen is pretty barren, with a few tools and silhouette placeholders for your clips (see Figure 19-2).

Figure 19-2. When you first start a movie project, the timeline consists of silhouettes where your clips will eventually go.

To add clips, tap the Add Media button—the tiny film strip/musical note icon circled in Figure 19-3. That opens the Media screen, where you see all the videos, photos, and music stored on your iDevice. You generally see your video clips first. To see your photos or music files, select Photos or Audio from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

Figure 19-3. The Add Media button (top, circled) gives you access to all your clips, photos, and music files (bottom).

To sort your footage, tap < on the Media screen. You can choose to see all your clips (select All), your best-of clips (choose Favorites), or footage shot with your device’s camera app (choose Camera Roll). If you use the camera app within iMovie to shoot footage (see Add Favorites), you’ll see another sort option, iMovie Media—that’s where iMovie-shot clips live (yes, in iMovie for iOS, you can shoot video from both the camera app and from within iMovie itself. The clips show up in different places).

Once you choose a sort option, all the clips in that group show up as filmstrips. You can scrub each one by drawing your finger across it.

As soon as you add a clip to a movie project, iMovie automatically saves the project with the uninspiring name “My Movie 1.” If you keep creating projects without renaming them, iMovie names each new one in sequence, so your second opus will be “My Movie 2.” If you want something catchier, like “My Movie 2: The Return of My Movie,” you need to rename the project.

You do that from a movie’s Project Info page (Figure 19-4), which you can get to two ways. One is by opening iMovie and then selecting Projects in the toolbar, which shows you all your movies-in-progress. Tap the thumbnail of a movie to open its Project Info page. The other way is from the timeline, when you’re in the process of editing a movie. From there, tap < in the top-left corner.

Figure 19-4. The Project Info screen offers all kinds of useful information related to your project, like its duration, the date it was last edited, and playback and sharing buttons. To rename your project, tap the name and type in a new one.

Either way, iMovie opens the Project Info screen, which includes your movie’s name, duration, and the date you last edited it. Tap the placeholder movie name, and iMovie calls up the iOS keyboard and places your cursor at the end of the text box. Tap the X there to delete the current moniker and type in a new one.

You’ll probably want to add photos and music or sound effects to your movie, too. This chapter focuses on video, while two other chapters discuss audio (Chapter 21) and photos (Chapter 22).

If you’re accustomed to iMovie on the Mac, you might assume that you can drag a clip from the Media screen into your timeline, but it doesn’t work that way in iMovie for iOS. You first have to select the clip, which calls up the yellow editing border and floating menu shown in Figure 19-5.

You can use all or part of the clip in your movie. To use just part of it, drag either end of the yellow border. When you finish, tap the swirling down-arrow button to add the clip or a clip section to your movie.

Figure 19-5. Use this floating menu to add footage from the Media screen to your project. Drag the ends of the yellow border to select just part of a clip. Press to preview what you’ve selected. Press the down arrow to add the selection to your project.

As you add clips to your movie, your timeline starts to fill in nicely. To see different parts of your movie, drag the clips in the timeline (in iMovie for iOS, the playhead remains stationary, and you move the clips themselves to scrub through your project). The white playhead line marks the frame you see in the preview screen above. The position of that line matters when you add clips—each time you add a new clip, iMovie slips it in after the clip that’s currently under the playhead.

Shoot New Video

You can film footage or shoot photos from within iMovie itself; those recordings appear right on your timeline.

Find the camera icon in the iMovie toolbar (Figure 19-6) and tap it to open the Camera app you know and love. Once you shoot some footage or take a photo, preview it and then choose to reshoot it or save it to the timeline.

Figure 19-6. Left, top: The Camera button lets you film video or shoot photos and save them right in your timeline. Left, bottom: The camera appears and works just as it normally does. Right: Once you finish shooting, you can reshoot the clip or video, preview it, or add it to your timeline (by tapping Use Video).

This is a great strategy to use if you have your movie planned out in your head and you just need to shoot the footage. Go from one shot to the next, adding each to the timeline as you shoot. If a take doesn’t work, tap Retake instead of Use Video. Get good at this and you’ll be cranking out blockbusters in record time.

UP TO SPEED: iMovie Media vs. Camera Roll

iMovie automatically gives you access to any videos or photos stored on your iDevice. It also lets you shoot and then save videos and photos straight to the timeline (see Add Favorites). But iMovie will be stingy with that media unless you tell it to play nice and share.

At the heart of every iDevice is the Camera Roll, a central repository for photos and video, available to any and all installed apps. iMovie taps into the Camera Roll to find stuff to use in your projects.

But when you shoot footage and images through iMovie, it keeps those files in iMovie alone. Other apps can’t access them until you tell iMovie to share them to the Camera Roll.

To do that, tap on the Media screen (The Video Browser) and then tap “Manage local media.” From there, you can see how iMovie highlights locally stored clips with a gray Import button () and a red trash can. The Import button saves the clip to your Camera Roll, making it available to other apps.

Be careful with the trash can button. Tap it once and your clip goes away forever, without so much as a warning screen.

Add Clips as Overlays

Like iMovie for the Mac, iMovie for iOS lets you insert clips as cutaway, picture-in-picture, or side-by-side shots (explained starting on Contrast). iMovie for iOS calls these overlays. (In the Mac version, they’re called connected clips.)

To add an overlay clip, first position the playhead where you want the overlay to appear. Now select a clip in the Add Media screen, and then tap the button. You see three buttons for creating a cutaway, picture-in-picture, or side-by-side overlay (see Figure 19-7). Tap the desired button, and iMovie inserts the clip as the chosen type of overlay. It shows up as a small filmstrip hovering above your main one.

Tap the overlay filmstrip in your storyboard to make these custom edits:

• For a cutaway, you can zoom the video (Split Clips).

• For a picture in picture clip, you can tap the compass button in the Viewer and resize or reposition the inset window.

• For a side by side clip you can position it to the left, right, top, or bottom using the buttons in the toolbar.

• You can change the type of overlay you inserted using the toolbar buttons that mimic the ones in Figure 19-7.

• Finally, you can make audio adjustments in the toolbar (Adjust Audio Levels).

If you change your mind, you can delete an overlay clip by selecting it and tapping .

Figure 19-7. Add an overlay clip (a cutaway, picture in picture, or side by side clip) using one of these three buttons on the Add Media screen.

To reorder a clip in the timeline, press down on it (lightly) until it attaches itself to your finger. Then drag it to its new position and let go. The clips underneath slide around to make space for the one you just dropped in.

Once you have your clips assembled in the timeline, you can edit them by selecting them and using the tools iMovie provides.

You can adjust a clip’s final edit, change its theme titles, speed it up or slow it down, split it so you can insert a new clip in between, freeze a frame, duplicate the clip, zoom in on an area of it, and rotate the clip.

You see options to do all this when you select an individual clip in the timeline. On iPhones, you find these tools spread across two “pages” of options (see Figure 19-8). Tap the second, small dot beside Title and Speed to get to the second page. On iPads, all the tools fit on a single toolbar.

Figure 19-8. The iPhone toolbar uses dots so you can navigate to all the clip-editing tools.

If you don’t see the tools, make sure you have a clip selected in the timeline and that you have Video (not Audio) selected in the toolbar.

Split Clips

To break up a clip so you can put another one in the middle, first drag the filmstrip so the playhead sits over the spot where you want the split. Tap the clip to select it and then choose Split in the toolbar. iMovie dutifully cuts the clip in two.

Note

If you don’t want a clip split anymore, tap the Undo button (The Undo Button) immediately after you split the clip (though a split clip doesn’t affect playback). Or, if it’s too late for that, you can always delete the two parts () and then add the whole clip back in from the Media screen.

Figure 19-9. Use the speed tool to change the pace of your clip. Drag the slider left to go slower and right to speed up.

As you work on your project, you’ll want to repeatedly review it to make sure it looks right. There are two ways to preview your movie.

Add Clips as Overlays explains how to save video you shot from within iMovie to your Camera Roll. Of course, a completed project, edits and all, could be just as worthy of saving to your Camera Roll so you can share it later (see CNN iReport). From the Project Info screen, tap and then choose Save Video. iMovie ships it over to your Camera Roll, where it’s available to other apps on your phone.

Let’s say you shoot a movie with your iPhone and put a simple rough cut together. Now you’re back home and want to edit it on the roomier screen of your iPad.

The easiest way to do this, by far, is to use AirDrop, a feature that lets you share projects and movies between iOS devices. AirDrop explains the AirDrop process for iOS in detail, so flip ahead to read more. But not all iOS devices can use AirDrop. (You need an iPhone 5 or later, a fourth-generation iPad or later, any iPad mini, or a fifth-gen iPod Touch or later.)

Lucky for you, you can transfer the project between devices using iTunes. These steps describe the process from iPhone to iPad, but they work for any iOS devices going in either direction:

You can use the Undo button in iMovie for iOS if you remember two things: First, you can only undo steps in order. Second, if you do a bunch of other things on your iDevice and then go back into iMovie, there’s a good chance that your undo list will be erased from iMovie’s memory.