Making Basic Edits

To get a better taste of how the iMovie interface gives you the power of video editing, we'll take a look at how to make a very basic edit using a combination of the Shelf, the Monitor, and the Timeline Viewer.

Preparing a Clip

In this section, we go through the process of making an adjustment to a clip, but first we need to drag the clip into the Timeline Viewer. To prepare the clip, click on it in the Shelf and drag it down and to the uppermost row of Timeline Viewer, which is where you put video clips. When your mouse cursorwhich is normally an arrowchanges to an arrow with a "+" next to it, release your mouse button (see Figure 14.15).

Figure 14.15. Before: dragging a clip into the Timeline Viewer.

After you drag the clip, the Video Monitor looks the same, but the clip now appears on the Timeline Viewer instead of the Shelf, as illustrated in Figure 14.16.

Figure 14.16. After: the clip as it appears in the Timeline Viewer.

Task: Deleting Extra Footage

Now that we have a clip ready to go, we can make an adjustment to it. In our scenario, the adjustment we want to make is to delete some extra footage at the end of the clip.

To delete extra footage:

1. Drag the playhead in the Monitor to somewhere close to the end of the clipto the point just before the clip switches to another scene.

2. Choose Edit, Split Video Clip at Playhead to mark the spot so that iMovie knows where one clip ends and the next begins. In essence, you've just created two separate clips from one original clip (see Figure 14.17).

   Figure 14.17. The newly split clip.

   

3. In the Timeline Viewer, click the unwanted clip and choose Clear from the Edit menu. The extra footage will be removed.

   

   You don't have to move clips to the Timeline to split themyou can choose a clip in the Shelf and preview it in the Monitor window, then place the playhead, and split the clip as described in Step 3.

   
   

Figure 14.18. The remaining clip now expands to fill the entire width of the Timeline.

Task: Deleting a Clip from the Shelf

One of the more common tasks in basic video editing is deleting unwanted video footage. Doing so is very easy in iMovie:

1. Click on a clip in the Shelf to select it.

2. Either drag the clip into the Trash until the Trash well darkens or select Clear from the Edit menu.

   You'll probably want to get into the habit of emptying the Trash after you've deleted a clip, or at regular intervals, so that you can keep the maximum amount of hard drive space available to work on your movie.

3. Choose File, Empty Trash to empty the Trash.

4. Click OK in the Confirm dialog box that comes up. Then see how much space you have freed up by checking the free space indicator at bottom-right of the iMovie window.

Task: Restoring Clip Media

No video editor is perfect, and sooner or later you'll decide that you want to start over again when adjusting clips. One way to back up is to go through a repeated series of undo steps by pressing Ctrl-Z on your keyboard or choosing Edit, Undo.

Another way is to use the Restore Clip option, which enables you to start over again by bringing clips back to their original state.

If you edit clips, you can only restore clips to the condition they were in up until the last time you emptied the trash, so be careful to clean up only after you're happy with your edits.

For example, you might have recorded a friend talking at great length about an important topic, and toward the end of her monologue, she realizes that another friend has been standing behind her doing a strikingly realistic impression . So, you capture the video clip and make a few adjustments, but accidentally trim the clip too close to the humorous scene at the end. You want to start over again, but aren't sure how. iMovie to the rescue!

1. Click one of the clips in the Timeline that you made by splitting the original clip.

2. Choose Advanced, Restore Clip as shown in Figure 14.19.

   Figure 14.19. A clip in the Timeline view.

   

3. Click OK in the dialog box that appears to restore the original clip (see Figure 14.20).

   Figure 14.20. iMovie asks whether you want to restore the modified clip to its original state.

   

Restoring a clip doesn't merge pieces of the original clip back together. If you split a clip and then restore one of the pieces, the restored clip will contain some of the same footage as the unrestored clip.

Task: Checking the Size of an iMovie Project

Just about the time you start getting hooked on iMovie, you might realize that your Mac doesn't have an endless amount of storage space on the hard drive, and you need to think a bit more about how much space your projects are taking up.

Chances are that you'll have enough space on your hard drive to work on a few projects at the same time, unless you're working on full-length movies from day one. When you're done and have exported your iMovies to tape or iDVD, you can burn the raw files in your iDVD project folder to CD or DVD or move them to an external hard drive.

Whichever way you go, it can be helpful to learn how to see how much space your project is taking up. It's good to keep an eye on things so that you can decide when you have to delete your collection of accumulated media files (the video clips, animations, video games , and MP3 audio files that you've downloaded from the Internet for purely educational reasons as a part of your ongoing studies in sociology).

1. Locate the folder with your iMovieswhen you created a new iMovie project, you named it something.

2. Select the folder and choose Get Info from the File menu. A window will appear, as shown in Figure 14.21.

   Figure 14.21. Showing information about your movie.

   

   

   In Mac OS X this folder is probably in the Movies folder within your home folder.

   
   

The Get info window will give you a variety of information, including the size of your folder.