iMovie: Basics

Terms to know:

Project: When working on video editing, you will be in the video editing project phase. The video will be referred to as a project because it is in editing format, instead of a final viewing format like QuickTime or RealMedia. The project phase also means that you may be working with multiple video files which you can combine into a single final file, or you may take a single large file and cut that file into multiple smaller files. Your final result will need to be exported from the editing format to the final viewing format in order to make the file smaller and to put the file in a format that more computers can access.

File format: File format refers to the form in which a file exists. For instance, if you're working with a file in Adobe Photoshop, the file is in .PSD form. If you wanted to put that image on the web, you would want to change the image to a more web-friendly format, like .PNG or .JPG (.GIF is also used, but CompuServe owns .GIF, so .PNG is the publically owned available form). when working with a file, your file in iMovie it will be in a format specific to iMove and you will need to change this to the final format you want when you are done editing your video. You should keep your previous file if you expect to do more editing, or if you can, but video files are often too large to keep unused copies available for long.

Rendering: Rendering is the process by which a program fits the pieces of a file together and displays them. For instance, when an image is loading on your computer from the internet, your web browser and computer are "rendering," or preparing that image for viewing. Time for rendering is directly proportionate to image size. Thus, video rendering, which is the rendering of multiple images, takes longer than single image rendering.

Crop: Cropping means to cut away. If you crop part of your video, you would be removing that section of your video.

Transitions: Transitions can be made using the transitions menu. Transitions allow for greater clarity and less `choppiness' in the final video. Transitions do need to be rendered.

Titles: Titles in iMovies allows you to easily add text to stills, clips, and over balck screens. The title option thus allows for the easy addition of a title screen (over the video, or on black), credits, closing screen ("The End"), and so on.

Stills: Stills are still images which can be put into your video. Stills last for 5 seconds by default, but this can be edited. Stills are often used for title screens and framing images at the end or beginning of a video.

Points to Note:

Save your files frequently! Saving frequently protects you from lost data - you should always save frequently, especially when dealing with labor and time intensive projects.

When using iMovie, you can undo up to ten actions until you save or quit the program. iMovie will not have you previous actions after you save or quit and iMovie will not be able to undo more than ten actions reagrdless of saves.

The final format that you'll keep will be QuickTime. Other formats will be too big to Fetch to other machines. QuickTime files are .mov