imovie how to - full manual - a wickett by andrew wickett

October 2010 - A. Wickett - Media Tech

IMOVIE – How to...

Contents: P1 -

Starting a project

P4 -

Importing footage from a camera

P7 -

Importing video from a USB stick or hard-drive

P8 -

Editing – ‘The Basics’ – Dragging clips, trimming, deleting.

P10 -

Editing – ‘Advanced’ – P10 - Titles P11 - Transitions P13 - Music & Photos P15 - Downloading music from YouTube P17 - Voice-over P19 - Video effects P20 - Speed P21 - Colours P21 - Audio P22 - Green Screen

P25 -

Saving work and shutting down the Mac.

P26 -

Next time... 1

IMovie is a basic video editing package available on all Apple Mac Computers. It allows you to create exciting video projects without a great deal of knowledge required. This help-sheet will run you through the basics so you can start making movies of your own.

Starting a project: Log onto the ‘students’ tab from the opening screen. This will take to you to the Mac operating system opening screen –

To open programs on a Mac we go to the bottom of the screen and use the ‘dock’. *If there is no dock at the bottom of the screen, simply move the cursor down to the bottom and the dock will suddenly pop up. To open Imovie you need to move the cursor to the ‘star’ icon and press it.

When IMovie opens up it will look something like this -

First you will need to create your own project. Simply go to ‘File’ in the top left corner and select ‘New Project’.

When the next box pops up type in a name for your film –

*Make sure Aspect Ratio is set to Widescreen and the ‘Automatically add’ box at the bottom is empty.* When done hit ‘Create’.

So here is the start of your project. Looking at the screen you can see it is broken into four main windows. PROJECT

EVENT LIBRARY

VIEWER

RAW FOOTAGE

Your PROJECT window will obviously be empty to begin with. This is where you start to drag you clips into when you begin editing. The VIEWER is where you watch your film and how you view your raw footage. The EVENT LIBRARY is where you store and organise your footage when you transfer it into IMovie from your camera. The RAW FOOTAGE window is where you browse your footage and begin selecting the clips you want to drag into your project window. Before you can start editing your film you must first import the footage from your camera onto the Macbook. To do this you need your tape, a camera and a firewire cable.

Importing your footage from a camera: Place your tape into the camera and rewind to the start of the footage you want to import into the computer. Then take the firewire cable and attach it to both the camera and the computer. *Please check the shape of the wire and the hole before you try and force it in.* The smaller end of the cable goes into the camera’s DV port –

The larger end goes into the computers firewire

port –

Now switch on your camera. 5

You should be faced with the following import screen –

On the blue import screen check that it is set to ‘Manual’ in the bottom left hand corner and then hit the ‘Import...’ box in the right corner. *If this import screen doesn’t pop up automatically you can try the following four things: -Click the camera icon button to the left of the screen just above the event library. -Check the cables are securely pushed in and the camera is switched on. -Try using a different camera. -Try a different firewire cable. After hitting import you will see the following box – Type the name of your project in the ‘create new event’ box. Make sure these two boxes are empty. Then hit ‘Import’.

Once you have hit ‘Import’ it will return to the blue screen and then automatically start playing and importing your tape.

You will be able to watch your footage on the screen as it is importing but you will only be able to hear the volume through the camera. It is important that you do not press anything at this stage and simply let the computer play and import your footage. The idea of importing your raw footage is to import everything and then decide what to use in your film later. You do not need to worry about deleting any footage at this point. You may see the footage start and stop on the screen. This is where there are breaks on your tape in the filming. If there is a very long break – you can press fast forward until you hit the next piece of footage. Once all your footage has been imported you can hit the ‘stop’ button in the right hand corner. It will say ‘generating thumbnails’ for a minute or so and then return to the blue screen. You can then hit ‘Done’ to return to the main IMovie screen. You should now see that your import has been generated in the ‘event library’ and that all your raw filming is now being displayed in the bottom right window. If you hover over it with the mouse you should be able to hit space-bar and watch it in the viewer. You are now ready to start editing! 7

Importing footage from USB stick or hard-drive: If you have your own clips on a USB stick or hard-drive you can import them easily. Navigate to ‘File’ scroll down to ‘Import’ and select ‘Movies’.

Find your files on your USB stick and select all the ones you want to import.

Tell IMovie to add the files to your existing event. Make sure ‘Optimize video’ is ticked and set to ‘Large – 960x540’. Select copy files. Hit ‘Import’ to transfer all your files to the computer. 8

Editing – The Basics: Dragging clips, trimming, deleting. Beginning to edit your film from the main screen is easy. Make sure your ‘project’ is open in the top-left window and your ‘event’ is selected in the bottomleft window. Then you simply hover over your raw footage in the bottom-right window and hit ‘space-bar’. This will start playing all your raw footage for you to view.

When you come across footage you like and want to include in your film - you need to select it. To select the footage - you click at the starting point you want to include and whilst holding the mouse down you drag out a yellow box to your end point. This will then leave you with a yellow box. You can drag either side of this yellow box to get your edit more precise.

You then grab this yellow box with your mouse and drag it up to your ‘project window’ and drop it.

This is how you start editing your film. Repeating these steps of selecting your clips and dragging them up into the project window allows you to start arranging your raw clips into a story. In the project window you can re-arrange the order of the clips by simply dragging them around.

If you change your mind and don’t want a certain clip just hit delete. You can watch your project at any time by hovering over it and pressing the ‘space-bar’. *At no point should you attempt to delete any of your raw footage. The idea is to arrange the bits you do want in the project window.* 10

Editing – Advanced: Titles, transitions, music, photos, voice-over, effects, speed, audio. You should now have been through all your raw footage and chose the pieces you want in your film. Once you have dragged these clips into your project and re-arranged them – you should have what looks like the basis of your film. From here we can add various effects, transitions, photos, music, voice-over & titles to make your film more professional. ‘TITLES’ Adding titles in IMovie is easy. Hit the ‘T’ button in the effects panel.

This will reveal all the available titles that can be used – Hovering over each title will preview it. You can place titles on top of a video or against a blank screen.

Once you have decided which title to use, select it with the mouse and then drag it over and drop it into your project.

When you drop the title it will allow you to type in the words and select the font and colour. If you drop it between two clips you can also select the background colour. Hit done and use the space-bar to preview the title in your movie.

You can make the text appear on the screen for shorter or longer by dragging the sides of the text box in the project window.

‘TRANSITIONS’ Adding transitions is exactly the same as adding titles Select the transition tab from the effect panel to reveal the list of transitions.

Choose which transition you want to use by hovering over it to preview it. The transition will change the way two back-to-back clips are played together.

Drag the transition and drop it between the two clips.

You can change the length of the transition by double clicking it. Type a new length in the inspector window and hit done. You can preview the transition by using the space-bar over your project.

‘MUSIC & PHOTOS’ To add music & photos to your film project from a USB stick you first need to import them in the correct way. Photos are imported into ‘IPhoto’, and music is imported into ‘ITunes’. Minimize IMovie by hitting the yellow – circle.

Then open up your USB stick by double clicking it in the main MAC screen.

To add the music or photos from the USB stick you simply grab the file and drop it onto the correct Application icon which will pop up at the bottom of the screen.

Grab your MP3 file and drag it down to the bottom of the screen and then drop it onto the ITUNES icon. This will then open up ITunes and import your song. Once imported you can close ITunes.

For photos drag them to the IPhoto icon. This will launch IPhoto and import them. You can then close IPhoto.

Go back into IMovie and select either the music or camera icon.

You can then navigate to the ITunes or IPhoto tab and your music/photo will be there.

Adding the photo or music is the same as adding titles & transitions – you simply drag it over and drop it where you want it in your video.

Once dropped you can move it around in your project or adjust its length by dragging the edges.

‘DOWNLOADING MUSIC FROM YOUTUBE’ There are many websites that allow you to download music from YouTube. Once the song has been downloaded you can add it to ITunes as described in the section above. Everything that is added to ITunes becomes available in the music tab in IMovie. One website you can use is – www.listentoyoutube.com First locate your song in YouTube and copy the songs web address. To copy the songs YouTube address, highlight it, and then hold down the ‘Ctrl’ button on the keyboard and hit the address bar with the mouse. From the drop-down menu hit copy.

Then open up another web page and go to www.listentoyoutube.com

Paste the YouTube address into the space. 17

(hold down ‘Ctrl’ to paste) Select high quality and hit GO!

Once it has downloaded hit ‘Download MP3’.

Then on the next screen hit ‘>> Download MP3’

The song will now download onto the Macbook into the ‘Downloads’ folder. Once downloaded it will automatically open up and be copied into ITunes.

You can now close ITunes and when you go back into IMovie you will find that the song is now in the music folder and can be added to you film.

‘VOICE-OVER’ If you want to add voice-over to your project you can do this by using the built in microphone. It’s best to find a quiet room for you to record the voice-over in. Select the ‘microphone’ icon near the middle of the screen.

You will be presented with the following box – Have the settings as you see in this picture. When you speak you will notice these bars turning green. For a good recording you want the green to be rising to about 3/4 when you speak. You don’t want it to be hitting red. You can adjust the ‘input volume’ and how close your mouth is to the microphone the get the right balance.

The in-built microphone is located here.

To start recording your voiceover you simply select the place in your project where you want the voice-over to begin. It will then count you down and play your project as you record your voice over it.

Hit space-bar to stop recording. You will then see your voice-over recording which you can move around or delete and try again. ‘CLIP SETTINGS - VIDEO EFFECTS / SPEED / COLOURS / AUDIO’ The final professional touches you may wish to add to your film such as slow motion, changing the colours, and adjusting the volume - can all be accessed from the same ‘blue box’. When you hover over any clip in your project you will immediately see a blue box pop up in the bottom lefthand corner.

Pressing it will display a drop-down menu that allows you to make clip adjustments, video adjustments, audio adjustments, and to crop or rotate the video.

Selecting ‘Clip Adjustments’ allows you to easily add an effect to the look of your video.

‘VIDEO EFFECTS’ When the inspector window pops up, click on the ‘Video Effect’ button to see what effects can be applied.

When the effect window pops up you can hover over any selection to see the effect.

To apply the effect to your clip, select it and then hit ‘Done’ on the next screen.

You can apply different effects to different clips to help change the mood of your film.

‘SPEED’ You can make a clip into ‘slow-motion’ or appear ‘sped-up’ by changing the speed of a clip. On the clip select the ‘blue box’ and hit ‘Clip Adjustments’. You will see an option to change the speed of a clip using a slider. Moving it to the right speeds up a clip. You can speed a clip up to 8 times faster – 800%. Moving it to the left slows a clip down into slow-motion. You can slow it down to 12.5%. You can also a reverse a clip by ticking this box. This will play a clip backwards.

‘COLOURS’ You can change the colours on your video clips as well as brightness, contrast etc... To do this, select the ‘blue box’ in the bottom left of your clip and then hit ‘Video Adjustments’ in the dropdown menu.

In the Inspector window you can make changes to many aspects of the video clips image. It can be useful for making clips brighter or more colourful, or giving a certain scene a specific colour tinge. Increasing the ‘Red Gain’ slider will make a scene appear redder and can help with certain genres.

As you drag various sliders you can monitor the result by looking at the viewer window.

If at any point you want to revert to the original image you can select this button.

Hit ‘Done’ when you are happy.

‘AUDIO’ Adjusting audio can be useful to make dialogue louder or background music quieter. You can also fade in and fade out audio clips so it sounds smoother and more professional. The Audio is 50% of a viewing experience so adjusting the levels can make a massive difference.

Hit the ‘blue box’ in the bottom left of your video or audio clip and then select ‘Audio Adjustments’ from the drop-down menu.

The ‘Inspector’ box provides you with the options to change the audio. You can use the ‘Volume’ slider to raise or lower the volume. If you tick ‘Ducking’ – this will lower the volume of all the other tracks playing at the same time to whatever volume you set. These sliders can be adjusted to decide the length of the fades on the audio tracks. If you have 3 audio tracks playing at the same time – you can go into each 23

tracks audio setting separately to adjust and get the right sound balance.

‘GREEN SCREEN’ To use ‘green screen’ technology in IMovie you must first decide on your background. Once you have imported the background as a photo or a movie – drag that background into your project.

Set the duration of this background (by double clicking it) to the same length as your green screen clip you are about to drag in.

Now grab your filmed green screen clip and drag it up and drop it on top of the background in the project window.

When you drop the clip onto the background a list will pop up asking you what you want to do.

Select ‘Green Screen’ from the list and IMovie will make the green disappear from you clip and superimpose it onto your chosen background.

IMovie removes the green from the top layer and places the subject onto the background below.

The final image. Green screen sequences can be incorporated into any film projects. The audio etc... can be treated as a normal film clip.

*You can preview your movie ‘full-screen’ on the macbooks by 25

selecting this button above the event library.

Mac:

*By holding down ‘Ctrl’ whilst selecting a clip reveals extra options for that clip - such as splitting clip in half, adding a freeze-frame, and detaching the audio.

Saving work and shutting down the

When you have finished your editing session you need to close Imovie and the Apple Mac down. To close IMovie you simply hit the red circle in the top left hand corner of the screen.

*Don’t worry - IMovie automatically saves your project when it closes.* To completely shut the Apple Mac down you must select the Apple Icon in the top left corner then scroll down to ‘Shut Down...’

Next time...: When you next open Imovie on your Mac you may find that someone else’s project opens up instead of yours. To find your project simply hit the ‘Project Library’ tab in the top left.

This will reveal a list of all the projects stored on the computer.

Simply select your project and then hit ‘Edit Project’.

Your project will then open up and you will be able to continue editing. Don’t forget to look in the ‘Event Library’ when you are trying to find your raw footage. Selecting your event will bring all your footage into view and then allow you to drag your selections into your film project.

If you need to do extra filming after you have started editing – you will have to import that footage and add it to your event. To do this connect the camera in the same way as before and when you are asked to create a new event – simply select ‘Add to existing event’ and select yours from the drop down menu.

If the Apple Mac should ever crash whilst you are editing or you are finding it is not working as it should – the first thing you should do is close down IMovie and restart the computer. You can restart in the same way you shut the Mac down. Select the Apple icon in the top left and then ‘restart’ from the drop down menu. Log in as before and test the project again. If the problem persists please visit the Media Technician in The Media Centre - M30. Please note that all Apple Mac use is monitored and any tampering with the operating system or deleting of files can be traced back to the user.