Digital Commons at Penn State

Capturing footage from an iSight into iMovie

Capturing from an iSight works the same as capturing from any other source. First you need to switch to capture mode and then select Built-in iSight from the drop down menu.

Next click the Record with iSight button

You will now see your footage added to the clip window.

iMovie 09 allows you to smooth out or stabilize a clip, in other words if your footage is really shaky it will help smooth that out. The following tutorial will help you find and smooth out your clip in iMovie 09.

Once you have some footage in your timeline you are ready to smooth it out. To do so simply hover your mouse over the footage and you will see a "Gear wheel" appear over that specific clip, click this "Gear Wheel" and choose the option "Clip Adjustments."

Once "Clip Adjustments" has been selected you will see an "inspector window" pop up on screen.

You will see a check box at the bottom of the inspector window that reads "Stabilization: Smooth Clip Motion" check that box and iMovie will automatically analyze the clip, this may take a few minutes depending on the clip.

iMovie 09 allows you to change the speed or direction that a clip plays. The following tutorial will help you find and change the speed of a particular clip.

Once you have some footage in your timeline you are ready to change the speed of that footage. To do so simply hover your mouse over the footage and you will see a "Gear wheel" appear over that specific clip, click this "Gear Wheel" and choose the option "Clip Adjustments."

Once "Clip Adjustments" has been selected you will see an "inspector window" pop up on screen.

From here you can manipulate the speed of a clip by dragging the speed bar, moving left slows down your clip and moving right speeds it up. To the left of the bar you can see the percentage of speed for that clip and the exact duration of that clip in seconds. There is also a button to reverse the clip and play it backwards.

Once you have the speed you would like simply click "Done" to apply it to your clip.

iMovie 09 comes with several video effects that can be added to any or all of your footage to help you achieve a style or look to your video. The following tutorial will help you find and add those effects.

Once you have some footage in your timeline you are ready to add video effects to that footage. To do so simply hover your mouse over the footage and you will see a "Gear wheel" appear over that specific clip, click this "Gear Wheel" and choose the option "Clip Adjustments."

Once "Clip Adjustments" has been selected you will see an "inspector window" pop up on screen.

From this window click the "Video Effects" Button that currently should read "None"

Now you will see a list of effects you can use on your video clip, you can simply scrub or mouse over these effects to view your clip with that particular effect on it. Simply click on the one you like and it will be applied to your clip. You can then press done in the inspector window to return to your timeline.

You can now create and edit projects in iMovie 09 using themes. These themes will automatically place titles and transitions in between your clips as you add them to iMovie 09.

To start lets create a new project by clicking File > New Project. The new project dialogue box will now appear, here you can choose your selected theme.

Now you will have an empty timeline in iMovie, you can start adding content to your timeline as you usually would by selecting and dragging video from your events into the timeline. As you add video footage you will see that the opening title is created.

As you add your second clip iMovie 09 will automatically add the ending credits title to your video project, don't worry as you continue to add video to your timeline the ending credits will get pushed back to the last clip each time.

iMovie 09 has a new feature that allows users to create custom animated maps to place in their video, this tutorial will outline exactly how to create and include one of these maps in your video.

To start we want to locate the "Maps and Backgrounds" button on the right hand side of the toolbar, clicking this button will show us the maps and backgrounds explorer.

At this point we can choose what style of map we would like to use, once we choose simply click and drag that map to any point in your timeline and drop it.

Now you will see the map on your timeline, an inspector window will automatically open allowing you to edit the map, this window will be located randomly on your screen, if you lose the window simply click on the map in your timeline to view it again.

Editing audio in iMovie 08 consists of being able to trim background music that is pinned to a clip and trimming of sound effects.

To trim background music, you will need to click on the clock icon that apears in the top left of the music in your timeline.

This will then move you into an audio waveform trim mode where you are able to grab the yellow clip edge markers to adjust your start and stop points. Press Done when finished.

If you drag another piece of music to your timeline, it will default to playing immediately after the previous piece.

You can change this by dragging the clip to the right. This will pin the clip to a new starting location. A small pin icon will now appear in the music clip.

You can also re-arrange and unpin music clips in the arrange clips window.

Transitions provide a smooth and easy way to cut between clips. Adding transitions to your project in iMovie 09 is a fairly simple procedure.

First, make sure that you have some footage in the timeline. Now click on the Transition button on the middle right side of the iMovie 09 interface.

This will open the Transitions browser.

Mousing over the transitions available will show you a short preview of what the transition will do when applied to your timeline.

To add the transition to your timeline, simply click and drag the desired transition into the desired place in your timeline. Transitions can be applied at the beginning or end of clips or between other clips.

The added transition will appear as a little box wherever it has been placed in the timeline.

To adjust the duration of a transition that you have already added to your timeline, right click on the transition and go to “Transition Adjustments.”

Capturing from a file based camera:

1. Hook the camera into a USB slot on the back of the iMac (if using the Canon HF10 make sure the camera is plugged into the wall and turned on in player mode)
2. Launch iMovie 09 – The capture window will open automatically (if it does not open press the CAMERA button in the left center of the iMovie interface)
3. By default iMovie 09 will import all of the video clips off of your camera. If you want to only import certain clips, change the import mode from automatic to manual at the bottom of the import window. You can then select only the clips you want to import.
4. Press the import button
5. On the next screen you can choose to add your footage to an existing event or create a new event. An event is a folder for easily organizing your clips.
6. Select “LARGE” for the size of your video
7. Press IMPORT to begin the process of copying your footage into iMovie. This process will take approximately the same amount of time as the length of your footage.

Titles can be added to your iMovie 09 project in two different ways. The first method is to have your title appear on a pre-made background slide for a set duration. The other method for adding a title is to add the text on top of your current video. This tutorial assumes you are already familiar with the concepts discussed in the Basic Editing in iMovie 09 tutorial.

Start with video already on your timeline. It probably looks something like this:

Now click on the Add Text tool on the tool bar on the right most side.

This will open up the Titles menu and you can browse the various pre-made title sequences available in iMovie 09. Hover your cursor over the thumbnail of the title to see a preview of what the title will look like when applied to your movie.