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.

Videos uploaded to the ITS Streaming Server should be saved in QuickTime format. Our streaming server will not support Flash videos, Windows Media, or Real Video. In addition, all videos uploaded to the streaming server should have what are called “hinted tracks”. These tracks enable the videos to be streamed bit by bit in real time without waiting for the whole video to download. You can tell if a video has a hinted track by opening it in QuickTime Pro 7 ($30 upgrade to the QuickTime Player available from Apple) and selecting Movie Properties from the Window menu.

You can see in the photo above that the movie has a Sound Track, a Video Track, a Hinted Video Track, and a Hinted Sound Track. The movie below does not have hinted tracks and will give you an “Unsupported Media” error if you upload it to the streaming server.

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.

Using Greenscreen footage in iMovie 09

1. Place the footage you want to be the background of your final composition into your iMovie project.
2. Select the portion of your greenscreen footage from your event and drag and drop it on top of the background footage in your project. You must be precise in dropping the greenscreen footage right on the background footage.
3. A contextual menu will pop up. Choose the greenscreen option
   
4. iMovie will composite your footage together. You can adjust the placement of your greenscreen footage by sliding it to the left or right in the project window.

Capturing from an iSight camera:

1. From inside iMovie 09 press the Camera Import Button on the left side of the screen.
2. Choose "Built in iSight" from the camera drop down box in the import window.
3. Press the CAPTURE button.
4. 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.
5. Press Capture to begin recording your footage into iMovie. This process will take approximately the same amount of time as the length of your footage.
6. Press stop to complete your recording.

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.