Editing

Selecting Clips
Trimming
Playing Video
Splitting
Inserting

A new feature in iMovie '08 is the use of filmstrips. A filmstrip is a what used to be known as a clip, except that a filmstrip is dynamic. The length of a filmstrip corresponds to the length of the imported. So instead of having two clips, one 5 seconds long and one 20 seconds long, displayed as the same size, a filmstrip will display the 20 second long footage as being 4 times longer than the 5 second footage. A jagged line means the filmstrip is long enough on the current display that it must be carried onto the next line of the Event Browser. For the purposes of this tutorial, however, we use the word clip to mean a section of footage.

To change how long each preview thumbnail of a filmstrip is, simply move the slider at the bottom right corner of either the Project Storyboard or the Event Browser to the number of seconds per thumbnail that you are comfortable working with. It is often helpful to change the frames-per-thumbnail ratio while editing. For example, when moving clips from the Event Browser to the Storyboard, it is probably better to have more frames-per-thumbnail so you can easily move large chunks. However, it might be better to only have a few seconds for each thumbnail when making detailed edits to the footage.

Selecting Clips

To start creating your movie, you need to bring clips from the Event Library into your current project. The first step is to find the clips that you want to use.

To browse through the footage in the Event Browser move your mouse over the filmstrips. You'll be able to watch a preview of the clip in the Viewer. It will move as fast as you move your mouse over the clip. This is called skimming.

To select a section of film from the Event Browser, click on the first moment you want to show in your movie and drag the box that appears all the way to the last second of movie that you want. This is just like highlighting chunk of text in a Word document.

If you need to adjust the length of your selection, hover over one of the vertical end handles of the yellow box and move it back and forth to select more or less of the filmstrip.

Once you have the yellow box around the clip that you want, just drag and drop it into the Project Storyboard.

Trimming

If you moved a little too much footage into the Project Storyboard, there are three main ways to trim it down.

1. Select the section of video that you do not want in the Project Storyboard and either click the delete button on the keyboard or right click on the selection and choose Cut. If you cut out a section in the middle of a filmstrip, iMovie will split the remaining footage into two filmstrips.
   

2. Select only the section of video that you want to keep in the project, and either right click on it and pick Trim to Section or from the menu bar, choose Edit >> Trim to Selection.

3. Select an entire filmstrip by clicking on it once. Then either right click on it and pick Trim…. The Trim Clip window will appear in place of the Project Storyboard. Select the section of the filmstrip that you want to be part of your video and then click Done.

A really nice feature about iMovie '08 is that it preserves the original footage. If at any point you realize that you trimmed off too much from a clip, you can select that filmstrip and select Trim…. In the Trim Clip pane, you will see the section that is currently in your movie surrounded by the yellow box and the rest of the original filmstrip will be grayed out. Simply adjust the size of the box to add the footage back into your movie.

If you need to add a little bit back to or trim a little bit off of the beginning or the end of a filmstrip, bring the mouse over the end that you want to trim and a FINE TUNE icon will appear in the lower corner of the filmstrip. Click on it and the end of the filmstrip will be highlighted with an orange handle. Click and drag the handle to add back on or trim off up to 30 seconds of the filmstrip.

Playing Video

Now that you've edited your movie to a certain extent, let's go ahead and play it. The Play buttons underneath the Project Library give you some control on how the movie is displayed. The button on the left will play the entire project on the full (monitor) screen, and a navigation bar of the project's filmstrips will appear at the bottom of the screen. The button to the right will play the project from the beginning, using the Viewer window to display it. The numbers below the Storyboard give the length of the project, and if a clip is selected, the length of that clip will also be listed.

Splitting

Sometimes you want to use parts of one filmstrip in different parts of your movie, e.g. you're cutting back in forth between two people looking at each other. In order to do this, you need to split the clip. There are two different types of splits: one that breaks the filmstrip into two pieces and one that breaks it into three.

• To split a clip into two pieces, select a clip from the split point to either the beginning or the end of the clip.
• To split a clip into three pieces, select the whole piece of the clip that you want to be the middle clip. The pieces on either end will become separate filmstrips.

After you have the clip selected, either right-click and select Split Clip or choose Edit >> Split Clip from the menu bar.

**Note: Regardless of how you edit the footage imported into the Storyboard, the raw footage in the Event Browser remains unchanged. So if you mistake, click Edit >> Undo, or delete the edited clip entirely from the Storyboard and start again.

Inserting

There are two ways to insert a clip in the middle of a filmstrip.

• Split the filmstrip where you want to insert the new clip using the "split into two pieces" method detailed above. Next, select the clip you want to insert and drag it over to the split. You will see a green line when the clip is positioned in the split.
  
• Alternatively, select the clip and drag it to the position on the filmstrip where you want to insert it, using the red line as a guide. When you release it, the filmstrip will split in two with the clip in the middle of it.

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