Editing Movies with iMovie

One of the great things about Macs is that they come with iMovie, an application that makes editing video easy. In this tutorial you learn how to use iMovie to cut and paste video clips together.  By the time you’ve finished reading this tutorial you should feel comfortable creating your own movies in iMovie.

Hardware & Software Required

• Macintosh Computer
• iMovie 7.1.4 or later

Step 1: Launch iMovie by double-clicking iMovie in the Applications folder. You will find clips you have previously imported into iMovie from your camera already listed in the Event Library.  If you don’t know how to import clips into iMovie, check out our first tutorial.

Step 2: From the File menu, choose New Project. You will be prompted to name the project.

Step 3: In the clip area, click and drag to select a portion of a clip you want to use. Note that as your mouse moves along the clip, the clip will play in the large window. This makes it easy to select just the portion of the clip you want to use.

Under the movie playback window you can see all the video frames you've imported. Click and drag to select the frames you want to use in your movie.

Step 4: Drag the selected frames into the editing area.  Repeat this step as required to select and sequence the frames you want to use in your film.

Drag selected frames up into the project area to create your movie.

Step 5: Fine tune the length, loudness, color, contrast and other properties of each clip in the editing area using the icon in the lower right corner of each clip in the editing area.

Note the icons that appear on every clip in the project area. Select these icons to make adjustments to clip color, duration, audio, etc.

Step 6: If desired, drag still images into your editing area from iPhoto or your hard disk. Click the Ken Burns icon on each photo to zoom, crop, and create animated pans of these images.

The Ken Burns tool lets you turn any image into a movie clip. Use it to pan around or zoom into photographic images.

Step 8: Click the Transitions icon, located on the middle strip, and drag transitions between one or more clips in the editing area.

Drag transitions between frames to specify how one clip fades into the next.

Step 9: Click the Titles icon, located on the middle strip, and drag titles on to one more more clips in the editing area. Enter the title text and specify the title duration.

Drag titles on top of clips to add text to them.

Step 10: Click the Music icon, and drag a music or audio track into the editing area if desired.

Step 11: Use the options on the Share menu to save your file in a format you can give to others.