iMovie: Home

O'Reilly Technical Books for iMovie

My iMovie

iMovie:  The Missing Manual

Green Screen Production Master Class

The iMovie workspace is divided into three panes: the Project pane, the Viewer, and the Event pane.

The Event Library, found on the left side of the Event pane, is where iMovie organizes all imported and captured video. Events cannot be edited in iMovie. Rather, you edit videos by adding videos from the Event Library to projects in the Project pane.

Event and Project footage can be previewed in the Viewer by hovering the playhead (the vertical red line connected to your cursor) and pressing the spacebar on your keyboard to start and stop playback.

The J, K andn L keys can be used for play backwards, play normal and play fastforward respectively.

The I and O keys are used for selecting the "in" and "out" of your raw footage.

The arrow keys will nudge your frames forward or backwards with the left and right arrows.  The up arrow goes the the start of your clip while the down arrow goes to the end of your clip.

Kent State iMovie Page

Northwestern University iMovie Page

iMovie files are contained in the Movies folder.  Accessing the content though is a bit tricky.  Right-click on the iMovie library icon and select Show Package Contents.  These folders contain projects, edits and original footage.

Downloading Web Content (YouTube and More)

• If you'd like to acquire an online video to use in your project, you will need to convert it into an usable video format first. The Firefox web browser has an easy to use plug-in that you can download called FlashGot.  It will capture all Flash content on a page, even ads, and download them to a folder.  Once the add-on is installed, there will be an icon on the top right of the Firefox window that will be a button that downloads the media from the webpage.  It will download YouTube content as well as many other sites with Flash-based content.  If you want to try another one, try YouTube Best Video Downloader 2 that will add a download button to the YouTube page you are on.  
• YouTube Converter is fairly robust and another option for capturing video from YouTube or even Vimeo.
• Another option is ClipCoverter - another website that works well..
• Zamzar is a useful online utility to convert files up to a certain size.  If you have a large file or you convert files regularly, download the program Adapter.

Apple's iMovie is the easiest way to edit film.  Select, move around and arrange clips with music, voice overs and sound effects.  Light years better than Windows Live Movie Maker!  The Media Center specializes in this program and can provide help when needed.   

iMovie '11 Tutorial Handout

Official Apple iMovie Manual