iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide

Tips and Tricks for iMovie Transitions

In my latest article for Macworld, I go into detail about using transitions in iMovie ’11:

Tips and Tricks for iMovie Transitions

Mastering iMovie Trailers at Macworld

When iMovie ’11 was released, the snazziest new feature was movie trailers, an easy way to create a short movie that had professional-quality editing and a soundtrack (recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, no less). But a movie trailer seemed like a one-shot distraction. Sure, it was fun, but was that it?

In my latest article for Macworld, I reveal that there's a lot more involved with movie trailers, including how to use them as a jumping-off point for editing longer movies. Read Mastering iMovie trailers for more.

iLife ’11 on the New Mac App Store

Apple today released Mac OS X 10.6.6, notable for including the Mac App Store. I think the App Store is a great thing for most Mac users, providing a clean, understandable way to buy and install applications. (I can't tell you the number of times I've helped someone with a Mac who has been confused about where a downloaded installer is, how to open it, how to run an installer, and then what to do with the disk image that gets created.)

With the Mac App Store, you buy an application, it's downloaded to your Applications folder, and placed in the Dock. It will also provide app updates, just as the iOS App Store does.

The iLife ’11 suite is also available, with a couple of interesting twists:

• You can buy the latest iPhoto, iMovie, or GarageBand applications separately for $14.99 each. If you don't care about GarageBand, for example, you don't need to pay for it by buying the entire suite as a retail box.
• However, those are the only iLife ’11 apps available from the Mac App Store. iDVD and iWeb (neither of which were updated for iLife ’11, but which are included in the boxed set) are not available. So, if you wanted the entire suite, you're better off paying $4.03 more to buy the packaged version with all five apps (or currently $3.27 more from Amazon.com).

If you already own iLife ’11, the apps appear as "Installed" in the App Store. Based on what I'm reading from some Mac developers, only updates for applications purchased from the App Store will be available using the Updates feature; so, you'll still need to run Software Update (from the Apple menu) to get the latest versions.

Talking iMovie ’11 on MacVoices

On Tuesday I chatted with Chuck Joiner about what's new in iMovie ’11 and my TidBITS article, "15 Secrets of iMovie ’11" for the MacVoices podcast. Chuck is always great to talk to, and indulged me when I found myself having to back up and explain things like rolling shutter, CMOS camera sensors, and interlaced video footage.

Jeff Carlson has been spending lots of time with the new iMovie ‘11, and has discovered a number of useful, cool and largely undocumented features. Jeff discusses the under-publicized return of the timeline (even if it isn’t called a timeline), the usefulness of Movie Trailer and other effects, and then dives into things you didn’t know, including rolling shutter fix, morse code in a theme, and several other minor but tasteful additions. iMovie ‘11 still isn’t good with interlaced video; Jeff explains what that means to you and how to work around it, and why iMovie ‘11 is finally almost like the long-dead iMovie HD.

Catch the podcast here: MacVoices #10125: Jeff Carlson Looks At The Known and Unknown Features of iMovie ‘11

15 Secrets of iMovie ’11

There's a lot more going on with iMovie ’11 than movie trailers and audio editing. In this TidBITS article, I reveal several tips, trivia, and otherwise unknown aspects of Apple's video editor: "15 Secrets of iMovie ’11".

Here are a couple of items to tease you:

Made with Morse -- Speaking of trailers, you can choose which studio logo appears at the front. In the Signals Across the Globe trailer, the music that plays in the background is actually Morse code for "Made with iMovie."

Change All Title or Transition Styles -- If you decide to change the style of an existing title, you can drop a new style onto the section of the clip the title occupies (the video clip turns bright blue to indicate you're affecting the title). Now, when you replace a title style, iMovie asks if you'd like to replace just the one title or all titles in the project. The same option applies to replacing transitions, too.

My Macworld iMovie ’11 Review

Macworld has now posted my review of iMovie ’11. I gave it 4.5 mice, up from the 4 mice I gave iMovie ’09 largely due to the inclusion of audio editing features that have finally caught up (and slightly exceeded) those of the late, lamented iMovie HD 6.

Putting together a video last night drove that home: I was able to isolate some sections where the shutter click from my still camera was overwhelming. To do so, I selected the portion of the audio where a spike appeared in the waveform, and dragged the Volume bar down to zero. However, that left a noticeable gap of silence.

So, instead I selected the clip, detached the audio, then trimmed it down so that just a section of background noise was active. The video clip is automatically muted when you detach the audio, so I un-muted it, placed the background noise clip over the shutter click, and lastly reduced the volume where the spike occurs. Here's the finished product:

The green waveform at the bottom of the screenshot belongs to the background music track; I've reduced the volume to about 40 percent so it isn't competing with the audio from the video. (I tried turning on ducking for the video clips, which reduces other tracks automatically, but doing so negated the purple background noise fragment clips. It was easier to adjust the background track volume where I needed it.)

Here's the finished video:

iMovie ’11 Supported Cameras

Apple has updated its list of cameras that work with iMovie ’11, now with a pull-down menu interface that lets you locate your camera model (versus scanning a long list):

http://help.apple.com/imovie/cameras/en/index.html?lang=en_US

First Look: iMovie ’11

So what's new in iMovie ’11? Check out my First Look: iMovie ’11 at Macworld for details.

The article was supposed to be only 600 words, but I easily doubled that. And, there are more features I didn't have room to include (more on these soon).

Regain the Timeline in iMovie '11

I'm using iMovie '11 right now and working on a First Look article for Macworld. In the meantime, here's something pretty huge: iMovie '11 brings back the traditional timeline! It only takes a couple of clicks. If you've been holding off on the new iMovie because there's no timeline, it's time to take another look. See my TidBITS article, "Regain the Timeline in iMovie '11".

I discovered some very cool new things in iMovie yesterday thanks to some time spent with one of the application's engineers. So far, it looks like a pretty exciting update.

Oh, and one last tidbit: At the Apple event I ran into Randy Ubillos, the creator of iMovie (and Final Cut), and asked about the possibility of taking projects created in iMovie for iOS and transferring them to the Mac for further editing. He said that's not possible in iMovie '11, but "it's a feature request we're well aware of."

iLife '11, Is It Coming Tomorrow?

Betteridge's Law of Headlines aside, I think we'll see an iLife '11 (or whatever Apple will decide to call it) at the "Back to the Mac" media event tomorrow. I'm flying to San Jose early in the morning to attend the event, since it promises to overlap with several of my interests: iLife, Mac OS X (a sneak preview of the next major version is promised), and maybe some iPad news (although the chances of the latter are pretty slim; if anything, Apple may announce a ship date for iOS 4.2).

So what's in store for the next iLife? As usual, I have no inside information. My guesses would include an HDR feature for iPhoto, maybe DVD creation from within iMovie (and a farewell to iDVD), and a way to bring projects created in iMovie for iPhone/iPod touch to the desktop for further editing.

Speaking of the mobile iMovie, I'd love to see a version for iPad, but again, that might arrive with the iOS 4.2 update in November, or with the next hardware generation of the iPad, which I'm guessing may appear late in the first quarter of 2011.

I'll be covering the event for the Seattle Times and TidBITS, so look there for the news in the morning!