How to use iMovie - Geerenex.com

Steps to create your own home movie

Gather all the visual material you want to include in your film:

Videotapes (Tip: when you’re on vacation, get lots of clips with everyone dancing – this goes great with music later…)
Images (the higher the resolution, the better)
Awards/Certificates/Ribbons/Trophy Photos
theater tickets
Traffic tickets for humor if you wish (you can record your voice and explain your side of the story and insert it into iMovie along with your image)
Receipts for special places you’ve been
Stories that you or your children have written

Scan any non-digitized material

If you don’t have a scanner, they’re pretty inexpensive (we just bought a $30 scanner/printer/copier on sale at Wally World)
Kinkos or a local copy shop (yes, even WalMart) can scan items for you to store on a flash drive (500M or larger), CD, or to download from the web
Save it in a special movie folder created for this special project on your computer (make sure you have enough space to store AND to work with; iMovie will tell you how much you need if you’re running low on space)
Tip: 10 Gig stores about an hour of raw video and sound

Edit all your stills/scans in iphoto and/or printshop

Double-click the images you want in iphoto and use the editing tools to remove red-eye, enhance dark photos/images, create blurry edges, touch up parts of images, etc.
At the print shop you can create special borders, soft borders, multi-image collages, different backgrounds, decorative lines and borders, reduce red-eye, remove facial blemishes, reduce pet eyes, remove scratches, and more.

Open iMovie on your Mac computer

Tip: iMovie 6 is better than later versions in my opinion – they still have several quirks to work out and you need a huge hard drive to make it work.
Connect your camcorder to your computer with a firewire (USB if necessary, but firewire has better quality)
Watch your videos on your computer from your camcorder and import the clips you want
Import all the other still images you’ve collected from your special movie folder into iMovie’s media/photos section
Drag and drop all the video clips and images you want to the timeline part in iMovie in the order you want
Trim video clips to the selected parts you want in the timeline viewer by clicking the clip and selecting the split video clip in the playhead (or Apple key and T) at the points you want to trim

Add Transitions, Ken Burns, Chapters and Titles if you want

Click on the image/clip you want to add transitions or title to and select the edit button, then transitions or titles and scroll through the different options until you have what you want and press Add
Click on the still image you want to add Ken Burns to (motion or pan and zoom) while the media/photo panel is open and then click “Show Photo Settings” – swipe to where you want the speed and how far near and far you want to start and end of each image
Continue through your movie to the end
Add a start and end title at least
Tip: keep the transitions the same throughout the movie for consistency (cross dissolve is best)
Tip: MAKE SURE you have all the videos and images you want before adding music and sound!
Add chapter markers by clicking the clip/image where you want the chapter marker to start and selecting markers/add chapter marker (you can also view them by selecting the chapter marker button)

add music

Look at your pictures and videos and decide which songs would fit
Tip: Google summer songs, Christmas music, sports music, etc. for any type of music you want (www.stillreminiscing.com also has a list of musical ideas)
Tip: iLife has great background music options to choose from (select media/audio/iLife sound effects and scroll until you find what you want)
If you want your movie to “move” to the music, you can view the sound waves in the sound clip and trim the stills at points where the rhythm changes. This takes time and patience though, so have a cup of coffee ready!
Tip: Make sure your movie is within 20 minutes if you want to share it with others, any longer and people will start to get bored and distracted.

Export to iDVD

Click Share/iDVD
The movie will open on iDVD
If you have raw and unedited bonus footage you’d like to include, you can click media/movies and select the movie you’d like to add from a menu of additional features.
You can also add a slideshow to your menu that you create in iphoto as an album by selecting “%2B” in the bottom left corner and dragging and dropping photos there.
iDVD has pre-selected music that plays with each track, but you can change it to your own audio clip from any of your movies, audio clips, or itunes music.

Burn your DVD

When you’re happy with your project, click File/Burn DVD… insert a blank DVD and you’re done. You have a movie!
Put it in a DVD case to store when you’re done; You can even print on printable DVDs these days and get fancy cases to add class!
Advice: this is huge-instead of just burning directly to disc, select “save as disc image” and take the time (it takes me 3 hours to burn a 20 minute edited movie) to burn an image to your hard drive. This way, if there are any hiccups in the recording, you don’t have to start over, and it also checks each disc so you don’t have to look at it to see if it works.