Tips for Working with iMovie

This past week, I had the opportunity to spend more time learning how to use iMovie.  When I purchased my laptop, I made the wise choice to pay for Apple's 'One to One' training.  I scheduled an hour long training with an Apple tech, who showed me a few simple buttons.  These buttons made the difference between this movie taking many hours to edit to taking one hour!

When you add a movie to iMovie, the raw footage ends up in one area of your screen.  (Either top or bottom).  The other area is your project area, where you build your finished movie.  (You can change where these areas appear on your screen by clicking on the button below located on the toolbar in the middle of your screen.)

Changes location of footage and project areas.  Located on middle toolbar in iMovie

The tool located at the bottom of both your project and footage area allows you to increase or decrease the size on the footage.  This tool is handy for increasing footage size when you really need to hone in on a specific spot, or reducing the amount of frames you see once you have made specific selections using the buttons described further down. 

Located on bottom right of both project and footage screen areas.  Changes size of footage.

The most important tools are two buttons located on the toolbar in the middle of your screen.  In the footage area, you can select a portion of the footage by using the yellow box.  Once you have a portion of footage selected, look in the toolbar for the green Star and red X button.

Located in the center of your screen.  Use either the green Star or red X.

If you want to include the selected frames in your movie, then click the green Star.  Those frames will now have a green line at the top. 

If you don't want to use the selected frames in your movie, click the red X.  This will remove the frames from the footage area.  NOTE:  YOU DID NOT DELETE THE FOOTAGE!  Should you change your mind, you can search for rejected footage, and re-add to the footage area.

Once you have selected your favorite footage and the frames have a green line on the top, you can drag these frames to the project area, and watch your movie!