iQuestions about iMovie
Aside from "get your arse to your local apple store for one of the free seminars," can someone give me advice on using this program. I have some basic questions:
I recently went on a trip to Japan (wahoo!). My friend dumped about 40 GB of video from our trip onto my towermac hard drive. It worked perfectly. Just plugged it in, and into iMovie it went. Each time he stopped the camera, iMovie created a different "clip." It could have been a commercial, me, Jeff Goldbloom, and my mac, one big happy family... but I digress...
What I want to do is use the "raw" footage from the trip to make a DVD with a number of mini-movies, for example, one movie a "music video" focusing on the sights we saw, one on the music we encountered, one "bloopers" reel, etc.. So I started with my "music video". I copied the clips I wanted to use into the iMovie "timeline," cut them down to the appropriate size, added a sound track. Everything was working fine. As I near the end of this first project, I'm wondering, how the heck do I save it as a movie in order to go on to the next project using the SAME video clips? Is it true that once I "save" the first project as a movie, I will not be able to go back and edit it? Also, my hard drive is being sucked dry by the raw video footage. Is there a better way to do this? Should I have saved all the raw video footage on DVD's? Am I using the program correctly?
Can someone please give me some step by step practical suggestions? I would really appreciate it.
I recently went on a trip to Japan (wahoo!). My friend dumped about 40 GB of video from our trip onto my towermac hard drive. It worked perfectly. Just plugged it in, and into iMovie it went. Each time he stopped the camera, iMovie created a different "clip." It could have been a commercial, me, Jeff Goldbloom, and my mac, one big happy family... but I digress...
What I want to do is use the "raw" footage from the trip to make a DVD with a number of mini-movies, for example, one movie a "music video" focusing on the sights we saw, one on the music we encountered, one "bloopers" reel, etc.. So I started with my "music video". I copied the clips I wanted to use into the iMovie "timeline," cut them down to the appropriate size, added a sound track. Everything was working fine. As I near the end of this first project, I'm wondering, how the heck do I save it as a movie in order to go on to the next project using the SAME video clips? Is it true that once I "save" the first project as a movie, I will not be able to go back and edit it? Also, my hard drive is being sucked dry by the raw video footage. Is there a better way to do this? Should I have saved all the raw video footage on DVD's? Am I using the program correctly?
Can someone please give me some step by step practical suggestions? I would really appreciate it.
Comments
[B]Aside from "get your arse to your local apple store for one of the free seminars," can someone give me advice on using this program. I have some basic questions:
Are you sure that you want to make separate movies? Remember imovie 3 has a "chapters" feature which would enable you to move swiftly to the desired point using your DVD controller (assuming you have the latest versions of the apps. ) This would mean just working with one movie which will save you space on your hard disc.
However, 40 gigs is a hell of a big movie to be working through. Make sure you update to imovie 3. 0.3 as earlier versions of iMovie 3 weren't very stable.
In iMovie 3 the .mov file created is dependant on the source or raw data, so the file will be somewhat small, once you save your original movie, you can create a new project. Once you have done that select import, and then select the .mov file from your last project, you should then be able to re-edit that stuff to do what you want with it then save it as a different movie. Continue doing that until you have all the movies you want made.
Once you are done making all your movies open up one and choose the iDVD selection to open up iDVD and start making your DVD. Then just drag and drop your other .mov files from your other movies and they will be added to the menu as a selection. Make sure that you do not have over 90 min. or it will be too big to make a DVD out of. Add the titles you want with the title screen you want and viola you have what you wanted.
Hope this helps out some.
Originally posted by ijerry
In iMovie 3 the .mov file created is dependant on the source or raw data, so the file will be somewhat small, once you save your original movie, you can create a new project. Once you have done that select import, and then select the .mov file from your last project, you should then be able to re-edit that stuff to do what you want with it then save it as a different movie. Continue doing that until you have all the movies you want made.
Ok, I have iMovie, and a DVD burner. Are you saying that even if my first "movie" is only a three-minute video taken from a large amount of raw footage, I'll be able to save it as a .mov file, then say "new project" and import all the raw footage again to create a second .mov file, and so on? If so, that sounds like what I was looking for. I was afraid that once I say "new project" I will not be able to get all the raw footage back, or if I do get the raw footage, then I will not be able to go back and edit my earlier projects...
Thanks for the help...8)