OReilly IMovie HD and IDVD 5 the missing manual apr 2005 ISBN 0596100337

You need iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual, the objective authority on iMovie HD and iDVD 5.. The finished video is then ready for iDVD 5, which now includes 15 new themes with anim

By David Pogue

Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: April 2005 ISBN: 0-596-10033-7 Pages: 528

Table of Contents | Index

The latest versions of iMovie HD and iDVD 5 are, by far, the most robust moviemaking applications available to consumers today But whether you're a professional or an

amateur moviemaker eager to take advantage of the full capabilities of these applications,

don't count on Apple documentation to make the cut You need iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The

Missing Manual, the objective authority on iMovie HD and iDVD 5.

Even if you own a previous version of iMovie, the new feature-rich iMovie HD may well be impossible to resist This video editing program now enables users to capture and edit widescreen High Definition Video (HDV) from the new generation of HDV camcorders, along with standard DV and the MPEG-4 video format iMovie HD also includes "Magic iMovie" for making finished movies automatically The feature does everything in one step- -imports video into separate clips and adds titles, transitions, and music The finished video is then ready for iDVD 5, which now includes 15 new themes with animated drop zones that can display video clips across DVD menus, just like the latest Hollywood DVDs.

This witty and entertaining guide from celebrated author David Pogue not only details every step of iMovie HD video production from choosing and using a digital camcorder to burning the finished work onto DVDs but provides a firm grounding in basic film

technique so that the quality of a video won't rely entirely on magic

iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual includes expert techniques and tricks for:

event filming)

Capturing quality footage (including tips on composition, lighting, and even special-Building your movie track, incorporating transitions and special effects, and adding narration, music, and sound

iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual it's your moviemaking-made-easy guide.

By David Pogue

Publisher: O'Reilly Pub Date: April 2005 ISBN: 0-596-10033-7 Pages: 528

The Missing Credits

David Pogue is the weekly computer columnist for the New

York Times, an Emmy award-winning correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, and the creator of the Missing Manual

series He's the author or co-author of 35 books, including

thirteen in this series and six in the "For Dummies" line

(including Macs, Magic, Opera, and Classical Music) In his other

life, David is a former Broadway show conductor, a magician,and a pianist News and photos await at www.davidpogue.com

from the Georgia Institute of Technology She has written, co-technology, particularly in the areas of programming, digitalvideo, and digital photography An unrepentant geek, Erica hasnever met a gadget she didn't need Her checkered past

includes run-ins with NeXT, Newton, and a vast myriad of bothsuccessful and unsuccessful technologies When not writing, sheand her geek husband parent three adorable geeks-in-training,

erica@mindspring.com

Rose Cassano (cover illustration) has worked as an

independent designer and illustrator for 20 years Assignmentshave spanned everything from the nonprofit sector to corporateclientele She lives in beautiful southern Oregon, grateful for themiracles of modern technology that make living and workingthere a reality Email: cassano@cdsnet.net Web:

Phil Simpson (design and layout) works out of his office in

Stamford, Connecticut, where he has had his graphic designbusiness since 1982 He is experienced in many facets of

Email:pmsimpson@earthlink.net

13

Glenn Reid, iMovie's lead programmer, agreed to serve as

technical editor for the second and third editions of this book.For this edition, iMovie product manager Paul Towner and histeam shared their expert advice, answers, andmost

importantlytheir enthusiasm for the project I'm also grateful toSohaila Abdulali, John Cacciatore, Kate Chase, Linley Dolby, andDawn Mann for their copy editing and proofreading smarts; tothe indispensable Lesa Snyder for her brilliant help in

reshooting the book's color graphics; and to David Rogelberg

Finally, thanks to Kelly, Tia, and Jeffrey, my favorite iMovie

stars, and my wife, Jennifer, who made this bookand everythingelsepossible

Missing Manuals are witty, superbly written guides to computerproducts that don't come with printed manuals (which is justabout all of them) Each book features a handcrafted index;cross-references to specific page numbers (not just "see

Chapter 14"); and RepKover, a detached-spine binding that letsthe book lie perfectly flat without the assistance of weights orcinder blocks

Over the years, home movies have developed a bad name, onethat's not entirely undeserved After all, you know what it's likewatching other people's camcorder footage You're held prisoner

Some clever souls tried to edit their videos by buying two VCRs,wiring them together, and copying parts of one tape onto

another That worked greatif you didn't mind the bursts of

distortion and static at each splice point and the massive

generational quality loss

You know what? Unless there was a paycheck involved, editingfootage under those circumstances just wasn't worth it Thefast-forward button on the remote was a lot easier

All of that changed when iMovie came along It certainly wasn'tthe first digital video (DV) editing software But it was the first

DV-editing software for nonprofessionals, people who have a life

outside of video editing Within six months of its release in

October 1999, iMovie had become, in words of beaming iMoviepapa (and Apple CEO) Steve Jobs, "the most popular video-editing software in the world."

2000 (for$50), iMovie 3 in January 2003 (for free), and iMovie 4

in January 2004 (part of the $50 iLife package)

iMovie is video-editing software Over a special wire (a FireWirecable), iMovie grabs a copy of the raw footage from your digitalcamcorder Then it lets you edit this video easily, quickly, andcreatively

iMovie is the world's least expensive version of what the

Hollywood pros call nonlinear editing software for video, just

like its much more powerful (and much more complex) rivals,like Final Cut Express ($300), Final Cut Pro ($1, 000), and Avidediting suites ($100,000) The "nonlinear" part is that not tape

forwarding; you jump instantly to any piece of footage as youput your movie together

is involved while you're editing There's no rewinding or fast-Your interest in video may be inspired by any number of

ambitions Maybe you want to create professional looking showsfor your local cable station's public-access channel Or you

money filming weddings and creating living video scrapbooks.Video, in other words, is fast becoming a new standard

document format for the new century

If you have iMovie and a camcorder, you'll be ready.

iMovieHD (called iMovie 5 in certain dialog boxes and other

spots) represents a deep overhaul of the program, one that willchallenge the iMovie veteran with a good deal of unlearning andrelearning

Big-Ticket Features

Here's a summary of the really big improvements in iMovie HD,the ones that Apple either advertises or should:

HD video iMovie can now edit high-definition(HDTV)footage, as captured by so-called HDV

camcorders These are semi-professional cameras that

record high-definition video onto an ordinary MiniDV tape,with spectacular widescreen results Now, high-def videoconsumes three or four times the amount of disk space asregular video, so if you're lucky enough to have access to

an HDV camcorder ($2,200 to $3,100), come prepared withlots of empty disk space and some understanding of thereal-time conversion tricks described on page 103

More formats That's not the only new kind of video that

iMovie HD welcomes It can also work with MPEG-4 video,which is what you get with those super-mini "palmcorders"from Fisher and Panasonic that record onto memory cardsinstead of tape iMovie is also compatible with widescreen(16:9) footage that many recent digital camcorders cancapturevideo that's not high-definition, but still looks

fantastic on a widescreen TV set

Automatic dumping iMovie offers Magic iMovie: an

iDVD offers something similar called OneStep DVD, whichslurps all of a tape's footage directly onto a blank DVD

Again, your editing options are very limited here, but thewhole idea is to get your footage from tape to DVD withoutany effort on your part After all, DVDs last longer than

tape, cost less, are easier to show on TV, and are easier tosend around to other interested parties

More draggability You can now drag individual video clips

around in iMovie's timeline vieweven back up to the Clipspane In fact, you can drag clips clear out of the iMovie

window and to the Finder (where they show up as individualclip icons) or into other programs, like iDVD or QuickTimePlayer

Overhauled Trash The Trash mechanism in iMovie HD is

utterly unlike the Trash in any previous version You cannow open it to view, rescue, or delete individual trasheditems, just as you can in the Finder Emptying the Trash nolonger means that you can't restore chopped-up clips totheir pre-chop conditions And emptying the Trash in mid-project is no longer an invitation to corrupting your entiremovie project

Overhauled safety nets iMovie HD is far more forgiving

than previous versions Its Undo command lets you takeback an unlimited number of steps, all the way back to thelast saved version of your project, if you like The new Save

As command lets you spin out half-finished variations of amovie, and the Revert to Saved command does what it does

in other programs: undoes all work you've done since thelast Save command Finally, you can trim clips, split clips,

There is, alas, a dark side to the new Trash, Undo, and Savefeatures To provide these generous safety nets, iMovie

hangs onto a lot more of the footage you've imported fromthe camera iMovie doesn't care that you've deleted 19 out

of 20 minutes of a clip and then emptied the Trash; if

you've incorporated even a single frame of that clip intoyour movie, behind the scenes, iMovie holds onto all of

those gigabytes Emptying the Trash, in other words,

doesn't restore free space to your hard drive except whenyou're deleting an entire, untouched clip that you haven'tused in the project

Note, furthermore, that you lose your entire Undo trail

every time you use the Save command As a result, hitting -S is both a step forward and a step backward in projectsafety

Self-contained project icons In the past, each iMovie

movie you worked on took the form of a folder on your harddrive, not a document icon But iMovie HD sews that folder

up into a new, single, double-clickable "document" icon

called a package

Here again, the change is a blessing and a curse The nicepart is that having only one icon to deal with makes it soeasy to name, copy, move, or back up Unfortunately, theactual project documentthe text file that records which

pieces of footage come whenis now sealed away inside thepackage icon, where it's no longer recognized by (for

example) iDVD

You'll find many more details about this change on page

112

Apple's most intriguing enhancements to iMovie HD, though,are the little nips and tucks that lie scattered

creates a safety copy of your entire project so that you canedit it later; the resulting disc doesn't play in a DVD player

Copyable clips You can now copy or cut clips out of one

project and paste them into anothera great way to re-usekey scenes in other movies (But note the important

caveats on page 478.)

Playhead pasting Speaking of copying and pasting: When

you paste copied footage, iMovie always deposits it at thelocation of the Playheadeven if that means splitting an

existing clip in half to accommodate the pasted material

Effect and transition improvements.Transitions between

video clips (like crossfades) can last ten seconds now, upfrom four Reverse, slow motion, and fast motion are nowlisted in the Effects panel, just like all the other effects (Sodon't keep scouring the bottom of the Timeline Viewer

looking for these controls; they're not there anymore.) Youhave a few new effects, transitions, and sound effects tochoose from And you can be much more precise with youreffects, transitions, and titles, because you can directly editthe timing numbers in the Preview window just by typingover them

waveformsthe visual representation of the loud and softparts in an audio clip? You used to have to pay a visit to theiMovie Preferences dialog box to turn them on and off; nowyou have both a menu command and a keystroke that canhide or show them

Hiding or showing the horizontal, draggable volume-graphlines on audio clips is easier now, too; this feature, too, has

a menu command and a keystroke

Search your photos A standard, iTunes-type Search box

now appears underneath the Photos pane You can pluckone of your photos out of thousands just by typing a fewletters of its name

Stills = videos Still photos you've incorporated into your

movie now behave like video clips in one useful regard: Youcan drag their edges horizontally to make them "play"

More blank-disc formats iDVD can record on both DVD-R

and DVD+R blanks (see the difference in punctuation?), ifyou have a relatively recent Mac

(ready-to-use menu screen designs complete with attractivebackgrounds and coordinating typeface, background music,

and graphics) The key attraction is moving drop zones

(design elements that you can fill with your own photos ormovies)

Drop zone editor A new, special window lets you fill or

rearrange the contents of all your drop zones at once It'sespecially handy because in iDVD 5's new themes, all of thedrop zones are rarely on the screen at once

Editable Map view As your menu and button layouts

grow more complex, you can use the Map screen to helpyou keep track of your menu structure In iDVD 4, the Mapwas just a frozen image But in iDVD 5, you can batch-

change your transitions, themes, button settings, and musicright in this schematic view

Widescreen DVDs If you've filmed and edited widescreen

video (with an HDTV camcorder or a regular one) in iMovie,iDVD can burn it onto a widescreen DVD for you On

standard, squarish TV sets, you'll get a letterboxed picture;

on wide-screen sets, you'll see video that fills your entirerectangular field of view

Don't let the rumors fool you iMovie may be simple, but it isn'tsimplistic It offers a wide range of special effects and flexiblefeatures for creating transitions between scenes, superimposingtext on your video, layering multiple soundtracks together, andmore Unfortunately, many of the best techniques aren't

covered in the only "manual" you get with iMovieits electronichelp screens

to know

Second, this book is designed to serve as the iMovie manual, asthe book that should have been in the box It explores eachiMovie feature in depth, offers illustrated catalogs of the varioustitle and transition effects, offers shortcuts and work arounds,and unearths features that the online help doesn't even

mention

Finally, this book comes with a free bonus book: iDVD5: The Missing Manual, which constitutes Chapters 15, 16, 17, and

18.If your Mac has a DVD burner like Apple's SuperDrive, iDVDcan preserve your movies on home-recorded DVDs that lookand behave amazingly close to the commercial DVDs you rentfrom Netflix or Blockbuster

About the Outline

you through transferring your footage into iMovie, editingyour clips, placing them into a timeline, adding cross fadesand titles, working with your soundtracks, and more

Part 3, Finding Your Audience, helps you take the

cinematic masterpiece on your screen to the world Even ifyou don't have the necessary gear to burn your work ontoDVD, iMovie excels at exporting your work in two differentways: back to your camcorder (from which you can play it

on TV, transfer it to your VCR, and so on) or to a QuickTimemovie file (which you can burn onto a CD, post on a Webpage, or send to friends by email) This part of the bookoffers step-by-step instructions for each of these methods,and also shows you how you can use QuickTime Player Pro

to supplement the editing tools in iMovie

Part 4, iDVD 5: The Missing Manual, is just what you'd

use DVD design and burning software, written by guest

expect: a bonus volume dedicated to the world's easiest-to-author (and bestselling digital-video goddess) Erica Sadun

It goes way, way beyond the basics, as you'll see

menu explanation of the iMovie menu commands, a

At the end of the book, three appendixes provide a menu-by-comprehensive troubleshooting handbook, and a new mastercheat sheet of iMovie's keyboard shortcuts

About These Arrows

Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual

series, you'll find sentences like this one: "Open your Home Library Preferences folder." That's shorthand for a much

longer instruction that directs you to open three nested folders

in sequence, like this: "In the Finder, choose Go Home Inyour Home folder, you'll find a folder called Library Open that.Inside the Library window is a folder called Preferences Double-click to open it, too."

Similarly, this kind of arrow shorthand helps to simplify the

business of choosing commands in menus, as shown in FigureI-1

Figure I-1 In this

book, arrow notations help to simplify folder and menu instructions For example, "Choose

Dock Position on Left" is a more compact way of saying, "From the menu, choose Dock;

from the submenu that then appears, choose Position on Left," as shown here.

Technical Notes for PAL People

signal in a format that's known as NTSC Even if you've never

heard the term, every camcorder, VCR, TV, and TV station inyour country uses this same signal (The following discussiondoesn't apply to high-definition video, which is the same acrosscontinents.)

What it stands for is National Television Standards Committee,

the gang who designed this format What it means is

incompatibility with the second most popular format, which iscalled PAL (Phase Alternating Line, for the curious) In Europe,Africa, the Middle East, Australia, and China (among other

places), everyone's equipment uses the PAL format You can'tplay an American tape on a standard VCR in Swedenunlessyou're happy with black-and-white, sometimes jittery playback

Tip: France, the former Soviet Union countries, and a few

others use a third format, known as SECAM iMovie doesn't work with SECAM gear To find out what kind of gear your

country uses, visit a Web site like

www.vidpro.org/standards.htm

Fortunately, iMovie converses fluently with both NTSC and PALcamcorders When you launch the program, it automaticallystudies the camcorder you've attached and determines its

format (And if it detects wrong, you can tell it what kind ofgear you have by choosing iMovie Preferences and clickingeither NTSC or PAL.)

However, most of the discussions in this book use NTSC

terminology If you're a friend of PAL, use the following

information to translate this book's discussions

The Tech Specs of NTSC

25 frames per second Video fans claim that the lower

frame rate creates more flicker than the NTSC standard Onthe other hand, this frame rate is very close to the framerate of Hollywood films (24 frames per second) As a result,many independent filmmakers find PAL a better choice

when shooting movies they intend to convert to film

625 scan lines That's 20 percent sharper and more

detailed than NTSC The difference is especially visible on

In the meantime, we'd love to hear your suggestions for newbooks in the Missing Manual line There's a place for that on theWeb site, too, as well as a place to sign up for free email

notification of new titles in the series

You'll find very little jargon or nerd terminology in this book.You will, however, encounter a few terms and concepts that

procedures as Shift-clicking, Option-clicking, and Control-corresponding key on the bottom row of your keyboard

Menus The menus are the words in the lightly striped bar

at the top of your screen You can either click one of thesewords to open a pull-down menu of commands (and then

click again on a command), or click and hold the button as

you drag down the menu to the desired command (and

release the button to activate the command) Either methodworks fine

Note: Apple has officially changed what it calls the little

menu that pops up when you Control-click something on the screen It's still a contextual menu, in that the menu

choices depend on the context of what you clickbut it's now called a shortcut menu That term not only matches what it's called in Windows, but it's slightly more descriptive

about its function Shortcut menu is the term you'll find in this book.

Keyboard shortcuts Every time you take your hand off

the keyboard to move the mouse, you lose time and

potentially disrupt your creative flow That's why many

experienced Mac fans use keystroke combinations instead ofmenu commands wherever possible -P opens the Printdialog box, for example, and -M minimizes the currentwindow to the Dock

When you see a shortcut like -Q (which closes the current

program), it's telling you to hold down the key, and, while it'sdown, type the letter Q, and then release both keys

If you've mastered this much information, you have all the

technical background you need to enjoy iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual.

Chapter 1: The DV Camcorder

Chapter 2: Turning Home Video into Pro Video Chapter 3: Special Event Filming

To edit video using iMovie, you must first shoot some video,

which is why the first three chapters of this book have nothing

to do with your iMovie software Instead, this book begins withadvice on buying and using a digital camcorder, getting to knowthe equipment, and adopting professional filming techniques.After all, teaching you to edit video without making sure youknow how to shoot it is like giving a map to a 16-year-old

without first teaching him how to drive

Technically speaking, you don't need a camcorder to use

iMovie.You can work with Quick Time movies you find on theWeb, or use it to turn still photos into slideshows

But to shoot your own videoand that is the real fun of iMovieyou

need a digital camcorder This is a relatively new camcorder

format, one that's utterly incompatible with the tapes you mayhave filled using earlier camcorder types as described on thefollowing pages (and shown in Figure 1-1):

VHS These gigantic machines were the original

camcorders, circa 1980 Because they were nearly a footand a half long, you had to rest the butt of these cameras

on your shoulder VHS camcorders accepted full-size VHScassettes that, after filming, you could insert directly intoyour VCR for playback Convenient, sure, but the size,

weight, and bulk of these camcorders condemned them to

an early grave These days, the only place you can find VHScamcorders is on eBay

S-VHS This format, also known as Super VHS, accepts

special, more expensive S-VHS tapes; requires a special,more expensive camcorder; and requires special, more

expensive jacks on your TV or VCR The advantage: sharpervideo quality

The existence of the S-VHS format should be your first hint

at a phenomenon you'll be reading, and hearing, a lot moreabout: For many home-video fans, the quality of the pictureand sound is incredibly important It's worth paying morefor, buying add-on gear for, and reshooting scenes for

(Fortunately, you, a soon-to-be experienced digital-video

[DV] producer, are ready to create videos that easily

the full-size VHS camcorder; the 8mm/Hi-8 camcorder;

and the modern DV camcorderthe one you need

to work with iMovie.

VHS-C Here was Panasonic's attempt to solve the

problems of the VHS camcorder's weight This kind of

camcorder is much smaller than full-size VHS units because

it takes much smaller cassettes After filming, you can popone of these VHS-C (for "compact") cassettes into a VHS-

sized adapter cassette, which you then insert into a

standard VCR

Clever, really, but still a nuisance Now, when you want toplay the video of the kids' birthday party, you have to findboth the party cassette and the adapter cassette Moreover,you can't send the tapes you make to friends or family

without buying an adapter cassette for them, too

8mm The 8-millimeter cassette is smaller even than VHS-C, which makes 8mm camcorders smaller stillnow not muchbigger than a six-inch sub sandwich Makers of these

camcorders make no apology for their tapes' inability to fitinto a standard VCR If you want to play back your footage,you run a cable from the camcorder to your TV or VCR, sothat the camcorder itself becomes the VCR

8mm camcorders are extremely in expensive these

daysunder $300 Among non-digital camcorders, 8mm isthe most popular format, but even these are rapidly beingdiscontinued by camcorder makers

Hi-8 Hi-8 was the compact-camcorder equivalent of the S-VHS format described above: pricier camcorders, priciertapes, better quality than regular 8mm For several years,

Today, of course, DV camcorders dominate these functions

iMovie works only with digital camcorders, but that doesn't

mean you can't use all your older footage; Chapter 4 offers

several ways to transfer your older tapes into iMovie But fromthis day forward, shoot all of your new footage with a DV

camcorder At this writing, Mini DV camcorders cost about $400for a basic model and prices continue to sink, month by month.(See the end of this chapter for a DV buying guide.)

Tip: Selling your old camcorder eases much of the pain of

buying a DV camcorder Remember to transfer your old footage into DV format before you do so, however.

Figure 1-2 The

various sizes of tapes that today's camcorders can accept differ in size, picture quality, and cost For both home and prosumer filming, the standard-size VHS cassette (back) is nearly extinct 8mm and Hi-8 cassettes (right) are extremely popular among people who don't have a computer to edit

footage, and are very inexpensive.

MiniDV tapes (left), like the ones required by most

DV camcorders, are more expensivebut the enormous quality improvement makes them worth every penny.

Still, DV cassettes aren't perfect Most hold only 60 or 80

minutes of footage, and they're more expensive than analogtapes

As you'll soon see, however, both of these limitations quicklybecome irrelevant in the world of iMovie The whole idea is thatiMovie lets you edit your footage and then, if you like, dump itback out to the camcorder In other words, it's common iMoviepractice to delete the boring footage from DV tape #1, preserve