Find out how

Selecting Favorites

As you familiarize yourself with your footage, you can mark Favorites, reject footage you know you’ll never use, and organize clips with Keywords. You’ll start by marking Favorites.

1. Select a clip that you know you will be using in your movie.
2. Click the star button to mark it a Favorite.

Whenever you mark a clip as a Favorite, a green line appears at the top of the clip.

Using Keywords

Keywords help you quickly identify clips that share a common attribute.

1. Go to the Main Menu and select iMovie > Preferences. At the bottom of the Preferences pane, make sure the Show Advanced Tools checkbox is checked.
2. Click the Keyword Tool button on the iMovie toolbar, or press K on your keyboard.
3. When the Keyword pane appears, click the Inspector button at the top.
4. In the Event browser, select all the clips to which you’d like to assign a keyword.
5. In the Keyword pane, click the keyword that you’d like to assign to the clips.

iMovie tags all the selected clips with the keyword and puts a blue line at the top of the clip.

Extending Audio Over Cutaways

It’s common to cut from one clip to another and have the audio from the first clip continue to play after the second video clip begins.

1. In the Project area, select the clip that contains the audio you’d like to extend into the second clip. Select the last few seconds of the first clip that contain the audio you want.
2. Split the first clip, choose Edit > Split Clip.
3. Control-click the selected clip, and choose “Reveal in Event Browser”.
4. In the Event Browser, Command-Shift-drag the clip to extract the audio, and place it at the start of the next clip.
5. Delete the video portion of the clip you split in step two.

Because you’ve extracted the audio from exactly the part of the clip you had split, the audio plays across the next shot seamlessly.

Normalizing Sound Levels

Normalizing audio means bringing a clip’s audio volume to the same level as all the other clips, allowing your volume to remain constant throughout your movie. To do so,

1. Select a clip.
2. Click the Adjust Audio button, or press A to open the Audio Adjustments window.
3. Click the Normalize Clip Volume button.

Adding Credits

It’s easy to add dramatic scrolling credits to the end of your movie. Here’s how:

1. Click the Titles button — marked with a “T” — on your iMovie toolbar.
2. The Titles browser opens below it. Select “Scrolling Credits” and drag it to the end of your project timeline.
3. Select the Scrolling Credits thumbnail. The Scrolling Credits tile appears in the Preview pane. Double-click the placeholder text in the Scrolling Credits tile and enter your own text.
4. Set the Duration of the Scrolling Credits tile to control the speed at which your credits flow.

Adding Audio to Your Main Menu

After selecting a theme for your DVD, you can add an audio track to play while your audience views the main menu.

1. At the bottom right of the iDVD window, click Media, then at the top of the Media Browser pane, click Audio. Your iTunes and GarageBand collections appear at the top of the pane.
2. Drag the audio file you’d like to use from the Media Browser to an unoccupied part of the main menu.

Previewing the DVD

Before burning your DVD, make sure to preview it.

1. At the bottom of the iDVD window, click the round Play button. The play button turns the iDVD window into a preview window and displays the iDVD remote control window.
2. Click the down arrow button on the remote control. The “Choose a scene” menu button highlights.
3. On the remote control, click Enter.
4. Use the remote control to select a scene to preview.
5. When you’re finished previewing, click the Exit button on the remote control.

Modifying Menu Buttons

It’s easy to change the appearance of menu buttons on the main menu page.

1. In the main menu, select a menu button.
2. At the bottom-right of the iDVD window, click Buttons. The Buttons palette appears.
3. Select the button style you’d prefer.

To change the size of the button:

1. Select the button you’d like to modify and choose View > Show Inspector. The Inspector window opens.
2. Drag the Size slider from to the left or right to decrease or enlarge the size of the button.