Seeking iMovie How-To

Is there an iMovie How-To or iMovie Tutorial somewhere. I know nothing about editing movies and I have failed to figure out much about iMovie just by fiddling around with it.

My local Apple store isn't offering any in-store instruction sessions on iMovie at this time and I couldn't find anything in Support on the apple.com site.

A search of "iMovie" here didn't work out either.

Thanks!

I have a copy of "The Missing manual" for iMovie. which does cover a lot of ground. Not sure if there is one for the current '11 version, but the '09 seems to cover most of the main stuff, except things such as trailers.

^^Maybe you could post it on mac-forums (?).

Tutor for iMovie is available from the App store.

I have failed to figure out much about iMovie just by fiddling around with it.

Click to expand...

Try working through the iMovie Help manual. There's some useful stuff in there that will cover most of what you need to get going.

docx said:

Tutor for iMovie is available from the App store.

Click to expand...

They give you free software, but you have to pay for the instructions on how to use it? WT-?

It's not very expensive, and is very good.
Got to be worth it.

Apple did not create "Tutor for iMovie." So no, they are not charging you for the instructions.

As stated, there is a full tutorial built into iMovie under the help menu. Part of it links back to Apple's own page on iMovie, chock full of video tutorials:

iLife - iMovie - Read about movie trailers and more new features.

MightyGem said:

Try working through the iMovie Help manual. There's some useful stuff in there that will cover most of what you need to get going.

Click to expand...

chas_m said:

Apple did not create "Tutor for iMovie." So no, they are not charging you for the instructions.

As stated, there is a full tutorial built into iMovie under the help menu. Part of it links back to Apple's own page on iMovie, chock full of video tutorials:

iLife - iMovie - Read about movie trailers and more new features.

Click to expand...

Good advice. Thanks.

That's OK.

So how do I learn to do things not covered in there?

My current want: Work with more than one audio track (I can't even get a second audio track in, and I do not mean a sound effect or iTune music, or garage band -- I mean an audio file about the same length as my video)

(Yes, I have others .

Working with a second audio track is covered in this video:

Apple - Find Out How - Movies - iMovie

(the principle is the same whether the second audio is music or not.)

I suspect you are actually asking about a THIRD audio track, ie you have the original sound from the video, plus a music track/effects track, and want to add MORE audio than those two tracks.

If that's the case, you will need to work with the movie in Garageband and then "mix down" when you bring it back to iMovie.

I have never used iTunes or garage band. From what I saw of GB, it was a way to play musical instruments on your keyboard (I figure it could work with midi instruments, but I never needed or wanted to).

I have _NO_ music or effects.

I have anywhere from 0 to 4 tracks of voice.
Depending on the recording software I'm using, I may have an audio track in with the screencast of the program, or the audio track may be in a separate file (someone just released a plugin that lets it take a video during use, but that plugin puts the audio into a separate file. The good news is that the video recording done that way is exactly the size of the program window, and has a pause/resume feature which quicktime player does not.)

Under normal circumstances moving forward, I'll have a video file with no audio, and typically three audio tracks -- one from the program, one from my voice, and one (sometimes 2-3, usually 1) from the voice of the person/people I'm working with.

You are the first person I've seen that says to use garage band to mix the audio and video all together, presumably before starting to edit in iMovie. Fine. How? I have no clue here.

i have a series of tutorials about imovie on my blog - iMovie - The Mac Mania
hopefully they give you a good overview

I did take a look at them.
Thank you, but I think I'm past that level already.

My current want: Work with more than one audio track (I can't even get a second audio track in, and I do not mean a sound effect or iTune music, or garage band -- I mean an audio file about the same length as my video)

Click to expand...

Under normal circumstances moving forward, I'll have a video file with no audio, and typically three audio tracks -- one from the program, one from my voice, and one (sometimes 2-3, usually 1) from the voice of the person/people I'm working with.

Click to expand...

There may well be a limit, but I'll say that you can add as many tracks as you want.

There's two ways of adding an audio track. You can drop it in to the Project away from a clip and it becomes a Background track. You'll see the background of the Project turn green.

The second way is to drop it on top of the clip and move it around to get the start point right. It then becomes associated with that clip. You can drop further tracks onto the same clip and they just stack up underneath and then you can fade the audio in and out on each track as required. I've just dropped 5 tracks onto a clip.

You can do it all in iMovie, no need for Garage Band as long as you're using iMovie11. In 8 and 9 audio editing was a problem and GB was needed for anything complex, but iMovie11 fixed that.