Imovie, this SHOULD be simple

[artmaker]

Imovie. Gees every time I try to use it I can count on hours of sifting through youtube videos.
First, version 11.

All I want to do is piece two videos together. Had to pause the camera, so I have two clips. Every blasted video I found (up till 3 am doing this.) shows clip inside a clip, or side by side split screens. NOT the simple thing I'm trying to find.

Well it seems, just putting the two in the same project automatically will save as one. I saved it, viewed it and sure enough. I never would have guessed that since the two clips have a space between them.

However, until it's saved, (which takes a LONG time for a LONG movie.) I can't seem to preview it as one thing. NOR can I start previewing where I want. Clicking play starts at the beginning every time.
It would have been nice if I could insert a short "intermission" thing in between clips. But wow, might take me a week to learn how to do that.
(Grumbling, WHY do they make these things so danged complicated?????)

Also is there a way to set the file size to only save below a certain point? I need to eventually get this thing onto youtube but even they seem to have file size limits. "Big and small" means nothing to me. Give me a number.

 

[Sawday]

artmaker - it's not at all clear whether you actually want a gap between the two elements. In the third para you imply that you have that gap but don't want it and in the fourth para you are asking about inserting a gap. Perhaps your question could be better worded?

 

[artmaker]

I mainly just wanted to merge the two videos so they play as one. In the project, it shows up as two video clips with a gap between. It took literally hours on youtube before I realized that it saves as one. Who would have known.

As an after thought, since right at the time I mentioned in my first clip "I need to pause this" it might have been cute to insert an "intermission" thing between the two clips. But that's just an after thought. Not really needed.
(Since doing that simple thing would mean more HOURS on youtube trying to figure out how, forget it.)

 

[Slydude]

Lets see if I understand correctly: You have two clips you want to join without a gap between them with the result being one video. If I'm right read on. You can do it with QuickTime Player X. Here's how it's done:

1. Open the first video clip in QuickTime Player X.
2. Use the Fast Forward and Rewind controls to move to the point you want to trim away some of the video. Choose Edit>Split Clip (Command + Y).
3. Select the section you want to get rid of and press Delete.
4. From the Edit menu choose Add Clip to End. You can select the second clip and it will be added to the end of the first clip.
5. Do any additional editing to the second portion of the clip then use the File>Export command to save the file as one file. The time it takes will depend on the quality you choose.

 

[artmaker]

OH MY GOD!

That was WAY too easy. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!

All this time I thought "player" was just that. It would play but not edit or resave. And it saved in SEVEN minutes! GEES Imovie took 23 to "optomize" then another 30+ to export, and I don't know how long youtube took to UPload. I left the house.
Wow. 7 minutes. And it looks like it saved the right out of the camera size. For some reason info shows 640X480 on my new save using the same two clips. 250 MG too. But the imovie version, even though I set it to "medium" in the optomize thing, is a whopping 316 MB and the size is 960 X 540 SAME EXACT clips. I don't get that.

Now when I went to save this, my options were ipod touch & iphone 3GS or… 480 p. I picked the 480 p but what exactly does that mean? What's the p for?


Anyway, wow. Next time I just want to piece a few camera movies together I know the easiest way to do it now.
Your my hero!

 

[Slydude]

You weren't supposed to discover my secret identity. Mild mannered teacher by day superhero by night.

Seriously, I'm glad that worked for you. I was a bit worried that my directions might be a bit too cryptic. BTW you might find this article useful. The editing features are not as obvious to trigger the first time you use them and this might have been the article that got me started. See here as well.

The p stands for"progressive" which is one type of video that QuickTime Player X can save. I wasn't sure of the difference myself so I did a quick search and found this explanation. It focuses on the higher resolution 1080 version of that format but the progressive vs. interlaced difference is still the same.

 

[artmaker]

Well wow again.

I wish I'd have posted here a day sooner.

Having issues with the ONLY social media site I actually like. Pinterest. Their support keeps telling me they cannot "replicate the problem." And wants a video.
I read in your first link quicktime actually has a screen video capture. Gees! I just wasted a whole evening taping a small video camera to the back of a chair and recording my computer that way. (And it looks terrible, but should be good enough for them to see.)
I wont have time to try and replace this till tomorrow, maybe.
Meanwhile, if your curious (and real bored) this is what I sent them. Such as it is.
Here

I'll come back tomorrow and read your other links.
Thanks again superhero.

 

[chscag]

Hi Jenny:

Glad to see that you got our password reset message which we sent to your new email address. Please keep your profile up to date and thanks for sending us your user name otherwise we would have not been able to locate you in our data base. Anyway, welcome back. Have fun.

 

[artmaker]

Hi Jenny:

Glad to see that you got our password reset message which we sent to your new email address.

YES and so quick too. Thank you.

I stopped using mac forums since I had a friend who is a mac tech and would help me a lot. But he's moved on, has kids, job, lives far.
Then my daughter, who it turns out is a super smart geek, COULD help me but flat out told me "I HATE working on other peoples computers. You need to figure this out."
Isn't that special? But… it's ok. When I really need her she's there for me.

I actually hate i-anything. Learned a very hard lesson that if you take a photo that's in i-photo and delete it, empty the trash, WHILE i-photo is on, the photo, the application, and every other photo in it just up and vanishes without a trace.
Thankfully this happened on my second computer and not much was lost.
I went around and around with apple support. My photos are simply gone. And how does an application delete itself? Finally got to someone fairly high up in ranks and gave her access to see my computer. When she saw the download for an itunes alternative (also buggy) she insisted I had a virus.
Sent me a LONG WINDED page of really detailed instructions to see if my computer was infected.
Well I asked my daughter to look over that. And no, not infected. (I had good reason to not trust that download and never actually installed it.)
There was much grumbling on her part as to "the idiots at apple" after looking over what they wanted me to check. (mind you, this kid of mine hacked her HS computer system and got everyones password. Later they actually gave her an office and brought their broken computers to her. Yup, smart.)

And support had no further reply to me other than to scold me for not backing up on i-cloud. (Which I will NEVER be using.)
I told them, "why should I have to back up my stuff so when your buggy software up and deletes itself I can recover my files? Better idea. Put my photos in a folder. NEVER replacing i-photo. I do the same with music now too since periodically i-tunes suddenly can't find it." Got all my music in a plain old folder too.


Anyway, long story, I'll probably be in here more often now. i-issues. lol. Apple is broken. Darn shame.