Hi, I'm totally lost and have some basic questions that I can't seem to find answers to on the net. I've looked around, but everything I find seems to assume I already know what they're talking about, or ends up being about how to create a movie masterpiece given 100 clips. I also found out a lot of stuff is for older versions. I have iMove 10.1.1
My situation: I copied all the little movies I had on my other "getting rid of Windows" computers to my mac book pro (250GB SS drive). I didn't think it was a whole lot as I'm not a movie nut... just family christmas clips, some vacation clips, etc. I also started doing some guitar playing at places and recorded some of the songs. I have a solid state HD Sony videocam (and I'm still figuring out AVCHD). I have about 20GB of music on the MBP, and some files, and that's about it. Not even a bunch of apps. No games.
And a few days ago my MBP said it was full and can't any more. Checking the file sizes, I realized these little movies are monsters. So for some of the largest ones, I got into iMovie, figured out and did the 'create movie' thing, which created a project, and I rendered?/shared them to .mp4 files that are in the 50 to 200MB range rather than the original 400MB to 1GB range. I played one on the big TV and it looked fine, so I'm happy with the iMovie settings I used. I've since moved all the movies to a separate drive, delete them from the MBP, including the iMovie library which was created with me not knowing what I was doing. I want to bring them over, one by one, make them smaller and create a library of movies that's organized. I am not a 'movie maker' nor a "movie enthusiast". I don't need all kinds of special effects - I just want to reduce my overall movie footprint on the MBP drive and organize all my little movies. So for me, it begs some very basic questions about iMovie. I'm not even sure what questions to ask.. each one seems like going down an endless hole when I did net searches for answers.
I've yet to comprehend the difference between 'media', 'projects', and 'theater'.
So, what is Theater? Do I need it? I suppose we'll watch these movies on the TV at family gatherings, not on the MBP.
What's the process? Create a movie - import the movie clip - go to projects - yank it down to the timeline - share it to a file using the smallest settings - then what? Is it in my library? Does it then become a 'media' ? I'm not sure, once I create the smaller .mp4
I plan on heading to a couple of places today to see if there's an Idiots Guide or For Dummies guide to iMove... are they any good? Is there a better book that's for the basic beginner?
Thanks for any help offered - I don't want to start doing all this until I fully understand what I'm doing, how I'm going to do it, and what I'm going to end up with.
Pete Derkowski
My situation: I copied all the little movies I had on my other "getting rid of Windows" computers to my mac book pro (250GB SS drive). I didn't think it was a whole lot as I'm not a movie nut... just family christmas clips, some vacation clips, etc. I also started doing some guitar playing at places and recorded some of the songs. I have a solid state HD Sony videocam (and I'm still figuring out AVCHD). I have about 20GB of music on the MBP, and some files, and that's about it. Not even a bunch of apps. No games.
And a few days ago my MBP said it was full and can't any more. Checking the file sizes, I realized these little movies are monsters. So for some of the largest ones, I got into iMovie, figured out and did the 'create movie' thing, which created a project, and I rendered?/shared them to .mp4 files that are in the 50 to 200MB range rather than the original 400MB to 1GB range. I played one on the big TV and it looked fine, so I'm happy with the iMovie settings I used. I've since moved all the movies to a separate drive, delete them from the MBP, including the iMovie library which was created with me not knowing what I was doing. I want to bring them over, one by one, make them smaller and create a library of movies that's organized. I am not a 'movie maker' nor a "movie enthusiast". I don't need all kinds of special effects - I just want to reduce my overall movie footprint on the MBP drive and organize all my little movies. So for me, it begs some very basic questions about iMovie. I'm not even sure what questions to ask.. each one seems like going down an endless hole when I did net searches for answers.
I've yet to comprehend the difference between 'media', 'projects', and 'theater'.
So, what is Theater? Do I need it? I suppose we'll watch these movies on the TV at family gatherings, not on the MBP.
What's the process? Create a movie - import the movie clip - go to projects - yank it down to the timeline - share it to a file using the smallest settings - then what? Is it in my library? Does it then become a 'media' ? I'm not sure, once I create the smaller .mp4
I plan on heading to a couple of places today to see if there's an Idiots Guide or For Dummies guide to iMove... are they any good? Is there a better book that's for the basic beginner?
Thanks for any help offered - I don't want to start doing all this until I fully understand what I'm doing, how I'm going to do it, and what I'm going to end up with.
Pete Derkowski