When it comes to video creation, editing is probably the hardest part. To properly edit a video, you need to be proficient with a good video editing software and have a great knack for video storytelling.
I realize iMovie doesn't have a 'real B roll,'if it did there would be two tracks for video at all times. That adding photos as a cut away is a B roll type thing, right? Am I trying to do too complex things with this, and would be better to switch to a higher end video editing app? Using iMovie 10 on my Mac laptop. You can select existing project or create new project to save your video. When you save your video to iMovie, it is added like a clip in iMovie. You can add your video to storyboard. To do this, open your storyboard. You will see 3 options i.e video, Photos and Camera. Tap on 'Video' option and select 'iMovie Media' option. Using transitions in an iMovie project adds polish and often smoothes juxtapositions between clips—for example, a long Fade to Black transition can indicate the passage of time.
Looking for a best iMovie Alternative? Check out Movavi Video Editor.
However, there is a myriad of video editing software out there. So, it begs the question, which video editing software should you use? Well, if you are Mac user, you can easily turn to the default iMovie that comes preinstalled on your computer.
- Here's a quick look at some iMovie 10 basics and a tutorial for your first b-roll assignment. You can watch the example video from the tutorial here: http://.
- Get yourself some b-roll. It's good to get a few shots that you can use to flesh out your movie and set the scene. There are lots of filters you can use in iMovie. Add your clip to the.
iMovie is often overlooked by many as a good video editing software. Most people think it's primitive and so it's not up to the task of making a great and well-edited video. Well, is it?
In my over 4 years' experience as a video creator, I can confidently say that making a professional looking video has more to do with your technique and less to do with the tools you use.
Regardless, there are certain professional features that I judge every video editing software I come across by. Let's put iMovie to the test and see how well it performs.
1. Color Correction
Color correction is one feature that I immediately check any video editing software for. These tools enable you to fix any color problems you may have in your video arising from various lighting conditions or white imbalance that may have been present during recording.
iMovie features a default color correction tools that enable you to tweak the brightness, color saturation and contrast of your video.
There is also a color temperature shift control that comes in handy when you are trying to fix a white balance in your recording.
2. Video Speed
Video speed control is another critical feature that I look for in any video editing software. Video speed control allows me to alter the speed of any video clip. Speeding up or slowing down a video clip is ideal for representing various scenes in a video.
iMovie allows you to either increase or reduce the pace of a video clip to illustrate multiple scenes in your video clip better.
3. Multiple Video Tracks
This feature is an absolute must. Having the ability to view multiple video tracks gives you an added flexibility and edge during video editing. This can come in handy if you ever need to add more video footage to your project. This is also called b-roll into your project.
Also, you can use this feature to add a green-screen, split screen and picture and picture.
iMovie does permit those features; however, you can only make do with only one extra video track. For very complex 4 or 5 layers composting effects, you are going to look further than iMovie.
Although, for most video editing projects, dual track multimodal editing system will do just fine.
4. Text and Titles
How To Work With Imovie
One other important feature to look for in any video editing software is the quality of the on-screen titles and texts.
Texts are important parts of a video, and they can be used to add text, captions and titles.
Your video editing software should be more than capable of adding quality on-screen texts. You really do not want to have a separate software for editing videos and adding titles and texts.
Which is why having a video editing software that edits video and is capable of adding text is a big plus. iMovie has a plethora of nice templates for titles, captions, credits and lower thirds.
Most of the templates are already pretty much animated, although you may choose to edit them to your liking. You can use a bunch of tools to tweak the color, sizes and fonts. However, you are a little restricted as you cannot change the location of the text on the screen.
But with a little technique and creativity, the default iMovie templates will come out right.
5. Picture overlays
How about when you need to show custom graphics or text in your video?
To achieve this, the video editing software has to be capable of importing graphics file from another source – the ability to use graphics overlay is another essential feature that I am keen about in any video editing software.
Basically, graphic overlays are custom animations, images or graphics that you create in other applications and then import them into your video project. But to use this feature, your video editing software must first be able to import graphics that contain transparency information or something known as an alpha channel. There is a limited amount of image format that is compatible with an alpha channel, with the most common ones being tiff and PNG.
iMovie can import either of TIFF and PNG including their alpha channels.
6. Key frame animation
This feature is one that you may not ascribe too much with a video editing software.
Key frame animation enables you to choose the position, appearance and size of objects on your screen. Having this feature in your video editing software is very useful as it saves you the hassle of having to work with other applications such as Adobe After Effects, even for some of the simplest animations.
iMovie has the key frame animation feature that can be found within its picture and picture feature. Although its pretty basic. But once you get a hang on it, you will find it very useful for creating simple animations.
7. Audio Editing Features
Audio is an essential part of any good video. People might bear a bad video quality, but nobody will put up with terrible audio quality. Poor audio can render even some of the best videos unwatchable, which is why I am very particular about the audio editing features of any video editing software I use.
1. Audio Meters
Audio meters help you gauge the sound of your audio and tell you if it's going to be too low or too loud for your audience.
They also help you to set a reference audio level for all your videos so that they all come out at a consistent audio level, which is great. You certainly don't want your audience either scrambling for the remote or adjusting their speakers each time they see a bunch of your videos.
In the case of iMovie, there is no traditional audio meter. Instead, there is a color-coding and waveform that helps you measure sound levels.
2. Audio Filters
Another crucial feature I always search for in any video editing software is the range of its audio filters. Audio filters are important for enhancing the sound elements in your videos.
In iMovie, you can find a bunch of basic audio filters, among which is an automatic optimized filter that helps you to even out and boost all the low-quality sound levels. It also contains several equalization and noise reduction filters to help you enhance the sound of your project.
3. Multiple audio tracks
In my opinion, multiple audio tracks is a crucial feature that any video editing software should have.
With multiple audio tracks, you can add sound effects, music and voiceovers to your project to make them more exciting and engaging.
iMovie allows you to create multiple tracks of audio that enables you to add several layers of voiceovers, sound effects and music to your project. However, they could all come out weird if you cannot possibly control the audio levels of each track.
iMovie allows you to adjust the individual sound levels of each of these tracks. This is a reasonably easy and effective way of controlling the sound levels.
4. Sound Mixing
In a process known as audio ducking, iMovie also features a sound mixing tool that automatically reduces the audio levels of other video clips on the timeline in relation to a chosen clip.
To Conclude
After walking you through those features, do I still think iMovie is a good enough video editing software?
Well, for most of the videos which we see today, I would say iMovie is more than capable. Sure, it's not the best software to use If you are creating lengthy videos or videos that contain lots of animations or effects.
Regardless, you can always create animations and other special graphics and effects on a separate application and then import them into your iMovie project.
Once you factor in the features, usability and price, iMovie becomes a decent competitor.
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Hey, My name is Paul – nice to e-meet you 🙂 I'm a freelance video editor who has over 4 years experiences of making all types of videos. I founded this website to provide step-by-step and easy-to-follow instructions to first-time editors or beginners like you who want to start their journey in video editing.
When you're new to video editing, you use the first thing you know or already have. If you're a Mac user, learning how to use iMovie to edit videos is probably on your to-do list because anything else is just too complex, scary and expensive for now.
By the end of this tutorial you'll know how to use iMovie to:
- How to import a video into iMovie
- How to crop a video
- How to add text
- How to add subtitles
- How to add music
What Can You Do With iMovie's Editing Tools?
Get the most out of this simple software by learning how to use the tools. Let's say you want to how to create a basic video in iMovie. This means you'll have to learn how to use iMovie to crop, add text, music, trim video and add subtitles to your video.
First, here's how to import a video into iMovie.
- Open Finder
- Click on Applications.
- Locate iMovie and click to open it up.
- Click on the File menu on the top bar and then click on 'New Movie.'
- In the New Movie, click on the option to Import Media
How to Crop a Video in iMovie
To crop a video in iMovie, go to the square-like cropping symbol appearing above your video. This will then bring up the fit, crop to fill, and ken burns options to crop your video. For this tutorial, you only need to worry about learning how to crop a video in imovie with the fit and crop to fill options.
Fit Crop Option
The fit crop option will take your video and expand it so it takes up the entire size of the landscape video. So if you have a square video or Instagram story-size video, it will blow up the video to cover all the space leaving no empty edges.
Crop to Fill
On the other hand, crop to fill gives you a bit more flexibility when it comes to cropping video in imovie. When you click on crop to fill you'll see a rectangle appear over the video. Drag the corner handles of the rectangle to define what will appear in your video. Click on the center (+) symbol in the center to move it around. Anything outside of the rectangle will not appear once you finish cropping your iMovie video.
How to Trim and Split Your iMovie Clips
For anyone totally new to video editing, here are some basic definitions. Trimming a video is when you adjust the start and end times of the video. Splitting a video is like trimming except you are taking a clip and breaking it up in multiple segments.
Maybe you have something interesting in the middle of your video, this is where you would split your iMovie clip. If you want to split a clip in iMovie, move your mouse over the area of the video you want to split. Then, you can either:
1. Go to Menu > Modify > Split Clip
2. Click Command (⌘) + B on your keyboard to split the clip
But maybe you also weren't ready in the first 2 seconds of your video and made an awkward fumble to turn the camera off at the end. This is where you would trim your iMovie video at the start and end points. To trim video simply click on the clip and then click and drag the ends of the video to your desired positioning.
How to Manually Add Subtitles in iMovie with Title Text
How To Use Imovie
Learning how to add subtitles in iMovie can be a tedious manual task but it's doable. You can always skip it and opt to automatically add subtitles to video with a simple to use online video editor like VEED.
But if you're not afraid to roll your sleeves up, here's how to add subtitles in iMovie:
- Head over to the text titles menu
- Select a text style. We like the lower-thirds option.
- Drag the selected option over the part of your video you want to start adding subtitles to
- Play the video to hear what's being said and type up your first sentence for your subtitles
- Select the text on the timeline and copy paste it to create a new line and repeat step 4 until you've manually added subtitles with iMovie to the full video.
How to Put Music on iMovie
How To Imovie Iphone
Music can give your video personality and set the mood. You can use a site like MixKit.com to source quality music for free.
There, super easy right? Once you've put music on your iMovie timeline, you can do things like trim the audio, change the volume and fade in or fade out your iMovie music. Here's how to put music in your iMovie video timeline.
How To Add B Roll On Imovie
- Go to your downloads folder
- Click and drag the music file into your iMovie timeline
There, super easy right? Once you've added music to your iMovie, you can do things like trim the audio, change the volume and create a fade in/fade out effect.
How to Trim Music in iMovie
This works the same way as trimming your video. Go to the start and end points of your video so you can click and drag to your desired start and end times. You can also split the audio the same way. Just make sure the music is selected.
How to Adjust Music Volume in iMovie
To adjust the volume of your audio, hover over the center of the audio clip. You'll see two triangles appear positioned on top of each other. You can then pull up or down to increase or lower the volume.
How to Fade Out or Fade In iMovie Music
Hover over the center of the video toward the start or end points of your music clip. You'll see two triangles appear here as well in a horizontal side-by-side position. You can drag these to the sides to create a gradual fade in or fade out effect with the music added to your iMovie clip. As you drag, you'll see a curved line inside the green music box on the timeline indicating you're applying the effect.
How to Export Your iMovie Video
Finally, to export your iMovie video click on the export button on the upper right-hand side. This will bring up a panel of options. Unless you want to import directly to one of the options that appear, you can select to download the file.
Now that you know how to use iMovie, you can begin editing your first video. Need a simpler all-in-one solution to edit your video online? VEED's online video editor allows you to automatically add subtitles to video, add progress bar animations, add text to video, crop your video for all major social platforms and so much more. You can start your first video project for free today! And if you need any help, we're just one chat message or Instagram DM away.
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