Importing Camcorder Footage

Suppose you've opened iMovie and clicked the Create a New Project button. At this moment, then, you're looking at an empty version of the screen shown in Figure 4-5. Connect your camcorder to the FireWire cablevision and turn it on. This is where the fun begins.

Click the little movie-photographic camera symbol on the iMovie screen, if necessary, to switch into Photographic camera Mode, as shown in Figure four-half dozen.

Tip

If you plough on your camcorder later iMovie is already running, the plan conveniently switches into Camera Mode. (iMovie simply does so the first time you power upward the camcorder during a work session, nevertheless, to avoid annoying people who plough the camcorder on and off repeatedly during the editing process to relieve bombardment power.)

The Monitor window becomes big and blueish, filled with the words "Camera Continued." (If y'all don't come across those words, check the troubleshooting steps in Appendix B.) This is the first of many messages the Monitor window volition be showing you. At other times, it may say, "Photographic camera No Tape,""Camera Fast Forward,""Camera Rewinding," so on.

Tip

If no camcorder is connected and turned on, iMovie automatically shows you what the Mac is "seeing" through its iSight camera, if any (the iMac and MacBook Pro have 1 congenital in, for example). This effect may freak y'all out if the camcorder isn't correctly hooked upwardly—suddenly yous're seeing your own face on the screen, even though the camcorder is pointing away from you lot!

(Once the camcorder is correctly gear up, you tin switch between it and the built-in camera using the piffling camcorder icon pop-up menu.)

While you're importing footage, the time code in the upper-left corner of the clip on the Clips pane steadily ticks away to show you that the clip is getting longer. Meanwhile, the Free Space indicator updates itself, second by second, as your hard drive space is eaten up by the incoming footage. The square Stop button does exactly the same thing as clicking the Play button a second time. The Pause button also halts playback, but it freezes the frame instead of going to a blank screen.

Effigy four-six. While y'all're importing footage, the fourth dimension code in the upper-left corner of the clip on the Clips pane steadily ticks away to testify yous that the clip is getting longer. Meanwhile, the Complimentary Space indicator updates itself, second by second, equally your difficult drive space is eaten upwardly by the incoming footage. The foursquare Cease button does exactly the same thing as clicking the Play push button a 2d time. The Pause button likewise halts playback, but it freezes the frame instead of going to a blank screen.

Now you can click the Play, Rewind, Fast Forward, and other buttons on the screen to control the camcorder (see Figure four-6).

You'll probably find that you have even more precise control past using the mouse to control the camcorder than you would past pressing the actual camcorder buttons. (The Space bar turns the Import button on and off, every bit described beneath. Otherwise, though, no keyboard shortcuts control these buttons.)

Tip

If, while the tape is playing, y'all click and concord your mouse button down on a Rewind or Fast Forrard button, playback continues at twice its usual speed.

What yous're doing now, of course, is scanning your record to find the sections that you'll desire to include in your edited movie.

The Monitor Window's Video Quality

After reading all the gushing prose about the loftier quality of digital- video footage, when you first inspect your footage in the Monitor window, you might wonder if yous got ripped off. The picture may not look anything like DVD quality.

This video quality is temporary and visible only on the Mac screen. The instant you send your finished moving-picture show back to the camcorder, or when y'all export it as a QuickTime movie or DVD, you get the stunning DV quality that was temporarily hidden on the Mac screen.

However, y'all'll spend much of your moviemaking time watching clips play dorsum, so information technology's well worth investigating the different ways iMovie tin ameliorate the motion picture.

  • Skilful . If you have a fast Mac, a bully way is to choose iMovie → Preferences, click the Playback tab, and and so choose " Highest (field blending)." The only reason you'd want to choose one of the lower-quality settings, in fact, is if you feel hiccups during playback, normally in complicated movies on slowish Macs.

    Tip

    iMovie's Preferences dialog box contains a slew of useful options. They're cited then frequently in this book that it'due south probably worth memorizing its keyboard shortcut: ⌘-comma.

    As a bonus, that keystroke works to open the Preferences dialog box in all of the other iLife programs, too, not to mention Microsoft Word, Keynote, Safari, and others.

  • Better . An even improve solution is to choose iMovie → Preferences, click Playback, and turn on "Play DV project video through to DV camera."You've just told iMovie to play the video through your camcorder . In other words, if y'all're willing to scout your camcorder'due south LCD screen as you lot work instead of the onscreen Monitor window, what yous see is what you shot—all gorgeous, all the fourth dimension. (You hear the audio only through the camcorder, too.)

  • Best . The ultimate editing setup, though, is to hook up a TV to your camcorder's analog outputs. That way, you lot get to edit your footage not just at full quality, but too at full size. The camcorder, still connected to the Mac via its FireWire cable, passes whatever you'd see in the Monitor window direct through to the TV set, at full digital-video quality. This is exactly the way professionals edit digital video— on TV monitors on their desks.

    The just difference is that you paid nigh $99,000 less for your setup.

Capturing Footage

When you're in Photographic camera Mode, an Import button appears just below the Monitor window. When you click this button (or press the Infinite bar), iMovie imports the footage you're watching, storing information technology as digital-video movie files on the Mac's hard drive. You can ride the Space bar, tapping it to turn the Import push button on and off, capturing only the good parts as the playback continues.

During this process, you'll observe a number of changes to your iMovie environment (Effigy iv-vi):

  • The Import button lights up in blue.

  • Equally presently as you click Import, what looks like a slide appears in the first square of the Clips pane, as shown in Figure iv-5. That'southward a prune —a single piece of footage, a building block of an iMovie moving picture. Its icon is a flick of the showtime frame.

  • Superimposed on the prune, in its upper-left corner, is the length of the clip expressed as " minutes:seconds:frames." You lot can run into this little timer ticking up every bit the clip grows longer. For example, if it says ane:23:10 , then the prune is 1 minute, 23 seconds, and 10 frames long.

    Getting used to this kind of frame counter takes some practice for two reasons. First, computers beginning counting from 0, not from one, so the very starting time frame of a clip is called 00:00. Second, remember that at that place are 30 frames per second (in NTSC digital video; 25 in PAL digital video). So the far-correct number in the time code (the frame counter) counts up to 29 before flipping over to 00 once again—not to 59 or 99, which might feel more familiar. In other words, iMovie counts like this: 00:28…00:29…1:00…1:01.

    Tip

    Standard DV camcorders record life past capturing 30 frames per 2d. (All right, 29.97 frames per second; see the box in Section 12.4.1.3.)

    That, for your trivia pleasure, is the standard frame rate for North American television. Existent movies, on the other hand—that is, footage shot on film—scroll by at only 24 frames per 2d. The European PAL format runs at 25 frames per second.

  • iMovie is a Mac Bone X–only program. As a upshot, y'all gain a huge perk: Your Mac doesn't have to devote every atom of its energy to capturing video. While the importing is going on, you lot're gratis to open other programs, surf the Web, crunch some numbers, organize your pictures in iPhoto, or whatever you like.

    The Mac continues to give processor priority to capturing video, and then your other programs may act a little drugged. Only this impressive multitasking feat still means that you can get meaningful work or reading done while you're dumping your footage into iMovie in the background.

If you lot click Import (or press the Infinite bar) a second fourth dimension, the tape continues to roll, but iMovie stops gulping downward footage to your hard drive. Your camcorder continues to play. You've only captured your first clip(s).

Automated scene detection

If y'all let the tape continue to ringlet, you'll detect a handy iMovie feature at work. Each time a new scene begins, a new clip icon appears in the Clips pane. The Clips pane scrolls as much as necessary to hold the imported clips.

What iMovie is actually doing is studying the engagement and time stamp that DV camcorders record into every frame of video. When iMovie detects a break in time, it assumes that you stopped recording, if but for a moment, and therefore that the next piece of footage should exist considered a new shot. It turns each new shot into a new clip.

This beliefs lets you lot but coil the camera, unattended, as iMovie automatically downloads the footage, turning each scene into a clip while you sit at that place leafing through a magazine. Then afterward, at your leisure, yous can survey the footage you've caught and set virtually the business of cutting out the deadwood.

In general, this feature doesn't work if you oasis't set your camcorder's clock. Automatic scene detection also doesn't piece of work if you're playing from a non-DV tape using one of the techniques described in Department 4.14.

Tip

If you prefer, you can ask iMovie to dump incoming clips into the Clip Viewer at the bottom of the screen instead of the Clips pane. Yous might want to practice that when, for instance, you filmed your shots roughly in sequence. That style, you'll accept to do much less dragging to the Clip Viewer when it comes time to edit.

To bring this near, cull iMovie → Preferences and click Import. Where y'all see "Place clips in," click Movie Timeline. Click OK. Now when you brainstorm importing clips, iMovie stacks them end to end in the Timeline instead of on the Clips pane.

If yous would prefer to have manual control over when each prune begins and ends, iMovie is happy to comply. Cull iMovie → Preferences, click Import, and continue as shown in Effigy 4-7.

Once you've turned off the automatic clip-creation characteristic, iMovie logs clips only when you lot click Import (or printing Space) once at the outset of the clip, and again at the end of the prune.

Tip

Tapping the Space bar is the same as clicking the Import button. In fact, if you lot tap Space when the camcorder is stopped, information technology begins to play and iMovie begins to capture the footage.

The iMovie → Preferences dialog box gives you control over the automatic clip-logging feature. You can turn off this feature entirely by turning off the

Effigy four-7. The iMovie → Preferences dialog box gives you control over the automated clip-logging characteristic. You lot can plough off this characteristic entirely by turning off the "Kickoff new clip at each scene break" option.

Timed scene breaks

Once y'all beginning editing your videos, you'll discover that iMovie is a very, very forgiving program. You tin chop out function of a clip today—so return next week or even side by side year and modify your mind. iMovie will happily restore the missing footage.

That trick works because iMovie never actually deletes any video when y'all shorten a prune. On your difficult drive, the unabridged clip is still lying there, ready to be restored to your project.

As a issue, iMovie projects can take up many times more than deejay space than you lot'd expect. For example, a i-infinitesimal video ought to take upwardly most 200 megabytes of hard drive space. But if information technology's equanimous of several dissimilar edited clips, that project could current of air upwards occupying five times as much space on your difficult drive, or fifty-fifty more.

You lot tin can read more about this habit in Section 5.3. But for now, notation that iMovie 6 introduces a new feature that's designed to counteract the programme's insatiable diskspace ambition—one y'all should know about earlier you start to import video.

Turns out that if y'all delete an entire prune (rather than merely a piece of it), iMovie does indeed remove it completely from the project. That'south why there'due south a new item in iMovie → Preferences, on the Import tab (Figure 4-7), called " Limit scene length to __ minutes." If you prepare that number to, for example, 3, then iMovie volition impose a clip pause every three minutes. Having more subdivisions of your video ways more opportunities to delete entire chunks.

For example, suppose yous filmed the last 15 minutes of a soccer game, eating up 3.25 gigabytes of disk infinite. No affair how much y'all chop and edit that prune to create a 90-2nd "game highlights" video, the projection will e'er occupy 3.25 gigabytes on your disk.

If y'all'd told iMovie to suspension upwards the clip every two minutes, though, you lot'll wind up with eight different clips. (They still play seamlessly, with no visible hiccup between them.) You lot might notice that there's no usable footage at all in sections 2, 3, and vii—so you can delete those vi minutes entirely, recovering that much disk space.

How much footage to capture

For best results, don't attempt to employ the footage- importing process as a crude means of micro-editing the footage on the wing. True, the e'er-diminishing digits in the Complimentary Space indicator may put you lot under pressure to limit the corporeality of footage yous import. And information technology'southward OK to ride the Import button and so that you lot cake out the obviously unusable sections. Just resist the temptation to do effectively editing this way. You lot'll want to trim your clips with iMovie's accurate snipping tools after.

This doesn't mean that you must transfer everything from your camcorder (although many people do, but for the convenience). Just when you come to a scene y'all desire to bring into iMovie, capture 3 to 5 seconds of footage before and later on the interesting function. Later, when you're editing, that extra leading and abaft video (called trim handles by the pros) will requite you the flexibility to choose exactly the right moment for the scene to begin and cease. Furthermore, equally you'll find out in Chapter 6, you lot need extra footage at the beginnings and ends of your clips if yous want to use crossfades or similar transitions between them.

The maximum prune length

iMovie veterans are used to a clip-length limit of nine minutes, 28 seconds, and 17 frames (which is 2 gigabytes of hard drive space). But in iMovie Hd, a clip tin can occupy up to xiii gigabytes of disk infinite. You lot can import an entire 60-minute DV tape's worth of footage equally a unmarried icon on your Clips pane, if you like. (That would crave, of course, that y'all've turned off automatic and timed scene breaks as described earlier, or that you ran your camcorder nonstop for a full hour.)

The Complimentary Infinite readout

As noted before, the Gratuitous Infinite brandish (Figure 4-vi) updates itself as you capture your clips. It keeps rails of how much space your difficult drive has left—the ane onto which you saved your project.

This readout includes a color-keyed early alarm organization that lets you ready for that awkward moment when your hard drive'southward full. At that moment, you won't be able to capture whatever more video. Wait at the color of the text just beside the Trash (where it says, for example, "1.83 GB available"):

  • If the words are black , you're in adept shape. Your hard drive has over 400 MB of free infinite—room for at least 90 seconds of boosted footage.

  • If the text becomes yellow , your hard drive has between 200 and 400 MB of free space left. In about xc more than seconds of capturing, you'll be completely out of space.

  • When the words plough carmine , the situation is dire. Your hard drive has less than 200 MB of free infinite left. Nearly i minute of capturing remains.

  • When the Free Space indicator shows that you've got less than 50 MB of gratis space left, iMovie stops importing and refuses to capture whatsoever more than video. At this point, you must make more than costless space on your hard drive, either by emptying your Project Trash or by throwing away some not-iMovie files from your difficult bulldoze. (Yous don't have to quit iMovie while yous houseclean; just hide it by pressing ⌘-H.)

Live Camcorder Recording

iMovie is also happy to capture video direct from a camcorder that doesn't incorporate a tape. In other words, you can employ your camcorder every bit though information technology were an iSight, sending whatever it "sees" directly into iMovie, live.

All you have to do is gear up its selector to Camera instead of VCR and have the tape out of the camcorder. Connect the camcorder to the Mac via FireWire, plow the camcorder on, and voilà: live, tapeless video capture.

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