iMovie'08 - The Quick Shortcuts

Ever felt that dragging the clips from the Event Library to the Project Library seems to be such a pain?

Add Selection to the Project

1. Select desired clip in the Events Library
2. Press E

The clip will be automatically copied down into Project Library from Event Library as it "flies" into it.

The orange line would appear at the bottom of the clip, showing that the clip is being used in the particular project.

Make a Clip as Favorite

1. Select desired clip
2. Press F

A green line would appear on top of the clip, showing that the clip has been marked as favorite. I would definitely recommend you to use this function as you could, at anytime, refer back to the best selected clips with minimal effort spent and it saves you from the trouble of renewing the clips again to find a particular clip that you want.

The Tiny Function Buttons

In this particular clip, you will see a tiny function buttons. They're so tiny, aren't they?

Well, you could either increase the size of the thumbnails by adjusting the slider.

From small to big… Pay close attention to the slider on the leftmost part of the toolbar.

Or you could use, again, shortcuts to open the basic functions in a clip.

Open Audio Adjustments

1. Select desired clip
2. Press A

Usually, when a piece of music is added to the video and if it has yet to end before the video, there will be a sudden "hiccup" when the video ends and that would seem pretty awkward.

I would recommend the use of Fade Out so that the music blends more appropriately with the ending. Too bad it is not possible to view the waveforms of the audio track and adjust it more accurately in iMovie'08. We could do that with old versions of iMovie though.

However, it's still possible to have the best of the two worlds when we play around with transferring the video between the new and the old.

Open Crop, Rotate and Ken Burns

1. Select the desired clip
2. Press C

Open Video Adjustments

1. Select the desired clip
2. Press V

Simple adjustments to videos with over exposure or underlighting can be rectified with the use of the above function.

If you find remembering these shortcuts is too much of a toil, you may just opt for clicking on these buttons.

For Greater Kicks

When it comes to creating music videos, a music track would be played throughout the video, with the original sound recording removed. If you haven't turned off your camera's sound recording or perhaps it does not provide the option to turn it off, fret no further because it's pretty easy to do it.

Remove Clip's Audo All at Once

1. Select a clip
2. Press A to open
3. Adjust volume level to 0%. Done or press Enter
4. Press Command-C to copy adjustments
5. Select the rest of the clips. Hold Shift and click on the clips
6. Use shortcut Command-Option-U

Likewise, if you want the audio level to be adjusted to a certain leel and constant throughout, you could do the same.

And if you find remembering the shortcuts too bothersome, after step 5, simply go to menubar Edit - Paste Adjustments.

From the picture above, you can also see other paste adjustments for video and crop.

I would recommend using Paste Adjustments for Video if you want your entire video to have a constant color tone, depending on the kind of mood and expressing you would like to create throughout your video.

Do you notice in some videos such as documentaries or interviews, a person talks and usually after about 5 seconds or before he starts talking from where he has stopped, the video will be cut into other clips that comes together with the audio of him talking simultaneously. Well, the good news is you could do it with iMovie'08 as well.

Remove an Original Audio from the Clip

1. Select clip in your Project Library
2. Hold Command-Shift and click on the clip. You will see a "+" sign
3. Release it under the video clip

A copy of the audio from the clip will be created. You may shift to the audio to the other clips now.

For Cheap Thrills

You could slow down the process of shifting the positions of the Event Library and the Projet Library. Hold Shift while you click on the button Swap Events and Projects. I thought that was pretty interesting.