Before you can
start editing video clips on iMovie, they have to be imported. Importing means bringing videos into iMovie. This article gives you brief instructions on
how to import video clips into iMovie.
Connect the
camera to the Mac, with the memory card inside the camera. You will need the cable provided with your camera to do this. Set the camera to
playback or VTR mode; this is the same mode you use to view photos/videos on
the camera. Some cameras may need you to make additional selection to indicate
whether you are connecting to a computer or to some other recording device. Read your camera instructions for more information.
Open iMovie and
click on the File option. Choose Import and then Movies.
This dialog box appears.
It allows
you to choose where you want to save the footage. It is convenient because it
shows how much footage can be stored on each one of your hard drives. You can
add these clips to any existing event, or you can create a new event. You also
have the option to split days into events, so if you have recorded footage over
separate days, it will have its own event based on the date. You get to choose
how you want to keep the imported video, either Large or Full (original)
size. The last option here is the choice
of whether you want to Copy Files or Move Files. By choosing Copy Files, you retain the original files intact after copying them into
iMovie, and by choosing Move Files, you delete the original files after copying
them into iMovie. Once you
have decided on the settings, click Import.
Import
window opens up.
All the clips
recorded on the camera appear right here. You can selectively check the ones
you want to import or uncheck the ones you don’t want to import. A quick way to uncheck all the clips is to
hold down Option while clicking the check box of the clips you want to keep.
This unchecks everything else.
iMovie offers
you the option to analyze video while you import it. You can analyze the video
for Stabilization and People, using the Analyze Video option in the Import window. Stabilization feature allows iMovie to take shaky
footages and smoothen it out; People feature is for iMovie to go through
the footage and detect the presence of people. This can be useful if you want to find just the footages that have people in it, later. If you select any of
these options, just be aware that it will add significant amount of time to
your import.
Here are few
other resources you might find useful to learn more about this.
