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| picture from apple.com |
For a group project I had this week, I used iMovie for the first time to edit something shot on an iPad.
First things first, Apple's products amaze me!
The movie was filmed by simply selecting the video option in the camera on the iPad. This will be great for students because the screen is massive (to an elementary school student) and there are less buttons to press, unlike the video cameras from years before.
Now to iMovie:
To get the movie on my macbook, I just had to plug the iPad into the USB port. Then the products did the rest. Your mac identifies the iPad immediately then you can select what is imported into iMovie. After the movie is downloaded, then editing can happen. The screen you work with looks like this:
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| picture from apple.com |
Here is a picture of the same screen with labels:
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| picture from sentra.ischool.utexas.edu |
The Help menu takes you through everything from importing to adding themes and background music.
At first, editing is a little challenging and frustrating because you have to be exact. I suggest watching your movie a few times so you can see precisely where you may want to cut scenes. If you do cut something you didn't want to, selecting Edit then Undo puts it back for you. The original import is still available. When you pick what is to be cut out, a yellow box will appear around each frame (or section of a frame) and can be moved until all to be cut is selected. Then you select Delete and that part of your movie is gone. The scenes that are left seamlessly come together and your product looks amazing.
The bottom line: iMovie is pretty awesome! Once you get the hang of things, it is very easy to use. I have a feeling we are going to see it more in schools and students using it to work on projects. What a way to differentiate an assignment for different types of learners!
Your presentation looked fantastic! The genius of iMovie is that you can use the basic features and produce a great product. But as you use it more, you discover that it also has some very complex and powerful tools. Someday I need to try iMovie on the iPad so that I can show teachers what they can do without a mac. But I think iMovie on a mac has more options, and the capability to connect to a larger screen.
ReplyDeleteThe large screen helps me select and edit clips more easily. A slider at the bottom right of the window allows you to adjust the number of boxes iMovie uses to display your raw footage. With a large monitor, you can see a still frame of every 1/2 second of video and still see a good portion of your clip. I use the slider to zoom in when I need to be very precise.
Another tool is the precision editor. I access this by placing the cursor arrow over the clip in the projects window. A gear icon appears. Click on that, and you get a number of powerful editing tools! Earlier versions of iMovie only allowed you to adjust the length of a clip BEFORE you dragged it into the project. Now you can change the length of a clip with the precision editor, even after adding transitions and titles. Of course back in the day we had to find creative ways to fill time while they waited for each edit to render, so I might be easily impressed!
Thanks again for editing our movie Sharon. :)I wish I had gotten better video of the posters....
ReplyDeleteSharon,
ReplyDeleteGreat job editing your group's movie. Your group also did a great job presenting. I was inspired by Mr. Duncan and his presentation on last evening. He stated that the features in iMovie may be a little overwhelming at first but more you play with the features the easier it becomes. I was so inspired that I will use my IPad to make movies with my daughter and I think I see a Mac Book in the future. I want to certainly incorporate this into my classroom so I will need to start figuring out all the features now.
Larissa
Sharron,
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear you had such a positive experience with iVideo. I will be using it this weekend so I'm relieved to hear that it is relatively simple tool to use. I am not a big user of Apple products, but hopefully I'll be able to figure this one out!
Kate
I'm sorry if you can't see the pictures for this post. If anyone has an idea of how to fix this, let me know!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a question for Becky Kirstein...Send her your blog link and ask her for assistance!
ReplyDelete