As you learned in Chapter 24, “Exploring the iMovie Interface,” the Clip Viewer is an alternative to the Timeline and might be preferable for some as a way to work with clips. In some ways, the Clip Viewer is the “lite” version of iMovie.
Although the Timeline view provides an excellent way to work with clips and is easy to use, the Clip Viewer is even easier to use. If you want to have a simplified introduction to working with iMovies, you might want to work in the Clip Viewer. Also, children might find it easier to play with iMovie in the Clip Viewer because there are fewer skills to master—just clicking, dragging, and dropping.
In the Clip Viewer, you can do just about everything you can in the Timeline, including adding transitions, effects, and titles. One of the only major differences is that you can’t work with audio in the Clip Viewer. When you try to drag a sound effect into the Clip Viewer, it switches you back to the Timeline.
Figure 27.1 shows the Timeline with three successive video clips arranged from left to right. The leftmost part of the Timeline represents the beginning of the movie, and the rightmost part of the Timeline represents the end of the movie.
Now take a look at the Clip Viewer in Figure 27.2, which is accessed simply by clicking on the film frame symbol at the left corner of the screen.
The video clips represented in Figure 27.2 are the same video clips that you saw in Figure 27.1. If you have iMovie open, take a moment to click back and forth between the Timeline and the Clip Viewer to investigate the differences.
Some people might prefer to think of the Clip Viewer as being like a slide sorter (a device that enables you to easily sort slides that have been developed from a traditional camera). If you’ve ever seen slides developed from traditional film, you’ll notice that the icons that represent the Clip Viewer and clip shelf look a lot like slides.
Adding clips is simple in the Clip Viewer. You can basically handle things the same way that you will learn to do in the Timeline: by dragging clips into the Clip Viewer from the shelf.
Open an iMovie project that has several clips in it.
To access the Clip Viewer if it’s not already open, click the film frame icon in the lower-left corner of the screen.
Choose a clip for your iMovie by single-clicking one of the clips in the shelf, holding down the mouse button, and dragging it down toward the Clip Viewer area as shown in Figure 27.3. When you have the mouse arrow over the Clip Viewer area, you can let go of the mouse button and drop the clip there.
To add another clip, repeat steps 2 and 3 to drag the next clip down and drop it to the right of the first clip.
When you’ve finished dragging clips into the Clip Viewer, they’ll be lined up in a row. If one of the clips is a blue color, that simply means it’s selected. If you want to deselect it, you can click somewhere other than on the clips in the Clip Viewer.
The Clip Viewer comes in particularly handy for rearranging clips if you want to reposition one clip after another or easily try different combinations of scenes. Open an iMovie project with a few clips in it, and before looking at the Clip Viewer, try the Timeline view (click the clock icon). Notice how things look. For comparison, you might want to try clicking on a clip to try moving it around, as shown in Figure 27.4.
Now you’re ready to reposition:
Open an iMovie project with at least three clips in it, and click on the film frame icon at the lower left to see the Clip Viewer.
Click the first clip, and holding down the mouse button, drag the clip to the right, until a space opens up between the second and third clips (see Figure 27.5).
Besides repositioning clips, the Clip Viewer is also good for putting clips back on the shelf if you’ve decided not to use them for the time being. Simply click on the clip to select it, and drag it back into an empty square in the shelf.
When you want to watch one of the clips you’re using in your iMovie, simply select it by clicking the clip and then click the Play button. And when you want to preview the entire movie, you click the Play button without any clip selected, and iMovie plays all the clips in succession.
It’s easy to look at a single clip in iMovie when you want to see what it contains.
Open an iMovie project with clips that have been dragged into either the Timeline view or the Clip Viewer.
Click the film frame icon to display the Clip Viewer.
Click once on a video clip to select it in the Clip Viewer.
Click the Play button under the Monitor to watch the clip, or click the playhead and drag it to the left and right to rapidly review what’s going on in the clip (see Figure 27.6).
Notice how, in Figure 27.6, iMovie displays how much time each video clip takes up at the upper-left corner of each clip icon. By the time you reach the end of the clip, the playhead is to the far right of the blue bar, telling you how many seconds have elapsed. In video, there are 30 frames per second, so the farthest number on the right reflects the frame, and the number to the left of the colon represents the number of seconds.
Previewing an entire movie is as simple as previewing a single clip; you just have to remember not to have any one clip selected when you click the Play button.
Open an iMovie project with clips that have been dragged into either the Timeline or the Clip Viewer.
Click the film frame icon to select the Clip Viewer.
Click somewhere other than on a clip to make sure that you don’t have any clip selected—they should all be a white color.
Click the Play button below the iMovie Monitor, and iMovie plays through all the clips, giving you a preview of your entire iMovie.
Notice how, in Figure 27.7, iMovie draws a small red marker that moves slowly to the right in the Clip Viewer area as you watch your movie. The position of the red marker corresponds to where the playhead is positioned in the Monitor window as well. Both the playhead and the red marker are essentially ways of keeping track of where you are in your movie project.
The folks at Apple, in their typical subtle elegance and imaginativeness, have built a helpful way of seeing where one clip starts and one clip ends directly into the Monitor window. Small vertical lines in the scrubber bar below the Monitor correspond to where one clip ends and another begins. This feature is sort of like having a timeline even when you’re in the Clip Viewer.
Adding transitions, effects, and titles in the Clip Viewer is as simple as it is in the Timeline. In many cases, you simply click a button to display the palette you need to work in, drag your enhancement where you want it in the Clip Viewer, and you’re there!
It’s easy to add a transition in the Clip Viewer:
Open an iMovie project with clips that have been dragged into either the Timeline or the Clip Viewer.
Click the film frame icon to select the Clip Viewer.
Click the Trans button in the main iMovie window to display the Transitions pane.
Click a transition and drag it to a spot in the Clip Viewer. (Try clicking Fade Out and dragging it into position after the last clip in your iMovie.)
After you drag the transition into place, iMovie attaches a small indicator to show you how the processing is going, with a small red line that moves to the right (see Figure 27.8). When it gets all the way to the right, the transition is officially processed, and you can preview the clip.
You learned about video effects in Chapter 26, “Adding Titles, Transitions, and Effects in iMovie.” Adding them to a clip is as easy as any other enhancement.
Let’s say that we shoot some video in a dimly lit location and then decide that we want to brighten things up a bit. No problem!
Open an iMovie project and click the film frame icon to look at the Clip Viewer.
Click the Effects button to display the Effects pane, as shown in Figure 27.9.
Choose a clip and click it to select it.
With the clip selected, go into the Effects pane and click the Brightness & Contrast Effect to select it.
Drag the Brightness slider a bit to the right. Then play with the Contrast setting until the subject is easier to see.
You see the changes, a little bit rough, in the preview window at the top of the Effects palette. (You could also click the Preview button in the Effects palette to view your settings in the Monitor window before applying them.)
If you liked what you saw in the preview window, click the Apply button in the Effects palette to tell iMovie that you’ve decided you want to use this effect. (iMovie then processes the effect and marks the clip with a checker-board icon to show that an effect has been applied.)
In this chapter, you were introduced to shelf the Clip Viewer, which can be considered the “lite” version of iMovie. Clip Viewer can be used as an alternative to the Timeline when working with video clips and is a good starting place for people who want to jump right in to digital video editing. Although you cannot work with audio, which will be discussed in the next chapters, you can use the Clip Viewer to add and arrange clips and apply transitions, video effects, and titles to your project.