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How to Use iMovie - 2024 Beginner's Tutorial
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Jun 10, 2024
In this beginner's tutorial video for 2024, you'll learn how to use iMovie, Apple's intuitive video editing software. The tutorial covers essential features such as importing footage, arranging clips on the timeline, adding transitions, titles, and music, and exporting your finished project. You'll also explore new features and updates introduced in 2024, making it easier than ever to create professional-looking videos on your Mac or iOS device. By the end of the video, you'll have the knowledge to edit videos confidently using iMovie, whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your skills.
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0:00
iMovie is one of the best ways to get started with video editing and it's a free app that comes installed on every single Mac
0:07
So it doesn't matter what Mac you have, how old the Mac is. It's going to have iMovie installed
0:12
You could also use it on iPhone and iPad and I have different videos about that
0:16
For this video, I'm going to focus on iMovie on your Mac. And this is going to be a simple 10-step process and even if it's your first time editing any type of video
0:25
this is going to be the right video for you. Now I also have an iMovie course that I'll mention
0:30
at the end, but that's going to give you a very comprehensive guide using iMovie, especially some of the
0:35
tips and tricks I've picked up in editing for 15 years. I'll mention that at the end, but this should
0:40
show you everything you need to know to edit your first project. Okay, the very first thing I want you to do
0:44
is I want you to open the App Store on your Mac here and go ahead and search for iMovie and make
0:50
sure if this says update to go ahead and press update so you have the latest version of iMovie
0:55
Also, if you've deleted it from your Mac for some reason, you could go ahead and press install
1:00
right over here. Now, if you press the search icon right on top of your Mac here, you could go ahead and search
1:05
for iMovie. And as long as it's installed on your computer and you have it deleted previously
1:10
you could go ahead and click it here to open it. Now, it's going to bring you to this page and it's
1:13
going to have a couple of different boxes. You could just go ahead and skip those or press OK on those
1:17
And this is basically the page where you could create your first project. So I'm just going to press the plus
1:22
sign right here. So the very first step in using iMovie is creating a project and you'll see two options over here
1:28
This one trailer, if you select this one, this is going to give you these kind of templates that only are designed to make a trailer
1:36
So if you want to make a cinematic looking trailer, this is the option for you. This one I covered in a different video
1:42
In this case, we want to start with the first one movie. So press that one and it's going to bring you to this page
1:49
So in the same step as we're creating a project, we want to name this project
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So a really easy way to name it is you could just go ahead and press this project icon
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and it's going to try to take you back out of this page where you could also name your project
2:02
So this is going to be our iMovie tutorial and I'll go ahead and press OK
2:07
And that does bring you back here where you could create a new project or edit an existing project
2:12
but I did want to show you this page because every time you start a new edits
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you want to come back here and press new so all your projects are separated
2:21
And then you could always double click here to come back inside of these projects and start editing
2:26
And let's go ahead and import our media over the video. here, so I'm going to go ahead and press import media
2:30
And this is going to give you multiple different options for where you want to bring media in
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So media is going to be your videos, your photos, your music, audio, anything that you're going to use to edit with
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That's your media. And it's going to take me to my homepage and this is what I've done on mine
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I've created a folder called media and it's just sitting on my computer
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And within that, I've created three different folders just to keep things nice and organized
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So I have a video file. So all the video files I'm going to use in this project I brought into here
3:01
And you also could do a photo. So you could add photos to your videos. I've also created an example for that. And we have audio. So anything that you have for music, for example, you're going to be able to bring that in and I'll show you how to add music in a little bit. And if you have things on your iPhone, you could also connect your iPhone and drop it that way as well. So this is also going to give you access to FaceTime. So if you want to record a clip up
3:27
of you talking, you could use the camera on your computer and use this FaceTime option to go ahead
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and record it there too. And I also recommend if you're going to do a lot of video editing
3:36
buy yourself an external hard drive so you don't take up all the space on your computer
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So I'll put in the description, a couple of recommendations I have for external hard drive
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All my projects are usually on an external hard drive so I don't take up all the space on my computer
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So I'm going to go ahead and just drag and select with my mouse all the different folders
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You could also do this with individual files too, but I like to just just bring in all the folders
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And then down here says import all. And then it's going to bring everything from those folders
4:03
into your project file. And now we're actually ready to start editing
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once we have everything we want. We could always bring in other footage
4:12
as we think of other footage to add to our projects. So this could happen at any time
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All you have to do is at any time, go and press this arrow up here
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And it's going to bring you back to the same page and you could select anything new to bring into your project
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So that was all. setting up our project as our first step. Now, the next step is going to be basic editing
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First, let me show you exactly what you're looking at here. Over here, this is where all our media is, this panel
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On the right side, you're going to see a preview of your edit. Right now, it just looks black because we haven't started yet
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And down here is called a timeline. So every single video editing app, iMovie included
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is going to have a timeline where all your editing takes place right down here
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So let's go ahead and get started with our editing. Okay, the very first thing I want to do is
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I want to go ahead and start bringing some video clips that I have over here
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So if you hover over any video clip like this, it's going to show you what it looks like on the right side of your screen
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So you could kind of preview it. So this just shows you a little thumbnail of it, just a still image of it
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But as you hover over, you could see a preview of it. Same thing with all these different clips
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Images won't have that because that's just the one thumbnail basically. That's the whole thing
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But video clips are going to have a nice little preview. And you'll see a little timer right here. This is a little timer right here. This is a little bit
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4.6s. That just means it's 4.6 seconds long. The entire clip is 4.6 seconds. This is 5 seconds
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I have a little longer one I show you here This one is 5 minutes long So this is just kind of a more in tutorial that I did that I want to bring that as an example to show you how to work with video and audio
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And to add them to your timeline and start actually using it in your project, this is the best way to do this
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Okay, this is a little bit of a keyboard shortcut, but it's going to save you a whole lot of time
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Choose the clip that you want to start with and go ahead and hover over it
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and you see this little yellow line, decide where you want that clip to start
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and then decide where you want that clip to end. So I'm going to say, as I'm hovering and previewing it here in my window
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I'm going to start the clip right over here, and all I have to do is press I on my keyboard
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and you could see it's created a different box now, this yellow box. So now my clip starts here, and I'm going to go a little bit later
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and I want to end it here, and I'm going to press O. So I stands for in point where you want it to start and O stands for where you want it to end, out point
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And then if I press E, it's going to just drag and drop it down here
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Okay, so I, O, and E are basically how you're going to do ton of your editing in a really, really fast way
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Another way to do it is you could always select a clip up here and drag the entire clip yourself down here
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That doesn't require any keyboard shortcuts, but now we have the entire beginning and
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the end of the clip. So we will have to do our t down here to kind of make it more aligned with our
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edit. And then you have the slider down here where you could kind of shrink down what you see here
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So if it gets large and you can't really see the entire project, this is kind of how you shrink it down
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and how you expand it out. Okay. So let's go ahead and delete this one because what I usually
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would recommend is go through your little clips one at a time and then just go ahead and press eye where you
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want it to start, go a little bit further, press O where you want it to end, and then press
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E to drop it down here. And it will just drop it right next to the other one. So if you look on the
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right side here, your video is going to start like this, and then it's going to go to this clip
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and then so on. And you will continue to tell your story. So I, O, E, there's my third clip
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and I will tell my story this way in the order that I want to tell them. Now, I'll also show you
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this resource here that may come in handy. depends on how in-depth you want to take your project, but this is called Invado Elements
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and I'll link this below as well. But with Invato elements, all that footage that you saw
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that I'm using right now in my edit, they're called stock video. So you could actually license those
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from this website, and then you could use them whenever you want, and they have over five million
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different stock video clips. So if I'm using myself talking, a lot of times I incorporate some of
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this into it to make it a lot more interesting of a video. So again, you could go ahead and
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search for all kinds of different things here. They have a search bar. They have an AI powered search
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too. And it's really easy to find exactly what you're looking for for your edit project to take
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it to the next level. This just doesn't have stock video. He has photos. It has templates. It has
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things for YouTube videos. It also has music too. And it has all of them in one bundle. So this is
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a subscription I pay for but I thought it's worth a mention because I use this for 70 years on all my
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video projects. Okay. Now let's go ahead and take a clip and put it down here. And I
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I'm going to show you how to trim a video that you just drag and drop
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Instead of putting I-O as an in point-out point, this is the entire seven seconds of this thing that was shot on my iPhone
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This one I shot myself. So we could actually trim the beginning by just dragging it like this
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And you could see it's shaving off a couple of seconds in the beginning. So it starts a little bit later
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And then at the end, we could do the exact same thing. We could just grab the end. We get these double arrows and bring it back
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And let's say right where he stops. That's the end. And I could preview it again
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up here really simple. Now you also want to change the order of clips. So maybe I want the video
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to end with the sunset. I could grab it and just drag it to the end. So this is a really easy way to do
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that. If you have a lot of clips and this is hard to do, just go ahead and shrink down what you see
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over here and then just go ahead and drag and drop any clip you want like this. And it will just change
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the order of clips. And what if you want to cut something in the middle of a clip, right? I showed you
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the beginning and the end, but the middle, there is no easy way to go ahead and drag anything. So
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To do that, just bring this white line where you want to make the cut. And there's another keyboard shortcut, which is if you press Command and B
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B is a blade tool. So Command and B creates this cut right here
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And if I go a little bit later here, I could do it again. And now I've made these cuts so I could select the middle part and just press delete on my keyboard
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And then I could maybe reorder that second part that I just cut out
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So that is Command B. It's always up here too. If you don't want to use keyboard shortcuts, this is modify and it's called split clip. Command B is the keyboard shortcut for it
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But I'm not teaching you too many keyboard shortcuts, but the ones I've covered so far is all you need to know
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So in point, out point, and E for adding it to your timeline. And then command B for kind of cutting it as splitting clips is all you really need to know as far as keyboard shortcuts go
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But it's going to speed up your editing a whole lot as you get more used to using those to kind of clean up down here
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but you could always visually do it too by just dragging and dropping things as I've shown you so far
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Let's go a little bit later. I'm going to drag this entire five minute clip and I'm going to add it down here
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And let's say this is me talking. Sometimes you want to add something on top of someone talking
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That's called B-roll. So to add B is really easy Let say I talking about these dials here in the submarine All I have to do is drag and drop it but I want to drop it on the second line right here So we have the first line as someone talking and then it going to go to this clip right here
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But the nice thing is it's going to keep the audio. You see this blue line. This is me talking
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So as it goes to this, it actually continues to show me talking
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I have it on mute right now just so I could talk through it. And if I want to just dial this back, so it's me talking
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talking, it goes to what's called B-roll here on another layer and it will come back to me talking
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but this entire time it keeps my voice, which is really, really nice. And I could also do this
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with images too. So let's say I'm talking about an image. I have this image here. So I'll drag
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the image and I'll put it on the second layer. This is four seconds by default. And it's doing a nice
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little zoom to it too. That does that by default. That's just part of iMovies ability. I'll show
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you a couple of different advanced settings that you could change if you don't want it to do this
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but by default it does this and I could shrink this down. Let's say, let's make it two seconds
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So then this is working with photos. It's going to go from me talking to this photo back to me talking
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Now, if you select the photo, you'll see some options up here. So let's talk about working with images a little bit
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Now, the most important one is right here, this crop option. If you select it, you could actually decide to do a different kind of animation or not at all
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So if I press fit, if I hover over this now, there's no motion to it
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But if I choose this Ken Burns effect, and I'll press play to show you that
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so it has that little nice zooming that we've already seen. So that is a nice way
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If you want to remove the Ken Burns effect, just click on fit, and it's going to fit
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You could also crop to fill here. So that's another option. Let me select that
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Crop to fill is going to let you actually zoom it in even more
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So if I wanted to just be really tight in the middle here, I could go ahead and do that
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and you could see it's a much tighter shell. of that photo. So this cropping option is a really good one. You also have things with color
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but I'm going to show you that in a little bit towards the end, and you have filters too that you
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could apply to images up here. I'll talk about color and filters a little bit later
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Okay, now let's talk about music. And if I show you that website again, Invito elements
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they have a music tab, and these are called royalty-free music. So most popular music has copyright
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You can't just put a music track and throw it on YouTube. For example, it's going to have a
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copyright problem. So you need something called royalty free music typically if you're going to share this
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publicly. Facebook, YouTube, they're all going to require that. So this is another reason why I recommend
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you find some kind of royalty free platform. Since I get my stock videos here, I also get my music here and
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they got a ton of them to choose from and you could go ahead and filter through. So this is the one I chose
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And all I have to do to add music is just grab it and drag it just like we do with video files
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But it's going to be a different layer. It's going to be down here. So this is going to become your music
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track. Now with music, sometimes especially if someone is talking, you want to select it and you want to
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lower the audio because right now it's fine if all of us showing was pictures or videos and nobody's
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talking. But if somebody's talking on top here, I need to lower it. So if you grab this and
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bring it down, you'll just have to listen to it. But typically around 10, 15% is going to sound pretty good
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So go ahead and lower this. If no one is talking, don't worry about that. You could just keep it at
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100%. But this is how you kind of change the volume of different clips
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Now, what if there is someone talking here and you don't want it right now
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You see this blue line right here that someone is talking, but I don't want them talking
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That's actually not part of the video. So this is working with audio now, this step
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And one thing you could do is you just lower this to zero. So this blue track now has zero
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So it was just me talking while I was filming that on my iPhone. I don't want that
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So you take it to zero. So that's a really nice way. You could always go ahead and press control on your Mac
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and then right click. That's basically right clicking. If you control and click, you get a right click
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And you could go ahead and detach audio. So then it puts the audio on a whole different track
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and you could kind of work with it a little bit differently or just press delete and he gets
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rid of it altogether. So that's another way if you want to kind of separate the audio from the
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video that has already video and audio in one track. That's one way to actually separate it. Now the
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music is going to be the only thing I'm going to hear. And here you could see the audio just keeps
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going but my video ended here. So remember that keyboard shortcut I showed you. You could
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select the audio, press Command B. So that cuts it and now I could select the rest I don't need
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and press delete. And I just want to make sure this kind of lines up to the end here
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I also want to show you fading audio out. So fading is just a nice way to kind of conclude an audio
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So it has this little line right here, this little dot, just drag it and this is creating a nice
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fade. So it's going to be full volume and slowly fade to nothing. So this is a little line
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a nice way to finish any type of music. You could also do this in the beginning too. So you could
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kind of slowly bring it in like this and you can make these phase as long as you want. You're just
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kind of drag it and it shows you how long the fade is. Usually about a second or two should be
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plenty for a fade in and fade out of audio. Now let's talk about transitions in our next step
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Transition is what happens when one clip ends and another clip begins. So what happens between them
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is a transition. Right now this transition is just a cut, meaning there
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There is no transition, so we need to add a transition. We don't have to though. It's very
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optional. A cut works just fine between clips. But to add a transition over here where we
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imported our media we have other panels So we have audio and video which we could also pull different audio clips and sound effects from here They do have a limited library of them that you could choose from You also have titles which I show you But right now let go all the way to transitions and with transitions so let say I want to cross dissolve
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If I drag and drop this between the two clips like this and you can see it's changed the
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middle right here. If I go over here and if I press space bar to play my video, that's a cross dissolve
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It's very nice, right? So I could delete that one and I'll show you fate to black. So some
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Sometimes you want this one instead, press play, goes to black, and then comes back out
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So these are creative choices here, which one you want to use. But typically I like these four
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Some of these like spin in, they're a little bit too cheesy for me, but that's what those kind of things look like
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So if you're making a slideshow, maybe that's a good option. But typically for more professional higher quality videos, you want to stick with the first four
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You also have backgrounds. So sometimes these come in handy, but these are different video clips like this
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So if you're creating a title, sometimes you want to want to drag and drop these backgrounds. So in this case, let me go ahead and add a background to the
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very beginning of this. Let's say we want this underwater background. It's a submarine video
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And you see if I'm putting this in the very beginning how I want the rest of it to get pushed out
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That's what you want because otherwise I don't want it to replace anything or be on top of anything
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So I'm going to grab it and do it like this. So it's going to start with this and then it's going to
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start our video. And in this case, let me put the submarine as our very first intro
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music got pulled away, so let's go ahead and bring that back to the very beginning of our project
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The reason why I want this background is because I want to put a title, which is this step
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which is adding text title. Go up here to add text, you have all these kind of pre-created titles
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that you could choose from. And some of the really simple ones are like these, slide. Okay, so drag
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and drop it on top. It wants to be the very first thing. And just like video clips
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you could just make these shorter and longer. So I'm going to go ahead and just make this just as long as this
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video background. Okay. So to edit it, just go ahead and click on it, double click on it
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It's going to load it over here. So you could type in your own text. And then when you
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type in your own text, you could go ahead and select that text and you have all kinds of
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editing format that you could go ahead and use to change it. And you also have color options
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available. You could also change the alignment. So these are just very basic things that you
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could do. Here's the little color thing that you could go ahead and change the color of your text if you want. Now it is limited on the
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how much you can move the text around. So it's usually best to find a text that kind of shows up
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where you want from these templates. And then you could always, you know, go ahead and kind
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of change their alignment this way as well. Now let me show you this video clip. So this next step
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is kind of changing the color or adding filters. So if you select any video clip and you come up here
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you have this little icon here. This lets you do kind of color correction. So if I want to kind
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of make it black and white, I could go this way. If I wanted to make it really vibrant, I could go
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this way. So you have some simple color correction here. The other option you have is this one
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right here and this one gives you filters. So you'll see over here you have ton of different filters
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and you could go ahead and just kind of go through each one and you could see the effect
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that is applying to your video. So if I wanted to make it black and white or even flip the video
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here, there's ton of different useful filters and if you click it, it's been applied. Now the final
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step is exporting, basically saving this video file as a complete video file with the music
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with everything it has, all the edits we've made, out of iMovie, somewhere else we could post
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like YouTube. So to do that, all I have to do is go to file up here and go to share. And then
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you have some options here and it's going to show you social media platforms, for example
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But I want to choose file. This is the one option that's the best one. He gives you some control
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and then save it to your desktop. Basically, just save it anywhere on your computer and then upload
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it from there. Now, all you have to do is name your project, which I did in the very first step
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But if you haven't, just go ahead and name it so you know what the video file is. It's going to give you some tags and things
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Video and audio is fine. We don't want audio only because we're doing a video file
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The resolution is fine. It's usually going to know which resolution your footage was made in
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So if you shot things in 4K on your iPhone, it will know that. But you could always change it manually here
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Mine is an HD. It's fine. Quality. I always leave it on high. This pro res is a massive, massive file
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So typically high is the best one you're going to get if you want to share it on the web
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And compression, if you have time, you could do better quality. Faster is just going to give you a very quick export
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but this is going to give you the best quality. So I recommend this. So these are the options I recommend over here
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It's going to show you how long it's going to take and it's going to show you how big the file is going to be
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This is 47 megabytes, very small file. Press next. And then it's going to ask you where you want to save it
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So I usually save it in the same place as my project. So I'm going to put it on my desktop here and I'm going to put it in the media folder
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and I could create a folder called exports or finished files or something like that
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And that is going to go over there. So I'll save it there. And now if I go to that media folder, I have something called export files
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And there it is. I'll just go ahead and make sure I'm on mute. I'll press space bar
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And there it is. We have our title with the animation. We have the different clips here that we added
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And we have our outro and it has the music and everything else. We've added to it ready to be posted from here
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And that's your crash course on Imovie. but if you really want to master iMovie and learn all the little tips and tricks of editing
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I've been editing for 15 years and I've put together an entire course that shows you how to really take a project from beginning to the end
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with all the things IMovie has to offer. So I'll go ahead and link that in the description as a resource if you want to take this further
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Thank you so much for watching this video and I'll see you next time
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