iMovie walkthrough, part 1

As a follow-up to our iMovie tutorial meeting on Tuesday, I'm posting this picture-laden walkthrough of the basics of how to use iMovie.

First of all, you're going to need to go to the editing computer in Kelly and Mark's office -- this if of course assuming that you are going to use that computer. You might have iMovie installed on your own Mac in your own office. In that case, use whatever you feel comfortable using. Note, there are two computers at the editing station. You're after the big, aluminum one, not the plastic-cased one.

For those of you unfamiliar with Macs, there's a little jobber down at the bottom of the screen called the Dock. You may have to hover your mouse down in the bottom-middle of the screen to make it appear. When it does appear, it will look something like this. You'll need to click on the iMovie icon to start the program -- it's the on that looks like a blue and black clapboard, sixth from the left.

When iMovie opens, you'll be presented with the basic editing screen, pictured at left. If you're starting a new project and this screen isn't blank, go up to the File menu and select "New Project" to start making a new video.

You'll next need to get videos off of the Flip camera and into iMovie so you can start playing with them. Connect the Flip camera to the computer. Go back to the computer's desktop and find the icon for the Flip camera. Open it, navigate to the video files, select the ones you want, and drag them into iMovie. It's as simple as that.

There's another method too: Go to the File menu and choose the "Import" option. You'll be allowed to choose a directory from which to upload your video files. Just select the ones you want and click "open" to start the import process.

It will take some time for the videos to be imported. That time will depend on the size and number of video files you're importing.

When the import is done, you'll be presented with the basic editing screen again, only this time it will show that you have some video files to work with.

Okay, that's enough for one post. I'll follow up with another that gets us into actually editing the video files in iMovie.

Related posts:

1. iMovie walkthrough, part 2
2. iMovie walkthrough, part 3
3. Making your computer play the Flip video files (Mac version)
4. iMovie tutorial tomorrow
5. Making your computer play the Flip video files (Windows version)