Video Editing with iMovie for Beginners

1. Introduction: Hello everyone and welcome to this iMovie course for beginners, where you're going to learn how to edit the video from start to finish. My name is Dan and I'm a photographer and the YouTuber. And when I switched from Windows do Apple computer, this is a tutorial I would have liked to help me get started. You're going to see the interface of the program, how it works, how to import your footage, how to add a soundtrack or enhance the audio of your video. How to trim and cut unnecessary parts of your video. How to add images, text, transitions, how to color grade, how to record a voiceover. And lastly, how to export your footage with the best settings. So if you're interested, feel free to join the course and I'll see you on the other side. 2. Getting Started: Let's begin with a course. If you've recently bought an Apple computer, you probably already have iMovie installed. However, if you don't, you just have to go to Apple's website and download the program. So once we do that, let's fire it up. If you don't know where your program is, you can use Spotlight to find it. So Command Spacebar and we just type iMovie. And this is the first window that we're going to see. So we come here to create new. And it's going to tell us if we want to create a movie trailer or a movie. So in this case, we want a new movie. And this would be the main window and interface of the program. 3. iMovie Interface: Now let's talk a bit about the interface of the program. We have three main windows which are important, as you can see here, it says import media, so this would be the browser. So this is where we're going to look for our footage inside of a computer, or where we're going to drag and drop. Here to the right, we have our preview window and we're going to see or actual video and some adjustments that we're going to make later on. We have our play button forward, backwards. We can make it bigger or smaller, and we also have our voice-over button there, we're also going to cover later on in the course. And lastly down here we have our timeline and as you can see, it says drag-and-drop video clips and photos from the browser above to start creating your movie. So once we import our media here, we're going to drag and drop here to our timeline. And then we're going to see in real time here to the right. And if we come up here, we have our media, our audio, in case we have any type of music files in our library. We also have some titles, backgrounds and transitions, and we're also going to cover these later on in another lesson. So now let's import our footage and start editing our video and seeing how everything works. 4. Importing Footage: So now let's import our media. We can either click here on important media or we can click on our keyboard command plus I in this window shows up. So in my case, I'm going to look for the footage on the desktop. And here I have one video, and here I have another video. So let's say I want to input these two clips. I'm going to hold Command and click on both of them. And now Import selected. And as you can see, my files show up here. And now if we move our mouse on top of the clip, we can have a preview of what we filmed. So backwards and forwards. Later on I'm going to show you how to import other types of footage like images. But in this case, we're going to start with our video as it is. So let's move on to the editing process. 5. Cutting and Trimming: Now that we have imported our footage, Let's select by clicking and dragging. And now that we have both selected, we're going to drag them to our timeline. But let's say I want to change the order and I want this clip to be the first one in the video. So I'm going to click on it and drag and drop at the beginning. And now the order is how I want it. So this clip is the first one. In this clip is the second one. So this is a quick video I filmed in my coda in Japan on a very beautiful beach. But it's a bit too long for an introduction. It's 13.4 seconds. Let's say I want to make it a bit shorter. And instead of beginning here, I want to start here, for example. So as you can see, when I move my mouse on top of my clip, we have this vertical line which tells us where we are inside the clip. So let's move in here and let's start the video here. What I can do now is right-click and hit Split tip. Or I can hit Command Z to go back. I can also do it with my keyboard as a keyboard shortcut, which would be Command B. So if I want to start here, I just hit Command B on my keyboard. And the video is now split into two. So this is the part that I don't need. And this is the part that I want to keep. So now I can click here and either right-click and delete or press Backspace on my keyboard. So let's delete that. And now the video starts here. So let's click Spacebar to play. And Spacebar again to pause, space bar to play. And the spacebar going to pause. And let's say, I don't like this view too much. So let's go back and I want to end here. I'm going to hit Command and B once again to split the video once more. And I'm going to remove this part here by clicking and hitting backspace on my keyboard. So now let's see how that looks. Instead of 13.4 seconds, now that clip is 7.3 seconds. Now let's go from the beginning. Let's click Spacebar. And it jumps to the next clip. That's much better. And we can do the same thing here. First, let's move our mouse over our clip and see which parts of the footage we like and which words we don't like. Of course, if you want to keep the whole clip, you can. So that's okay. But in my case, for this tutorial, I'm going to trim and remove unnecessary footage. Let's say I want to start here. For example, once again, I'm going to hit Command B on my keyboard. And let's see how this looks. That's much better. Okay, Let's say I want to finish the video here for example. So I would hit once again command B, or I would right-click split lip, and then I will delete the footage that I don't want. So I'm going to click here and Backspace on my keyboard once again. And let's see how that would look like. So as an example, it looks good enough for me. But let's say you went a bit overboard cutting and trimming. Or you can do is come here to the beginning of the clip for example. And as you can see, there's some arrows that pop up. If we click and hold, then we can drag to the left. And as you can see, our previous footage shows up once again. And we can do the same thing here. Let's come to this clip here and move our timeline so we can see it. And if we want to recover the ending of this clip, we press and while we hold it down, we drag it to the right. And as you can see, we're recovering the footage that we raised previously. So it will look like this. So these are two different ways of cutting and trimming your video. Now let's move on to audio. 6. Audio Levels and Soundtracks: As you can see here under our video footage, we have a wave or a wave form. Up here we have our video and down here we have our audio. Let's make this bigger so we can see it clearly. We're going to come here and we can zoom in here and zoom in or zoom out. So we click and drag or zooming in to make it bigger. And now let's go to the beginning. And I want to make the old timeline bigger. So we come here to settings. And down here, lips, eyes. We move it to the right to make it bigger or to the left to make it smaller. And you want to make sure that show waveforms is selected. Once again, let's go back to the beginning. And as you can see, there's two different colors. On our waveform. We have blue and a bit of yellow. Blue is our optimal audio level. Yellow means it's a bit too loud, and red means is just clipping. It's unusable. So first of all, we want to make sure that there's no red on our waveform. And second, we want to try and make sure that everything is blocked. So as you can see on our waveform, when we hover our mouse on top, these two little arrows pop up. We can move it up, or we can move it down. Up, makes the volume louder and down means the volume quieter. So as you can see, if we go too high, it starts getting yellow and red. And as I said, you don't want any red. So we're going to bring it down, and now everything is blue. So that will be an optimal level. And here as you can see, there's a small line or yellow. Let's bring this down a bit. But let's say you are doing client work or you record audio and video separately, which is what most pros do. And you don't want to use the internal microphone on your camera because they sound awful. Which are going to do is select the clip, right-click, and then come here to detach audio. And as you can see now, we have our video on one side and our audio on another. So if you record a different audio source, you can import it here into our browser and then select it and bring it here. But now let's say you want to add a soundtrack to your video. So let's hit Command Z. And that's come to the second flip. And let's say during the second clip, you want to add a soundtrack or some music. So we're going to do the same. We're going to select our footage, right-click and detach audio. And now we're going to select this waveform and we're going to delete it so we can right-click and delete, or we can hit Backspace on our keyboard. And now this clip is just video. It doesn't have any audio. So what we're gonna do now is on our keyboard press command I to import. And we're going to look for our sound file, in my case this MP3. So I'm going to click here Import selected. And now I have my song here. And I'm going to click and drag down here. And now this clip without a soundtrack, but as you can see, it doesn't start right at the beginning of the video. So I'm going to move this audio file by clicking and dragging to the beginning. And as you can see, there is a vertical yellow line that's snaps it into place. But now let's say we want the audio to fade in and fade out. As you can see here at the beginning, there's a blue dot, and at the end there's another blue dot. So if we click and drag to the right, you'll see there's a curve here. If we click and drag to the left, there is also a curve. So now the audio would fade in here, and it will fade out here. And if we want to go back, as always, we can click Command Z to go back once and Command Z once again to go back. But there's also another way to edit the audio. If we select our audio clip here, we can come up here to this icon here, which says volume. And we can also choose automatically improve loudness. And click here. And as you can see, this changed, or we can remove the auto and it goes back to normal. Or we can also bring it up here or bring it down. And if we want to go back, we can click Reset and it goes back to the original audio. We can also come here to the noise reduction and the equalizer and use some of the equalizer presets that we have here. I don't recommend them only for voice-over, but we're going to see that in a bit. Audio clips and soundtracks. I never touch this. I only touch the volume icon or I edited here. And now that we know how to edit our audio and add a soundtrack, let's see how to add titles and text to our video. 7. Adding Text and Titles: So I've started a new project using only the first clip so you can see everything clearly. This is our video and let's come up here to titles. And as you can see, there's many different options. What we're gonna do now is hover our mouse from left to right on top of some of these titles to see the type of text and the effect. So for example, this one here. If we bring our mouse on top and we move from left to right, we can see the effect as well as the type of text. So let's try this one. For example. Let's move from left to right. And this would be the effect and the text. Or this one for example. Let's move from left to right. And this would be the text and its effect. I want to try this one. So I'm going to click and then I'm going to drag it onto my timeline. And I'm going to drop it here. Okay. Now, let's say I want to bring the text to the end. I click and drag. Or I wanted to text. At the beginning, I click and drag once again. Or I wanted in the middle. So I just click and drag and leave it here. So let's say I want to edit my text. I double-click here. And I can type on my keyboard whatever I want to. So for example, this is a test. And let's see how that will look. So let's click here spacebar to play, or we can play here. Spacebar. There's the text was the animation, and then it disappears. So I think it looks quite nice. But let's say I want to change things up a bit. I double-click once again. And here, There's some options so we can change the font. For example, let's say this one here. This is a new font. And we can also change the color of the text. So for example, instead of white, we can make it red. And let's see how that will look like. So now we have a different color and a different font. So anytime you want to change the texts, you double-click here. And then you can change the font to any font that you want. You can also make the text bold, or you can also outline the text. And this is what it would look like. And if you want to erase the text, you just click on it. And then right-click Delete, or is always Backspace on your keyboard. And you can try any kind of text. So let's say for example, this one. Let's drag and drop. And you can also edit the text here by clicking here, or by clicking here. So you can double-click here or inside the preview window. And lastly, if you come here to where it says auto, we dropped down the menu. We can change the size of the text. We can make it smaller or bigger. Let's see how it will look like. Let's bring our play head here. Spacebar to play, and the space-bar to stop. And that's the way to add the text and titles to your video. Now I'm going to show you how to import images, how to add them to your video, and how to change their size and position. 8. Adding and Resizing Images: Now let's say we were here and we want to add an image. So we're going to move back to My Media. And we're going to import media or hit Command I on our keyboard. And then we're going to look for our image. In my case, it's this one here, this cool Japanese flag. Let's import selected. And now it shows up here. So as always, I can take and press the Plus icon and it will bring it here. Or if I click Command Z, I can select it and click and drag wherever I want it. So let's say at the beginning of the video, and let's see how that would look. Let's press space bar to play. So that's the image, but as you can see it as a weird animation. So what we're gonna do is we're going to come up here where it says cutaway and we're going to click. And there is a drop-down menu and we're going to select picture in picture. And it also says dissolve. And instead of 0.5, which is the transition duration, we're going to just use 0. So what we have to do is come here to this blue icon here, which says cropping. We click on cropping. And by default, images that you add to your timeline have this Ken Burns animation. What we want is the style to be fit. So we click on fit. We click this once again. And now let's see how that would look like. So now as you can see, the image stays still and doesn't move, and doesn't have any kind of animation. And of course, we can click and drag to any part of the video that we like. So let's say here and let's see how this would look like. So if we want to edit the picture, we double-click and always try and remember to use picture-in-picture dissolve and 0, that way your image won't move. Now let's say you want to change the size and the position of your image inside the frame. As you can see when we double-click here, we have four dots that can help us resize our image. And we can also move it inside our frame. And I movie tells us the horizontal line and the vertical line to make sure it's properly aligned inside the frame. Let's say I wanted like that. And here for example. So let's see how that will look like. So now you know how to add an image on top of your video footage. Now let's move on to adding transitions. 9. Smooth Video Transitions: Now we're going to add a transition between two clips. So we have our first clip here. Let's import our second clip once again. So Command I on our keyboard, this is our second clip, so Import selected. And now let's bring it onto our timeline. And let's see how this would look like without any transition. So as you can see, it's a very harsh cut from one clip to another. So we're going to add a transition to make it smoother. Come up here next to titles and where it says transitions. And we have different types of transitions. And like before with the titles, if we hover our mouse from left to right, we can preview the transition. So for example, this one from left to right. And this is how it will look like, or let's say this one here from left to right. And you can do that with each and every one of them. Slide right, for example, from left to right. Okay, so let's say we want one flip to slide right to the next clip. So we click and drag and drop it here in the middle. And now as we can see, we have a transition here. So let's see how that would look like. Let's move our play head here. Hit Spacebar. I think that looks much, much better. And also as you can see, the second clip is inside a train, so the movement of the transition fits quite well. Let's see that once more. Spacebar. I think that looks perfect as it is. But let's say you want to edit the transition a bit. Where you can do is double-click. And this shows up. So you can change the duration of the transition and it says apply or apply to all. In this case we only have one condition. But if we add more than one, we can apply the same effect to each and every one of them. So let's say instead of 1 second, we want 0.5. And let's apply. Let's see how that looks. So it's much quicker. In my case, I prefer 1 second, but if you want to make it quicker, you can. So let's go back to 1 second. Apply. See how that looks. I think that's perfect. Let's try with a different transition. So we select it and we hit backspace on our keyboard. This is the original. Let's see this one, for example, wipe down. Okay, so let's click and drag to the middle. We let go. And let's hit Spacebar to see how it looks. And of course, you can play around with any transition and you can use more than one in your videos. I don't recommend using 15 or 20 transitions, but 12 or three transitions. That's okay. And it makes your video look a bit more professional. Now that we've seen transitions, Let's move on to color grading. 10. iMovie Color Correction: Imovie is a basic and free software, but it does allow you to improve the white balance and the color of your footage. So that's what I'm going to show you now. Let's remove this clip here. Backspace, and let's remove this transition backspace as well. Go here to my media, so there's less clutter here. So first we're going to select our clip. And we're going to come up here to this icon here, which is color balance. And we can click Auto. And as you can see, this changes the whole color over clip. And sometimes it can do a good job. I usually don't use this option, but if you want to, go ahead, we can also come here to white balance. And this allows us to look for a white spot on our image and click on it. And it also changes the color of our whole clip. So if you have something that's 100% white, like a white shirt or a piece of paper or something that's white. You can select it from your footage, click on it. And that's going to change the whole white balance of your video. If you'd like it, you click here. If you don't, counsel. So let's cancel. And now let's move on to color grading. So let's select our clip and we come here to this icon here, color correction. And here we have our color grading. So here to the right, we can make the image cooler. If we slide to the left or warmer. If we slide to the right and we can reset. But we can also change the lights and the shadows. So if we click on this dot here, we can make areas lighter or darker as it says here. So if we click and drag to the left, you can see the shadows are becoming much darker. If we drag to the right, they're becoming lighter. And that's recent one more time. And we can do the same here. If we click and drag to the right, the highlights become much lighter or darker. And we can also do the same with these dots here. We're changing the contrast of the whole video. So as I said, it's not a super professional color grading, but for me I think it does the job. And remember, this is free software included with your computer. So in my case it's more than enough. Let's say the highlights are a bit blown out here. So let's bring this down a bit. But let's make this warmer. And let's bring the shadows down a bit. Let's Play. Nothing that looks much better. There's a bit of contrast. The highlights are not so blown out and the shadows are a bit darker. So that's the way to color correct your footage. And now let's move on to recording a voice-over. 11. Recording a Voiceover: What we're going to do first is come here and select this clip. Right-click and detach audio. And we're going to select the audio and we're going to erase it. So Backspace on our keyboard. And now we're going to record our voice-over. We're going to click this icon here. And this shows up. And as you can see, there's two lines with dots here. This is our audio volume. So if it's green, it means it's at an optimal level. But if I raise my voice too much, it turns yellow and that means it's starting to clip, so it's too loud. And we want to try and keep that level green, which means it's loud enough, but not too loud. So let's go to the beginning of the clip. And when we want to start recording our voice are going to click here. The countdown starts. And then we're going to start recording. And we can keep going on and on as long as we want. Once we finish recording or a voice, we're going to click Stop. And as you can see, we have our audio here. And now we can click on the audio and we can move it to the end or to the beginning. And now we would have our video with the audio that we just recorded as a voice-over. This is very useful, for example, for this type of videos, online courses, or tutorials, or any kind of video where you want to record your voice separately. So it's extremely easy. And like before, we can come here and the volume louder or bring it down. And once we're finished, we can get here done and it goes back to normal, or we can click back to the microphone icon. However, there's a recommendation. Once you've finished recording, you can come up here to this icon here, noise reduction and equalizer. And as you can see, when you're recording a voice-over, it'll automatically chooses voice enhance. However, I don't recommend this profile. I do recommend leaving it flat. Take a look at the wave form here. Right now it's on voice and ends. That's changed too flat. And as you can see, the waveform is much different now. So I do recommend keeping this on flat. You can try obviously to use voice, enhance music and dance loudness. Maybe it suits your voice, but in my case, at least flat is the best option. So keep that in mind. And now that we've covered almost everything in the previous lessons, let's learn how to export our footage with the best settings. 12. Best Export Settings: Let's say we've finished editing our video and our audio, and we've added all the images, transitions, and voice-overs that we wanted. Now we're going to export our footage. So we're going to come up here to the upper right corner. This small icon here. We're going to click there. And this box pops up. So we can either choose to upload to YouTube and Facebook or e-mail. In my case, I do recommend exporting file to our computer, and then later on uploading to YouTube for example. So let's click on Export File and this window shows up. So here we're going to change the title. So for example, test footage Japan. And you can add a description. So this video is about Japan. You can also add tags. You can change the format if you want to. If you're only editing audio, for example, in my case it's video and audio. You can change the resolution. I recommend leaving it in 10 ADP and you can change the quantity and the compression. So compression setting, I always choose better quality for you have to be careful here in quality setting. So by default it's set to high, and I do recommend high or custom. If you know what you're doing, you might be tempted to use best, but take a look at the file size. If we choose high, it's going to be 413 second clip, 34 megabytes approximately. But if we choose best progress, this will be 209 megabytes for 13. Secondly, if you're editing and you're going to upload a YouTube video that's five minutes long. Instead of 100 megabytes, maybe it's one gigabyte. So the difference is huge. Yes, progresses better, but I think it's not justified. So this will be 34 megabytes, doesn't take up space in your computer, and it doesn't take up much space if you want to send it to another person. Obviously, bigger videos take up more space. But as I said, I do not recommend selecting best progress quantity only high. And of course, once you're finished, you can click next. And then you're going to choose where to save your video. So if you say desktop and Save, it's going to start exporting the video here. And that's done. Let's bring this down. And as you can see here, movies, test footage, Japan has already been saved. 13. Class Recommendations: Congratulations. Now you know how to edit the video from start to finish with iMovie. If you like the course, feel free to subscribe to my bro phone as I keep uploading other courses. Imovie is a program for Mac OS. So if you just bought a new Apple computer, I do recommend this course, for example. And if you're interested on becoming a YouTuber in using iMovie to edit your videos. I can also recommend this course where you're going to learn YouTube SEO and how to rank your videos. So thank you very much for watching my course and hopefully I'll see you in the next one.