Hi everyone, I was surfing around looking for more effects and transitions to load onto my iMovie software. I found plug-ins for effects, transitions and titles on Mac downloads that really enhance your movie capabilities. I highly recommend them to you. Here is what you do. (1) Open a window on the web.
(2) Open "apple support" on your menu bar
(3) Open "downloads"
(4) On the right hand menu, scroll down to Apple Software - iMovie
(5) Open: iMovie Plug-in Pack 2 Document and Software (it should be your first choice)
(6) Select the plug-in: North American English-software (234k) When your plug-in has completed its download, un-stuff it (open it by double clicking the icon to install it onto your hard drive -- you'll find the software (plug-in) in a folder on your hard drive titled "downloads") Drag the plug-in folder to iMovie folder - Resources - plug-ins -- this will automatically load the new effects etc. on your iMovie software (we can do the same for the G4's in the lab).
Other tips: Tip #1: If you want to subtitle (available with the new plug-in) under an image, de-select "over black" in the titles section (as you would with any of the titles, this allows you to put text over visuals).
Tip #2: Remember that you can adjust the speed of any of the transitions in order to make them fit between your clips. Because transitions must load and borrow time from the nearby clips, your transition speed will depend on being less than your clip length.
Tip #3: Clips are timed as minutes:seconds:fractions of a second i.e., 00:04:28 (4 and 28/60 seconds)
Tip #4: The film 'tempo' and 'rhythm' needs to be viewed in playback (you cannot estimate this by looking at the clip and seeing the time until you have a sense of timing).
Tip #5: If the audio quality for the on-camera talent is poor, it would be best to write down exactly what was said, then repeat the words onto SoundEdit or Sound Companion. This is called ADR (additional dialogue recording) and it is frequently used to improve the quality of the vocals on film. The trick is to watch the video as you record the voice in order to match the timing of the words (so that it doesn't look like a Jackie Chan film) ;-)
Have fun with your editing! I only wish that we had one more visual track to create some really neat superimposures (maybe we can get Final Cut Pro in the future)... Cheers Anne-Marie