iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Full-Screen Playback Mode

Whenever you’re tempted to play your movie-in-progress, consider clicking the Play Full Screen button (the darkened triangle to the right of the round Play button). It makes the playback—even if it’s already underway—fill the entire computer screen.

Tip

Remember that iMovie 4 lets you select nonconsecutive clips in the Timeline Viewer. You could, for example, select only clips 1, 4, 8, and 11 (by

-clicking them).

In full-screen playback, iMovie even plays only the selected clips, even if that means skipping over some of the clips in your Movie Track. That’s a huge advantage when you’re experimenting with different sequences of clips—for example, when you want to show people a certain sequence with and without an intervening shot in hopes of asking their opinion.

To interrupt the movie showing, click the mouse or press any key on the keyboard. (The usual Macintosh “cancel” keystroke,

-period, ironically, doesn’t work in this context.)

Note

The quality of the full-screen playback still isn’t the same pristine, crystal clear playback you’ll get when you transfer your finished movie back to your camcorder for TV playback. In fact, it’s little more than a blown-up version of what you see in the Monitor window while editing your movie. If it’s grainy there, it’s enlarged-grainy ...