iMovie® '09 & iDVD® '09® For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Precision Editing

In This Chapter

• Adding comment and chapter markers

• Fine-tuning a cut

• Editing video and audio separately

• Using greenscreen compositing

• Putting Picture in Picture in play

• Employing cutaways

Removing excess footage, stabilizing shaky video, and rearranging your clips are basic editing operations, and we cover those in Chapter 6. Adding titles and transitions and employing video effects are intermediate editing operations and we discussed those in Chapter 9. Themes and Maps were explored in Chapter 8.

In this chapter, we hit upon some advanced editing topics, most particularly a new iMovie feature that Apple has dubbed precision editing, hence this chapter's name. Precision editing also encompasses the use of some common video presentations, such as picture-in-picture and green-screen composition. We also discuss adding chapter markers to be used with iDVD and comment markers that serve as reminders while editing.

Marking Frames

When you're browsing through your project's video, you invariably come across frames where you want to add a title, adjust the audio, or perform some other operation. You could stop each time you encounter such a frame, perform the desired operation, and then go back to browsing. We've tried that and found that we often got sidetracked, losing the browsing continuity as we went through the editing process. Similarly, when you're planning to ...