iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Edit Menu

The Edit menu contains all of the editing commands described in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. In fact, along with the various drag-and-drop editing techniques described in this book, the commands in the Edit menu are the only tools you need to build your movies.

Undo

In iMovie, you can take back not only the last editing maneuver, not only the last 10, but an infinite number of steps, all the way back to the last time you opened iMovie. The ability to change your mind, or to recover from a particularly bad editing decision, is a considerable blessing.

The wording of this command changes to show you which editing step it's about to reverse. It might say Undo Merge Events, Undo Split, and so on. Keyboard shortcut: ⌘-Z.

Redo

We're only human, so it's entirely possible that sometimes you might want to undo your Undo.

For example, suppose that you've just used the Undo command a few times, retracing your steps back to a time when your movie was in better shape, and then decide that you've gone one step too far. That's when the Redo command is useful; it tells iMovie to undo your last Undo, so that you can step forward in time, redoing the steps that you just undid. (If you haven't yet used the Undo command, then Redo is dimmed.) Keyboard shortcut: Shift-⌘-Z.

Cut, Copy, Paste

You can use the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands just as you would in any other program: to move stuff around. You can cut, copy, and paste whatever you've selected: entire filmstrips or just chunks of them.

For example, ...