iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

All About Events

At the lower-left corner of the iMovie window, you see the Event library. It's supposed to be a massive repository of all the video on your entire computer, from all sources (Figure 2-10).

Figure 2-10. When you click an Event name (left), iMovie shows you all the video clips that it contains (right).

It's organized like this:

• Last Import. Click this heading to view, in the clips area, all the video clips that you most recently imported from your camcorder. Often, this is precisely what you want.

• iPhoto Videos. Click this icon to see all the movie clips you've shot with your digital still camera (not your camcorder). In the Great iLife Master Plan, of course, it's not iMovie that handles photos and videos from still cameras—it's iPhoto. So here, iMovie is giving you handy, one-click access to all the videos that you've imported into iPhoto from your still camera.

• 2009, 2008, 2007… These year headings organize your camcorder video collection into annual clumps. Click the flippy triangle to expand or collapse the year heading, so that you can see all the video batches within it.

What you actually see in one of these expanded lists is all the individual import jobs you performed during that year, each with whatever name you gave it. If you click one of these Event names, the right side of the window shows you all the video clips inside it.

Fine-Tuning the Events List

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