iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Four Ways to Remodel Your Workspace

iMovie '09 is refreshingly respectful of your screen real estate. It offers a bunch of different ways to maximize your working area without the hassle of buying a whole new monitor.

Hide the Projects or Events List

Once you're working on a movie, you don't need the list of projects staring you in the face. iMovie gets this. As soon as you open a project, iMovie hides the list of projects, giving you more space for the storyboard itself. (You can always bring the Projects list back by clicking the Project Library arrow in the top-left corner of your iMovie window.)

You can hide the Events list as well, and for the same reason: because when you're editing your Disney vacation video, you probably don't need to be staring at the list of other vacation footage. This time, choose Window → Hide Event Library, or click the Show/Hide Events List button (Figure 2-14). The list goes away, and the video-clip area expands.

To bring the Event list back, repeat the procedure. You can also use the Hide and Show commands in the Window menu to hide or show the Project Library and the Event Library.

Tip

You can also make the font bigger in the Projects and Events lists (see Fine-Tuning the Events List).

Make the Clips Smaller

In iMovie '09, your video clips are represented by filmstrips—multiframe horizontal strips whose lengths are proportional to the clip duration. You can read more about filmstrips in Chapter 3.

For now, it's enough to note that you can adjust the size ...