iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Full-Screen Playback

You can make the Viewer window bigger to get a more detailed view of your video using the ⌘-8, ⌘-9, and ⌘-0 keystrokes; see Adjust or Relocate the Viewer. But eventually, you'll want to treat yourself to iMovie's IMAX mode: full-screen playback. That's when all the controls and menus of iMovie itself disappear, and the video fills your entire monitor. Here again, iMovie offers different approaches:

• Play from the pointer. Point without clicking to any spot in the storyboard. Then press ⌘-G to begin full-screen playback of that selected video.

• Play the entire storyboard. Click the Full-screen Playback button (identified in Figure 3-10) to play your storyboard from the beginning. Choosing View → Play Full Screen does the same thing.

Note

In theory, ⌘-G is the keyboard equivalent for the View → Full Screen command. But they aren't, in fact, equivalent. ⌘-G is the only way to begin full-screen playback from a specific spot. If you choose View → Full Screen from the menu, iMovie begins playing the storyboard from the beginning. (It has to—since you moved your mouse to the menu, you're no longer pointing to a certain spot in the video!)

Figure 3-10. Top: Click the Full Screen button to begin playback of your entire storyboard from the beginning.Bottom: During full-screen playback, if you wiggle your mouse, you get the navigation filmstrip shown here at bottom. Click the filmstrip, ...