iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

The Precision Editor

In editing jargon, a cut is the place where one clip ends and another begins—the crossroads where clips meet. A well-designed cut looks very professional, even if it's subtle. For example, you might cut between two birthday parties that happened in the last year. To make the cut really cool, you could move from one birthday to the next using the exact moment when the candles are blown out. One of your kids would lean down to blow out the candles, and the other would stand up smiling. The effect forges a connection between the two birthdays, even though they happened at different points in the year.

The Precision Editor, an innovative tool debuting in iMovie '09, makes cuts like these—cuts that would involve many steps in a professional editing tool—remarkably simple. Assuming you already have two clips needing a refined cut between them, using the Precision Editor on a cut would go something like this:

1. Call up the Precision Editor.

   You can get to the Precision Editor in several ways. The easiest way is to double-click the space between two clips. But if a clip is already selected, you can also choose Window → Precision Editor or press ⌘-/. You get the same effect by clicking the icon on the clip itself and choosing Precision Editor.

   Note

   If you placed a transition between two clips (About Transitions), double-clicking the transition's icon brings up the Inspector ...