iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Travel Maps

Just in case you didn't get the memo, here's some big news: iMovie loves travel footage. Maybe Apple did some rigorous focus-group research, or maybe the Apple programmer behind iMovie '09 just loves to travel. Whatever the reason, if you travel, iMovie has a special place in its heart for you.

Travel Maps are the grandest token of iMovie's travel-love. These are basically animated maps that take viewers from Point A to Point B with a snaking, animated red line across a map or a globe, à la the Indiana Jones movies. They're great for conveying your itinerary details in a quick, visually compelling way. Although you might think of them as transitions—after all, they fill the space between things, in this case places, much as transitions do—iMovie doesn't think of them that way. To iMovie, they're specialized video clips.

Adding a Travel Map

In the middle toolbar, on the far right, is a button with a globe icon (see Figure 5-15). Click it to open the Maps and Backgrounds pane. At the top of the list are eight different animated map options: a globe version and a flat version of four different map styles. There are also non-animated versions of each map style you can stick in your project as images. Scrolling down, you'll find a bunch of images that look nothing like maps (hence the "and Backgrounds" part). These are just pictures that you can use, for example, as backgrounds for titles.

Figure 5-20. At the top of the Maps and Backgrounds window are eight different animated ...