iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Recording Narration

If anyone ever belittles iMovie for being underpowered, point out an iMovie feature that isn't even available in most expensive video-editing programs: the ability to record narration while you watch your movie play. If your Mac has a microphone, you can easily create any of these effects:

• Create a reminiscence. As the footage shows children playing, we hear you saying, "It was the year 2009. It was a time of innocence. Of sunlight. Of children at play. In the years before the Great Asteroid, nobody imagined that one 6-year-old child would become a goddess to her people. This, then, is her story."

• Voiceover. The technique of superimposing an unseen narrator's voice over video is called a voiceover. It's incredibly popular in TV, commercials, and movies (such as Saving Private Ryan, Sin City, and of course, the Look Who's Talking movies).

• Identify the scene. Even if your movie isn't one with a story line, iMovie's narration feature offers an extremely convenient method of identifying your home movies. Think about it: When you get photos back from the drugstore, the date is stamped across the back of each photo. In years to come, you'll know when the photos were taken.

  Video cameras offer an optional date-stamp feature, too—a crude, ugly, digital readout that permanently mars your footage. But otherwise, as they view their deteriorating VHS cassettes in 2025, most of the world's camcorder owners will never know where, why, or when their footage was shot. Few people ...