iMovie 6 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

What’s New in iMovie 6

iMovie 6 represents only a light overhaul of the program, so iMovie veterans won’t have a lot to learn and unlearn.

Big-Ticket Features

Here’s a summary of the really big improvements in iMovie 6, the ones that Apple either advertises or should:

• Full-size previews. When you’re setting up a video effect, title, or transition (crossfade), you used to have to preview the results in a tiny, Triscuit-size window. In iMovie 6, though, the entire full-size Monitor window shows the preview. It loops over and over, changing its display in real time as you fiddle with the settings of your effect.

• Themes. A theme, in iMovie lingo, is a prefab, canned, professional animated graphic that you can use for opening credits, section dividers, end-of-movie “bumpers, “and so on. Actually, they’re not entirely canned. Each Theme design contains big holes called drop zones that you can fill with your own photos or movies, so that the result looks like it was tailored just for your movie. (The Themes match the menu-design templates in iDVD, too, so the whole thing can have a consistent look when burned to DVD.)

• More than one movie open at once. No longer must you close one movie project before opening another. In fact, you can have 10 of them open at once, for ease in comparing versions or copying material (or drag-and-dropping material) between them.

• Audio effects. iMovie 6 offers a new, sweet suite of audio-processing effects. There’s a graphic equalizer to bring out (or throttle ...