Tutorial 8 • Video Editing with iMovie

iMovie is a free editing program for Mac OS and is available on the App Store. The program provides an easy-to-use interface for editing videos—deleting parts of the video, adding titles and transitions, deleting audio, and adding voiceovers.

Recording Video

Record a video with a DSLR camera set to video or with a smartphone. For ePub 720-pixel resolution should be adequate. Save the video clip to disk.

Editing

1. Open iMovie, import your clip, and drag it to the editing area.
2. To delete parts of your clip that you don’t want, move the Playhead to the place you want to trim the video and select Modify > Split Clip. Then select the unwanted portion and delete.
3. Add a Fade from Black at the beginning and Fade to Black at the end (both are called “Fade to Black”).
4. Add a title by choosing one from the Title Gallery. The title can start on the Fade from Black or on the video itself.
5. iMovie can crop videos, but the original aspect ratio (height to width) must be maintained.

Voiceover

1. To add narration (voiceover), record the narration in Apple QuickTime Player (File > New Audio Recording) and save to disk.
2. Drag the audio recording file into the movie and place underneath the clip where you want it to start.
3. If you want to remove the existing sound, select the clip, choose Modify > Detach Audio, and then select and delete the audio portion.

Export

To save your movie for inclusion in your ePub or iBook, select File > Share > File. Choose the quality level that you want.

Place

1. To place your video in a fixed-layout or reflowable ePub, place the video file on its own page in the InDesign file and then export to ePub.
2. To place in an iBook, drag-and-drop the video file into an iBooks Author page.

Instructional Video