Many students and faculty who visit the Learning Studio are new to video editing. Apple’s iMovie software comes free on all Macintosh computers, so it’s the most obvious place to begin.
The iLife suite–including iMovie, iPhoto, and GarageBand–is available on any Macs in the Learning Commons or Learning Studio. iMovie was designed around the ability to organize, edit, and share your video as quickly as possible. With the addition of the tapeless camcorders, now available for checkout in the Learning Studio, this means you’ll have your clips loaded and ready to edit almost immediately.
Here are a few ways you might use iMovie for projects this semester:
- Import footage from a checkout camera or mobile device and cut it into a short video.
- Bring images from iPhoto or the web and assemble them into a narrated slideshow with panning effects.
- Combine still images, video footage, and audio tracks to create a basic digital story.
Getting Started
For those new to iMovie, here are a few short videos to help get you started.
ORGANIZE AND EDIT VIDEO
- Importing Video from your Camera
- Marking your Favorite Video
- Trimming Edits between Video Clips
- Adding Photos
- Adding Background Music
- All New Audio Editing in iMovie ’11
- Adding Titles
- Cropping and Rotating Video
- Adding Transitions
- Add a Voiceover
- Slow down, Speed up, or Reverse Video
- Publish to YouTube
- How to Save an iMovie Project (by Lafayette College)
What’s Next
Once you’ve gotten some experience in iMovie, you also have the opportunity to work with pro video editing systems in the Learning Studio: 
- This summer we upgraded to the new version of FinalCut Pro X, Apple’s next-generation video production platform. For a detailed comparison with iMovie, Apple offers this summary of features of FCP X.
- We continue to support Adobe’s Creative Suite products and have the latest version of Premiere Pro and After Effects Pro.