PE1_iMovie

In the next few posts, I’m going to share my learning experiences with you as I journey through the Lynda.com iMovie ’11 Essential Training. My objectives are to become familiar with the website as well as to learn how to use the program.

Before now, I hadn’t had the opportunity to use iMovie or any other iLife applications, but I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is—very intuitive. Part of what makes iMovie so easy to use is that it has a one-window frame, divided into several panes, which places everything you need to make your movie right in front of you.

The first half-hour or so of the training takes you through an introduction and tutorials on getting started and importing video as well as understanding the interface. In the following screenshot, you will see the iMovie’s one-window frame with some video clips that I’ve imported from the training’s accompanying exercise files.

iMovie '11 Screenshot

Top windows in the frame are devoted to projects. There is a project pane on the left, where you can drag in video clips to form your movie; a player on the right; and just off of the project pane, a project library that houses your projects. Bottom windows are for events. They show an events library on the left, which lists imported video footage, organized by event; and an event browser, which displays content selected from the library.

So far, I have two notes about iMovie: (1) the top and bottom panes can be switched but the player stays put; and (2) there is no save option because iMovie automatically saves changes.