- Today I'm gonna show
you 10 iMovie editing tips and tricks, that you can start implementing
into your next video. I have some tips that are
gonna save you so much time when it comes to editing, as well as some cool
tricks like doing this, and this, all inside of iMovie. - [Sean] You gotta just press record. - Hey, my name is Nolan
Molt with "Think Media." and before we jump in to tip number one, I'm gonna have timestamps
for all these tips and tricks in the description below, as well as our pinned comment, so make sure to check that out. Without further ado let's
jump into tip number one. For this first trick I want to add this little thumbs up button right here, and move it down here when I'm talking, with a sound effect to notify
people to like the video. So the most important thing is to find an image
online that's transparent, that means there's no background. So, back here it looks like
this is a black background, but really there is no background, and I'm gonna show you
when I drag this over you're gonna see that it's see-through. Now this is not what we
want it to look like, we're gonna fix it. But you definitely want
a transparent background when using this effect. And so, let's start by
placing it where we want. So I want it to start right here. Footage actually to edit inside. Last a few seconds, and then
have a go away right there, so it's three seconds long, and I'm gonna zoom in on this
by dragging this this way. Now that we're closer up let's adjust some of the settings
so that it looks good. First of all, the crop is weird, it's like copped in way too close. So we're gonna go into cropping, and instead of Ken Burns
we wanna go to Fit. Because we have a square picture, if we go to Crop to Fit, you're gonna see that you can't fit the entire thing in there. So, we're gonna go to Fit, and that is going to give
us the correct cropping. And then the next thing we need to do, is go up here, and go
to Picture in Picture. Now you're gonna see it's a lot smaller, and that nothing is cropped, and we're able to, if we select this, move it around and put
it wherever we want. You can make it bigger by
dragging these blue dots, or smaller by doing that as well. I want it right here, I'm
gonna make it a bit bigger, and then all we need to do is
change a couple more things, and add a sound effect. So if we play it right
here you're gonna see that there's a dissolve,
footage actually to edit. I don't wanna dissolve, I want it to pop right into the video. And so if we go back into the
settings for the dissolve, we're just gonna turn
that to zero seconds. Hit the blue check mark. Now we're gonna watch it again, and it should pop up, and pop out. And I'm gonna use some of this footage, actually to edit inside of iMovie, so you guys can see. Perfect the last thing to do
is to add our sound effect. So I have this pop sound effect, that will match perfectly with this image. Now I'm gonna zoom it as much as I can, because I really want this sound effect to pop right when it comes on. So, right there is gonna be great. Gonna use some of this footage, actually. We will probably even turn
it up a little bit more, to maybe 200%. Some of this footage actually to. Awesome and then what I'm gonna
do, is I'm gonna select it, I'm gonna hit Command + C to copy it, then I'm gonna come over here to the end, put my cursor down, and
hit Command + V to paste. Let's watch it back. Some of this footage actually
to edit inside of iMovie, so you guys can see what that looks like. Now you can use any image you want. You can make your own image,
you can have it say subscribe, subscribe and like this
video, whatever you'd like, and this is just kinda showing you what you can really do an iMovie with this Picture in Picture effect, and then again making
sure it's transparent so that it overlays really
nice onto the video. The second trick I'm gonna show you guys, is how to do a speed ramp in iMovie. And if you don't know
what a speed ramp is, stay tuned I'm gonna show you right here. So, right here we have some
120 frame per second footage, that I wanna slow down so
it's 24 frames per second, making that 20%, you
know, slow-motion speed. 100% would be its normal speed, this is what the eye
would see 20% slowed down, and so I'm gonna start
by, we'll use this clip, and I'm gonna just drag this on here, and you're gonna see something that iMovie will automatically do, they add a speed ramp for you. So, right here in the beginning it starts off at its normal speed, I'll play it through, and then right when you see
this little dot right here, and the symbol, it goes to slow-motion, and then picks up again, And I'm gonna show you how
to tweak all these things, as well as another way
to do the speed ramp. So, let's just watch this through first. Boom, it slows down, does a nice smooth transition
into that slow-motion, but as you can see, this
shot is way too long, and so I kinda wanna change it up. So what I'm gonna do is, you
can grab either one of these, you can grab this top one, or
you can grab this bottom one, and I'm gonna show you what both do. So, this top one is actually
gonna change the speed, and so I don't wanna touch that yet. I will get to it in a second. But this one is going to change where it either speeds up
or where it slows down. So if I move this around, let's say I want her to be in slow-motion while she turns her head. So right here it's ending
while she turns her head. I'm going to zoom in, move this so that it's in slow-motion, all the way until right there, okay? And so, I want the
slow-motion to kick in here, so I'll bring the other
one to start right here. Really, the only thing that changed is how long the slow-motion. Boom, and then it goes
back to its normal speed. So let me zoom out. I'm gonna drag this one over, I'm gonna zoom back in so that I can make some
better adjustments. Basically, if you look at that filmstrip, just think of it as a start and end point for your speed ramp, okay? So where this one is first, this is going to be the
start of the slow-motion, this one's the end of the slow-motion. So I want it to start right
as she turns her head. Let's watch that now. Awesome, so I love that. I think that's a really cool shot, and then boom, back to normal
motion, that's pretty sick. So this top piece, if I move that it's
actually gonna start to mess with the slow-motion
settings, and so you'll see, if I grab this one right here, and I start to stretch it
out, this is going to be, this middle part, it's
gonna be even slower, but I don't want that
because if you go too slow it starts to look choppy, so I'll drag this out just to
show you what that looks like, and let's watch it again. All right, see how that
looks pretty choppy, it's 'cause it's way too slow, and so I do not wanna do that. And you'll see as I
keep moving this closer, the turtle is gonna change
from a turtle to a rabbit. The rabbit means it's going faster, and then the turtle means that
it's going in slow-motion, and when you see nothing
that means it's at 100%. So right here there should
be no change happening. Okay, so nothing changed there, because it's at 100%
in all three sections. And so if we drag this out we can make that slow-motion again. Now if you're having trouble with this, sometimes it can be a little weird to mess around to get your exact timing, I'm gonna show you another
way to do this speed ramp that might be easier for you guys. So, we're gonna start by
dragging our clip down again. You're gonna see it still
has this built in speed ramp, so we wanna go up here, select this, and change the speed back to normal. Okay, so now we have our normal clip, and it's gonna look kinda weird because it's shot 120 frames per second. It just looks kinda jittery, but that's just because it was shot in 120 frames per second. So, this is it at its normal speed. So again, I'm gonna zoom in, and I want this look back
to be in slow-motion, and so what we're gonna do is
we're use the range selection, by holding down the R key on the keyboard, and select the parts that we
want to be in slow-motion. Okay, so that is the clip
I wanna be in slow-motion. I'm gonna let go of R, and
I'm gonna go up to here, select Speed, and change it to Slow. Now, here you're gonna have some options for your slow-motion
10%, 25%, 50%, or Auto. I want mine at 20%, and you
don't have that option in here. So what you can do, is
if you go to Custom, you can actually dial this
in to exactly what you want. So for me I wanted 20%. Now you notice it's put in these symbols, so I can still use these
to make adjustments if I need to do that. Perfect, so this slow-motion
part is that 20%, which is exactly what I
wanted, and then boom, it goes back to 100% right here. And again, what's nice
is I can change this. Let's say if I wanted to start right here, I can just drag that
over and boom, it's done, simple as that, that's
how you do a speed ramp. So those are some pretty
cool editing hacks inside of iMovie, but stick to the end of the video where I'm gonna show you some
of the best export settings, for exporting your video in iMovie, as well as some shortcuts that are gonna save you so much time, and save your life when
it comes to editing. Tip number three is using
green-screen in iMovie. So I'm gonna show you how
you can use a green-screen explosion like this, or you can even use a
subscribe button like this, and overlay it on top of your video. So I'm gonna show you
how to do that right now. You wanna start with your base layer, and for me I'm using the shot of me running down this alleyway. So I have this clip of me
running down the alleyway. I wanna add in an explosion
right as I leave the frame. So, first we're gonna find what part of this green-screen do I wanna use. Then you're just gonna drop it
right on top of your footage, and to get rid of the green background you wanna click on this right here, and change it to Green/Blue Screen, and it's already gonna do
a pretty good job for you, and then in here you have
some options to change this. I think it looks best probably
if I turn the softness all the way to the right. And then, it's not a pretty good job with cleaning everything
up, so we're basically set. Now, what I need to do now, is just set up the right
timing for the explosion. So if we watch it through right now I kinda get blasted
right in the explosion, so I'm gonna just drag this to the right, and it's really as simple as that, in iMovie you can just
drag it to the right, and I'll drag it even a little bit more. So right here is maybe when I want this explosion to happen, okay? So, here is what it looks
like with the correct timing of the green-screen (fire booms) Awesome, now utilizing
green screen footage is a great way to have fun in iMovie, you can find a lot of free
green screen footage on YouTube, and then do a converter, and
that's what I did for this. Obviously, this isn't like
the best explosion, you know, it's not the most realistic, but it's a fun way to
practice using green-screen, and to express your
creativity inside of iMovie. A more realistic way of you guys using this green screen footage, could be by using one of
these things right here, a subscribe button, if you wanna add that
to your YouTube video, it's really easy when you're
using a green screen in iMovie. So let's take a look at this. Boom, subscribe, hit that bell, you can add in some sound effects, and you got a pretty
professional-looking YouTube video going on with these graphics. Now if you wanna learn how to actually move this green screen
button maybe down more, or make it smaller and in
the corner, I have a video, you can click on the card
right now to go watch that, and it's a little bit more in-depth on how to use green screen in iMovie. All right, the next trick is to use the audio effects in iMovie. And so, I have a little scene here where I'm talking to someone
aka myself on the phone, and let me show you what
that looks like first, and then we'll go ahead
and add the effects, and you'll see how much
better it makes it. All right, so here I have
my footage of me reacting to the phone call, and we're gonna not do any
audio effects on this one, and then I'll show you
what we're gonna do next. Hello, oh my bad. All right, now I want
to add the phone caller, which was myself in this instance, and I'm just going to grab
this and drag it underneath, and it's automatically gonna
turn it into an audio file. So when I let go it's
placed on the timeline. Now I just need to line it
up perfectly with the video. All right, so let's watch this through, and then I'm gonna show you
how much better it sounds when I add a little audio effect. Hello, hey, I'm just calling 'cause, we'll, you forgot to hit the
like button on the video. Oh, my bad. All right, so it sounds pretty good, but we're gonna make
it sound a lot better. This audio clip doesn't really sound like it's coming through the phone, and so if you click up here you're gonna see that
there is some effects. So, you have some that you
can use for video effects if you wanna make it in black
and white, or blockbuster, you know, if you wanna use
any of these you can do that, but a lot of people don't know if you select the audio effects, let me select my audio first, you can then change your
audio to one of these effects. Hey, I'm just calling 'cause, we'll, you forgot to hit the
like button on the video. If I wanna sound like a
chipmunk I can do that, or. Hey, I'm just calling 'cause, we'll, you, that's a little scary, forgot to hit the like
button on the video. But for this one, I wanna use telephone, because I want it to sound like it's coming through the telephone, so let's select the telephone, and let's listen back to it now. Hello. Hey, I'm just calling 'cause. First things first, I'm gonna turn it up because I feel like the
effect kinda made it quieter, so I'm gonna turn that up to about 250% and we'll take a listen now. Hello, Hey, I'm just calling 'cause, we'll, you forgot to hit the
like button on the video. Oh, my bad. So that sounds way better, it
sounds a lot more realistic, like it's actually
coming through the phone, but really it was just an
audio effect on this audio. Tip number five is a really cool effect that I use all the time when editing, it's called a J cut, or it could be an L cut depending on when you use this effect. Let's watch these two clips and see what it looks like before a J cut. (water splashes) Cheers. (slurps) All right, now I'm gonna
add a little J cut, and you wanna start by
detaching the audio. So, if you right-click
you can hit Detach Audio. Now, what I wanna do is, I wanna have the audio actually
come in on the previous clip before this footage is even shown. So I can drag the audio like this. Cheers (slurps). But now you notice the audio is off. So I need to trim this end until
those two right ends align, just like that. Cheers (slurps) But also, this audio right
here is kinda ruining the shot, so I'm gonna hold down R, and I'm going to mute that
audio by pulling that down, and that is how you can
get rid of that audio. So let's hear what it sounds like now. Cheers. (slurps) I think that's pretty cool. So I really use that all the time. But one tip here is that
you wanna fade in the audio. So, this audio is going to fade down, and this one is going to fade in, and that just gives a
really seamless transition from one clip to the next. The reverse of this would be an L cut, and we're gonna do the same thing here, we're going to right-click, we're gonna detach the audio, then all I wanna do here is
start to shorten this clip so that the audio overlays the next image, and let's see what that looks like now. Some average coffee,
out of a french press. Now, I used to work at a coffee shop. One last little power tip and trick, that kinda goes into what we're doing here by detaching audio, is really making clips
seamlessly come together. And so, if we right-click, and we detach the audio on both of these, I'm gonna show you what
it sounds like before we do this trick. You're gonna notice it's a
little rough when it cuts, because the other one is louder. So the audio gets louder. It's just kinda a harsh cut, and so here's something that I do a lot, is I extend both of these audio clips, and then like I talked
about, I just fade in, and fade out each of the clips, and this helps the cut
to go a lot smoother. I would probably bring this audio down. We can even extend this
one and then all the audio just kinda seamlessly
goes into the next clip. So let's listen one more time. (water splashes) That sounds awesome. Just by detaching that
audio, extending it out, and just fading them in
and out of each other, it's gonna make your
cuts way more smoother. All right, this next trick
is a pretty cool one. I'm gonna show you how to clone
yourself inside of iMovie. First let me give you
some tips on the footage that you're gonna need
to make this happen. First off your camera cannot
move at all when filming this. And you wanna be in complete manual mode. So manual focus, you don't
want auto white balance, you wanna put it on daylight
or whatever fits your scene, and then all your other
settings, do not touch them. I don't even press the stop button, because any little tiny
movement of the camera will ruin the shot, so I
recommend doing what I did here, doing it in one clip and then
hitting stop at the very end. And then if you can, you wanna use some sort of studio lights. I used a window, and you're gonna notice that the lighting kinda subtly shifted, and
that kinda ruins the shot too, and so there's a way to kinda
fix it that I'll show you, but the best way to do
it is under LED lights, or some sort of softbox, or
whatever lights that you have, use those instead of
like, outdoor lighting, because that can also ruin your shot. So, we're gonna start by dragging down my first performance of me
on the right side the screen. So this is the beginning
of my second clip. This is where I want it to start, so I'm gonna hit I, and you're gonna see that it's
gonna be my beginning point, and then I'm gonna play it through and figure out where I want it to stop. I mean, come on, if you
if you like cameras, if you like YouTube, just
subscribe to "Think Media." You should. That's where I want it to end. So then I'm gonna hit O, and that is my selection that I want. Before dragging this
on top of this footage, what you wanna do, is
you wanna go to the crop, but you wanna make sure this is selected. So that's selected. Then you're gonna wanna hit Crop. Once you hit Crop you
wanna cover only the parts that you are in, you do not wanna cover up any sort of part where your other clone person is. And if you can, you wanna at the very top, and the very bottom, it's gonna make it easier when
I show you how to do this. All right, so we're
gonna hit the check mark, and we are going to drag that
right on top of our clip. Now that they're lined up, you can see this doesn't look right, this needs to be on the left side. So I'm gonna select it again, and this time we're gonna go over here, and we're gonna go to Picture in Picture. It automatically makes it really small, but we can scale it back up. So, it's gonna kinda snap to the grid. So, as it snaps to the
top, snaps to the left, we're then just gonna take
this bottom right-hand corner and drag it out to the
bottom of the screen. We're then gonna hit the check mark, and you're gonna see it's not perfect because there was a little
bit of a cloud that came over. This shot is a little
bit darker than this one. It's not the end of the world though, how you would fix that
is you'd go to this, and you wanna just change your highlights, your mid-tones, shadows, and adjust all those so that
it looks as clean as it can. So as I adjust this a bit
brighter, I knew it was darker, so as I just a brighter, this line right here's
starting to go away, because these shots are now starting to look closer together, and it's still not perfect, we can still see a little
bit of a line right here, so I'm going drag this one, and bring it up a little bit higher, and it really just takes some fine-tuning when you are fixing this kinda stuff, but you can get them pretty close. Like, right now, I don't
really see a line there, and this is starting to look really good. So this is looking pretty good, but if we go to the very
beginning I kinda of. I mean. Do a ghost effect there, which
I don't wanna have happen, so I'm gonna click on
the Picture in Picture, and then go to zero, because I do not wanna
have any sort of dissolve. Now, let's watch this
and see how it looks. I mean, come on, if you
if you like cameras, if you like YouTube, just subscribe to "Think Media," okay. There you go, you have a clone effect right inside of iMovie, Who knew iMovie is better
than After Effects? If you're enjoying this video so far give this video a thumbs up, and comment down below, and let me know how long have
you been using iMovie for. With this next tip it's very
similar to our first step, with a Picture in Picture effect, but using it in a different way. So here I have another transparent image. I'm gonna drag that
over my clip in the sky, and you can see it's a planet, and I'm just going to do exactly what I did in the first tip, making it go to Fit, and then
going to Picture in Picture. Now, I just want to kinda
frame it into my shot, and we're starting to get sort of a sci-fi looking shot here. We're gonna change the dissolve to zero, and now we got almost like
a sci-fi looking scene here, because we have a planet
up here in the sky, and so using Picture in Picture, it doesn't have just to be for
subscribe and like buttons, you can do some kinda cool effects, like a moon or a planet like this, and so you can get creative with it. If you wanna go even more in-depth, you can do some key-framing
with your Picture in Picture. So I went to our backgrounds, and I used this educational still image, and here on top I have
a transparent plane. So I am gonna Fit the plane, and then make it a Picture in Picture, and get rid of the dissolve. So here I have a plane, but
it's just sitting still. I want it to fly across the map, and how you do that is
by using key-frames. So if we go back to our
video overlay settings, you're gonna see this
little button right here. That is for our key-frames, and so we want the plane
to go from North America, all the way over to Africa. So we're gonna set our
first key-frame right here, because we want the
plane to be right here, and then I'm gonna hit play, and right there is where I
want it to land on Africa. So if you don't see it, all you gotta do just kinda click on it, and and it's automatically
added a new frame, 'cause you can see the X right here, that means there's already
a key-frame on top of it. If you hit the X it's gonna get rid of it, okay but we're gonna drag it over here, it's added that key-frame for us, and that's just two key frames. We have one here at the beginning, and actually I can hit this back button and it will take me to
the first key-frame, and then you can see right
here it jumps forward, and that's our second key-frame. So I'll hit the check mark, and we can take a look
at what this looks like. And there you have some
key-frames right inside of iMovie, which is pretty cool. But the plane doesn't look natural, because it's not going the way that the front the plane is going. So if we go to the cropping
we can actually kinda flip this plane around,
and hit the check mark, and now it's looking a bit
more natural, going to Africa. This next tip is going
to save you so much time, because I use these every time
I edit, and I use them a lot, and these are keyboard shortcuts, and I'm gonna share
just some of my favorite and most used keyboard shortcuts, that I really do use every
single time that I edit. The most common one that
I use is the spacebar. It's my play and pause, so if I hit the spacebar the
video is gonna start playing. I hit the spacebar again and it stops. And so you can hit the play button, and the pause button right here, but it's so much easier for me to just use the spacebar to do that. The second one that I use
is the zoom in feature. So most of you know that right here you can zoom into your clips, and zoom out on your timeline, but sometimes that isn't
just the most efficient way to do it. So I like to use command
minus to zoom out real quick, and then if I wanna zoom in on a clip, if I'm like trying to edit
something that is a short clip, or I'm trying to go like, frame-by-frame, I would hit command
and then the plus sign, and we are going to zoom in. That makes it way easier for
me to make a really micro edit by zooming in, rather than
it being way out here. The next keyboard shortcut
I use all the time, and this one probably saves
me the most amount of time, is my copy and paste. There's kinda two ways
to think about this, there's copy which you hit Command + C, and then if I go right here,
put my playhead right there, if I hit Command + V it's
gonna paste the clip. But the one that saves me
the most amount of time is actually when I hit Command + C, and then I go to my next
clip and I hit Command + V. The reason why I do this, is for example, if I want to copy a crop,
so this image is cropped, but I want this image
to be cropped as well, I would hit Command + C, and then I hit Command + Option + B, and that is going to crop the same amount. You can also do this with audio. If I want all these clips to be muted I can just mute one of
them, hit Command + C, and then select all these
clips, hit Command + Option + V, and now all those are going to be muted. Now this one I use a lot as
well, and that is command + Z, and it undos what you just did. Let's say I accidentally
delete my entire project, I select it all, I hit delete, and it's gone forever
until you hit Command + Z. When you hit Command + Z
it undos what you just did, but maybe I wanted to
delete the whole project, then I could hit Command + Shift + Z, and that will redo. And I'm telling you, I make so many mistakes where
I accidentally do something, let's say I make it black and white, and then I'm like, (groans)
I did not mean to do that, I just said Command + Z,
and I'm back to normal. This next trick I'm gonna
show you how to turn any video of yours into a time lapse. So, here I have a 13
and a half minute clip, and I'm gonna drag the entire
thing down into my project, and then to turn it into a time lapse you're gonna select the clip, go up here to the speed button, and we are gonna change our speed to Fast. Here you're able to make it two times, 40 times, eight times, 20 times faster, and you're able to get
that time lapse effect. Even though I put it to 20 times speed it's still not fast enough, I mean this clip is 40 seconds long, and I really want it to
be like five seconds long. So what you can do, is
you can go back to Custom, and then here you're able to change it to whatever you'd like. So, instead of 2,000%
let's put it at 10,000%. Now it is an eight second
clip so let's try 12,000%. Six second clip, let's take a
look and see how this looks. Awesome, so I think that looks super good, and you can definitely use this
if you're shooting the sky, or a car's coming by, whatever kinda time-lapse you wanna do, this is a great way to
do it inside of iMovie. Now this last tip is going to give you the best export settings, so that you can get the best
video quality from iMovie. After you spent all this time in editing, you really wanna make
sure that you're exporting it the right way, so that you don't lose any sort of quality when you put it on to YouTube. So we're gonna go to File, then to Share, and then to File again, and we're gonna have some
settings to mess with. When it comes to resolution, the higher the number the
higher the resolution, the higher quality it is going to be. So if you shot it in 4k you
would have an option here. We shot it in 1080p, and
we want it to be in 1080p. We wouldn't want it to be in 720, because that is goning
to be a lower quality. When it comes to format, we want our video and
audio to be exported. Now when it comes to the
quality you have a few options, I think it really comes
down to three options, we don't wanna use Low,
we don't wanna use Medium, if we're trying to get
the best video quality. You're gonna wanna use
High, Best or Custom. And I've done tests on all three of these, and in my opinion the best
quality you're gonna get is using Best ProRes. But, there is a catch, and it's actually not
the best one for YouTube, and I'll tell you why. First let's take a look at High. This clip right here is
gonna be 17 megabytes, and if I change it to ProRes it's a hundred and one megabytes. Now that's a lot more storage, and so if you don't have a
lot of storage on your iPad, your laptop, your iMac, then
you do not want to use ProRes. You would wanna use High,
or you'd wanna use Custom. Now, custom is at 20 megabytes per second, and you can see that's what
actually High is using, because it's the same file size. So if you wanna get a
little more extra quality, you can drag this all the
way up to its maximum amount, and this is only gonna go up a little bit, it's not a hundred megabytes,
like the ProRes was, but this is actually gonna give your image a little bit more of sharpness, and a little more higher quality, and so I did test on all three, this is going to be the
second best after ProRes, but ProRes is barely better,
it's not a whole lot better, it's just a little bit sharper, but this is a very close second, and for all that storage
that you're gonna save, you're gonna wanna use Quality, Custom, and then turn this up all the way, and when it comes to compress, I think the default is on faster, but if you want the best quality
leave it on better quality, and then you're ready to export. Here, you can title your project and tell your computer where to save it. When you hit Save it starts to export. And a lot of people don't know, you know, how long it's gonna take. If you click this right here it shows you that it's
exporting time lapse, and when that circle goes away, you're gonna get a notification that your share was successful, and your export is complete. I hope that helped you
with editing an iMovie, now you can go shoot some footage, and then start using some
of these tips and tricks in your next edit. Now, if you're interested
in getting better footage to edit and sign up iMovie, we put together a playlist for you guys that you can click on right now, you can learn all about
lighting, and audio, and cameras inside of that playlist. I hope you guys enjoy and
I'll see you in the next one. (upbeat music)
