Quick Tip: Adjust the Audio of a Picture with a Secret Trick

"What, what? Pictures don't have audio right?"

You're right. They don't. And iMovie doesn't think they do either. If you select a still image in your project and bring up the Inspector, you only get two choices: Clip and Video. The audio tab doesn't appear like it does for video clips. At first glance, that seems right because pictures don't have an audio track to adjust.

But what if you are making a slideshow and you want your background audio to duck (get quiet) under a specific picture for dramatic effect? Well, without the audio tab and the ducking checkbox that comes with it, you'd have to go through the very tedious process of dragging in three overlapping copies of your song and cutting them with precision so that they just sound like one copy of the song that gets quiet at just that point.

OR YOU CAN USE THE SUPER-SPECIAL SECRET TRICK!

Alright, fine. It's not that special, but it is really useful. Hopefully you noticed that the above image of the Inspector is a little weird. It's showing you the audio adjustments panel, but there's no Audio tab to select. How did I do this, you ask?

The letter A. Just select the picture in question and hit A on your keyboard. The shortcut works with pictures, even if the Inspector doesn't think it should. So now you can adjust the background audio behind a still image. Duck away!

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What is iFrame?

You, like me, probably wondered what the heck iFrame is when you saw it listed in the recent iMovie Software Update. My initial reaction was that the consumer video space needs another format like a kid's sandbox needs cats. As is usually the case with Apple, there's more to the story.

iMovie Friendly
It turns out that iFrame is a new format Apple is promoting. Based on h.264 and AAC, the format is optimized for iMovie. How so? Well, it doesn't require lengthy conversion times before you can edit it, the way AVCHD does. It also comes in a default resolution of 960x540, the same size that Steve Jobs said was plenty big when he first introduced iMovie '08. This, presumably, is more processor friendly than typical h.264 clips that suffer in skimmability while editing. Basically, iFrame video is ready to go and smoother to use as soon as the files get off your camera and onto your Mac.

Being in the middle of a YouTube generation, the difference between iFrame's resolution and HD seems to not matter a whole lot. If you're putting your masterpiece out there, you'd choose HD. But if you posting the birthday party footage for your friends and family, a video format that's easy to edit and share fits the bill nicely.

The (Near) Future
Sanyo is the first manufacturer to offer iFrame capability in any of its cameras. Today, it announced the VPC-HD2000A and the VPC-FH1A. Both look like nice hybrid cameras, since they also shoot 8-megapixel stills. They can also shoot 1080p video, in what appears to be MPEG-4.

Finally, don't expect Sanyo to be the sole purveyor of iFrame cameras. After all, Apple is making a heavy-duty move into the consumer video space through its iPods and iPhones. I expect all of Apple's video recording devices to shoot in iFrame before too long. If shooting HD on an iPhone has too many space/power/battery life limitations, I'd be okay with "HD-esque". After all, I'm recording it on an iPhone, not a Red One.

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iMovie Software Update Out: Version 8.0.5

A new version of iMovie hit your Software Update recently, this one being version 8.0.5. According to Apple:

This update improves compatibility with a number of devices and fixes other minor issues, including:

* Improved compatibility with camcorders using the iFrame video format
* Improved compatibility with importing video captured on the iPod nano
* Fixed problems with resizing the iMovie window during playback
The update is recommended for all users of iMovie ’09.

The update is only 36.9MB, so it's a pretty small one. As always, tell us about your experiences in the comments!

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Link: MacCreate Tutorials

One of the great websites out there for learning to use the whole stable of Apple's creative applications is MacCreate.com. The site covers all of the iLife apps, iWork apps, and even the Pro apps. The tutorials are easy to read and range from basic to advanced.

Here you can browse a list of over 50 iMovie tips and tutorials:

MacCreate iMovie Posts

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Quick Tip: External Hard Drives and iMovie

For those with a lot of footage or projects clogging your hard drive, iMovie '09 made declogging substantially easier by letting you store both events and footage on external drives. But there are some limitations, mysterious in nature because the iMovie documentation doesn't detail them. If your external drive is connected, shows up in the Project and Event lists in iMovie, but has a yellow caution symbol next to it, let's dispel the mystery with two important tips:

1. Your drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended or Mac OS Extended (Journaled), formats otherwise known as HFS+. If it's FAT-formatted, for example, you have a drive that iMovie will display in its list while taunting you with the caution symbol. If this is your problem, you'll need to use Disk Utility in your Applications->Utilities folder to reformat the offending external drive. Remember, "reformat" is the obscure technical term for "ERASE!"
2. Your drive needs to be fast enough. Where does iMovie draw the line? Well, thumb drives and network drives are automatically disqualified. Editing video requires a lot of bandwidth between your computer and the drive storing the video footage. Thumb drives and network drives are usually too pokey. I'm told you can overcome this limitation with symbolic links, but at your own peril. If you don't know what symlinks are, this will tell you more than you need to know.
   

Hopefully these two little tips will get your footage and projects right where you want them.

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What Camera Do You Use for iMovie?

I occasionally get requests for camera recommendations, especially as they relate to iMovie. I thought it would be interesting to pose the question to everyone:

What camera do you use with iMovie and why?

In my family, we've used a Canon TX1 for almost two years. It's a hybrid that shoots 7 megapixel stills and 720p video. Our favorite thing is its size, which means we use it all the time, taking it with us most places we go. The 10x zoom is great and the controls make it really easy to shoot either pics or video without having to fiddle with switches. The video files, though large, work great in iMovie.

We don't like its low light performance, which is pretty poor. We've also dropped it and had it repaired twice, once under warranty and once out of warranty, but Canon does a quick turn around and the repair cost didn't break the bank.

It's definitely not a camera for everyone, if for no other reason than its ergonomics. But my perfect, family-friendly camera would shoot stills and HD video and would fit comfortably in my pocket, so this comes pretty dang close. (Plus, we bought it *new* for around $300, which was a hard deal to pass up.)

Please take a moment to tell us what camera you use with iMovie and why.

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Great Deal: Creative Vado HD for $129

I know I just spent a whole post questioning the viability of these little devices with the iPhone 3G[S] coming, but this deal is definitely worth passing on.

Today only (June 16), Amazon is selling the Creative Vado HD for just $129. That's $100 off the list price. This little camera shoots 720p in h.264 and has 8GBs of storage built in. That translates to two hours of footage before it fills up.

Despite the great deal on this camera, it's not quite ideal. To get the iMovie compatibility, you'll need to transcode the files it produces with something like Quicktime Pro or MPEG Streamclip, a free video conversion utility. This isn't a perfect situation, but a lot of Mac users seem to like this camera in spite of this drawback. It will definitely do the trick until the iPhone HD comes out next year.

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