video editing - imovie and iphoto

[bcnmac]

Hi,

I was hoping I could get some feedback based on your experiences. I have all my pics and videos from our iphones in my iphoto library.

I want to edit the videos through imovie. There is a lot of superfluous video from all the iphone videos. But it seems like I can reject part of the the clips that come from iphoto.

Is there a better way to organize the media files? I tried importing an iphone video into imovie, but it seemed to get transcoded into a larger file.

Thanks!

 

[Dave Braine]

iMovie is designed for editing your video clips, rather than storing them, which is why they end up in iPhoto when you import from your iPhone.

I make a Project in iMovie of just the bits that I want, then Export As a Movie, store that in the Movies folder and then delete the imported clips from iPhoto.

 

[bcnmac]

Thanks for the reply.

So you delete your iphone videos from iphoto once you have a edited video? Do you reimport this to iphoto for syncing?

I meant to say before, imovie will NOT let you reject iphoto clips. That is my frustration also. There are standalone videos in iphoto (kids, trips) that are cool, but with a worthless minute at the end.

I hoped I could multitask in imovie (edit videos together and clean up clips) but I have not been able to figure out how.

 

[Dave Braine]

So you delete your iphone videos from iphoto once you have a edited video?

In general, yes.

Do you reimport this to iphoto for syncing?

If you mean synching back to your iPhone, I don't bother, but you'd probably need to put the finished movies into iTunes to do that, not iPhoto.

 

[bcnmac]

Thanks for your reply.

I guess I'll have to edit the videos and then delete the originals. Do you know if the rendering time is quick? Does the quality change? It seems laborious for a trim. (it just seems counterintuitive).

I'm not trying to edit them together, rather I'm trying to clean them up. It's unfortunate that I can't do that from imovie.

I'll import them back into iphoto to keep all the kiddie pics together.

Thanks again!

 

[Dave Braine]

I'm trying to clean them up. It's unfortunate that I can't do that from imovie.

I think you mean iPhoto, because you can certainly do that from iMovie.

If you open a movie from within iPhoto, it opens in Quicktime. Quicktime has a Trim function, so you might like to try that. See here:
http://www.mactips.info/2009/10/how-to-trim-a-movie-with-quicktime-player-10

 

[bcnmac]

Wow! Great idea. I didn't even think about that.

What I said about imovie, though, still stands. The clips I import into imovie I can trim and reject sections of. The iphoto clips in imovie I cannot. It would be great if the Quicktime idea was incorporated transparently into iMovie.

However, your idea at least gives me a workflow.

Thanks again!