Book Review by Mark Shapiro
July 19, 2009
iMovie '09 & iDVD - The Missing Manual by David Pogue & Aaron Miller
If you are using a Mac to edit video, you are probably also using a version of iMovie and iDVD. iMovie & iDVD is a highly reliable, stable and simple to use program for creating videos and multimedia DVds using your Apple Macintosh computer.
Over the years, this program has grown, changed and expanded, adding new features and capabilities. There has been some controversy as some of the "favorite" techniques have been dropped or changed, but on a whole, iMovie and iDVD is recognized as an excellent program for those just starting out to create and edit video on the Mac platform.
Bursting with new features, Apple's iMovie '09 is vastly more usable and complete than iMovie '08--amazing right out of the box. But the box doesn't include a good user's guide, so learning these applications is another matter. iMovie '09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual gets you up to speed on everything you need to turn raw digital footage into highly creative video projects.
You can try out the book free - ONLINE - for 45 days |
You get crystal-clear, jargon-free explanations of iMovie's new video effects, slow & fast motion, advanced drag & drop, video stabilization, and more. Author and New York Times tech columnist David Pogue uses an objective lens to scrutinize every step of process, including how to:
Organize your videos just like your photos, and precisely edit with ease
Work on multiple iMovie projects at once and drag & drop clips among them
Integrate with other iLife programs to use songs, photos, and an original sound track
Output your creation to a blog, its own web page, or as a video podcast with iWeb
Understand basic film techniques to improve the quality of the video you bring to iMovie
The Book is very well organized and intelligently laid out- starting with how to import your video into the program - it covers how to get video from your old analog and DVD tape camcorders, as well as from newer tapeless models such as flash and DVD camcorders.
Chapter two then provides a nice overview of how iMovie works -the basics of how the iMoive editing screens look and work, and how to get form one section to another.
From there, in chapter three, four and five, we finally start making out movie - Those chapters cover the basics of editing - how to use the iMovie 09 storyboard, how to work with keywords, and all about transitions, themes and "travel maps".
The following chapters are the real fun stuff. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 cover the cool and groovy special effects like slo-mo, green screen, tiles, opening/closing credits, and PiP, as well as "fix it" features such as image stabilization, color correction, image cropping and rotation.
Check out this short excerpt on How to Use iMovie 09 to stabilize shaky video footage
Check out this GizModo review of the iMovie 09 program - the video stabilization before and after footage is very impressive
Chapter nine covers audio - all about narration, music and sound. Chapter 10 is how to import and use digital still images in your video movie. Chapter 11 goes into a few advanced and miscellaneous topics that really didn't fit anywhere else.
Chapters 12 through 15 cover how to get your video out of your computer and how to share it with the world. This is the YouTube section.
The second half of the book is all about iDVD o9 and how to use it to build and burn great looking DVD projects. It covers the essentials of DVD authoring such as how to prepare your files to build a dvd, how to import video, how to create menus and use themes and everything else you need to know to create a good looking DVD project.
This latest "Missing Manual" - iMovie '09 and iDVD by David Pogue and Aaron Miller is an essential guidebook for anyone who is considering creating videos and DVD using the Mac platform. It is an excellent first step towards more advanced programs such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.