iMovie 09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual |
2009 | 463 pages | PDF | 15,2 MB
Apples iMovie 09 is more accessible and comprehensive than iMovie 08and impressive right out of the box. The one thing not in the box is a users guide, and thats where this book comes in. Youll make the most out of the applications if you get help from the experts. iMovie 09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual explains everything you need to know to turn raw digital footage into high quality film.
Stabilizing Shaky Footage
By David Pogue and Aaron Miller Not every piece of video needs fancy effects. In fact, most video is probably better without a Dream filter and Picture-in-Picture. The unadulterated stuff straight from your camera usually looks best.
In fact, if your footage needs any help at all, its probably in the cameraman department. Dont take this personally. Handheld shots, the most common kind of home video, are notoriously unstable, and thats an instant giveaway that youre an amateur. You can have the hands of a surgeon and still end up with shaky footage. This is true even with all the newfangled image stabilization technology that comes in the latest cameras.
Dont give up (and dont resort to carrying a tripod everywhere). iMovie 09 can stabilize your video after the fact, using one of its most amazing new features.
Video Stabilization
iMovie has powers that leave other beginner video-editing programs panting with envy. Its filled with tools that have historically been found only in professional editing programs. iMovies stabilization feature, for example, is inherited from Apples $1,000 Final Cut Pro software.
It works by analyzing every single frame in a clip, recognizing the changes in both camera position (movement up, down, left, or right) and camera rotation. Once it figures that bit out, it knows how to slide and rotate your clips to iron out the shakes.
Unfortunately, this sort of analysis takes a very long timeroughly ten minutes for every minute of video (more or less depending on your Macs speed).
The results, however, are worth it. The stabilization feature works absolute magic on most jerky, bumpy handheld footage. It works so well, in fact, that it can look positively creepy, as though you were floating along on a magic carpet. Fortunately, theres a slider that lets you control how much stabilizing goes on.
