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iMovie Tutorial 0003 - Transitions

  One of the best things about iMovie is its ability to create professional looking transitions fairly easily and quickly. Once you have your video clips cut and arranged to your liking, it is time to add transitions to ease the cuts between clips.

  1. To view available transitions, click the Transitions button in the clip tray. Click each transition to see a preview of what it will look like. You can download additional transitions from Apple.

  2. In order to use a transition, select it from the tray, then make adjustments for direction and duration as needed.

  3. To add the transition, drag it from the tray and drop it in between two clips.

A red line appears on the transition, indicating that it is being rendered. On slower machines, this may take a couple of minutes. You can play back the video in the playback window to make sure it is what you need. If you need further adjustments, select the transition in the timeline and make changes.

  Continue adding transitions as needed.

  Note about Transitions and the Excessive use of:

  Transitions are like any other new and interesting technology. For awhile, everyone is using fifteen amazing, cutting edge transitions in a one minute clip, and oohh, and oh, how cool it is. Then, six months later, we're bored with it (remember the Gap commercials and the 360 cam?). The point of this is: don't get carried away. Use transitions when they can ADD to the piece, and are appropriate. This way, you won't have any embarrassing bits of barndoor, clock wipe, and folded airplane transitions in your portfolio:)