iLife '04: The Missing Manual

The Movie Track: Your Storyboard

When you’re not trimming or splitting your clips, most of your iMovie time will be spent in the Movie Track—the horizontal strip at the bottom of the screen. The idea is that you’ll drag the edited clips out of the Clips pane and into the correct order on the Movie Track, exactly as though you’re building a storyboard or timeline.

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Movie Track offers two different views: the Clip Viewer and the Timeline Viewer. Both are illustrated in Figure 14-7.

In the Clip Viewer, you can freely rearrange clips by dragging them horizontally.

Tip

As you drag over them, the existing clips scoot out of the way, which can drive you crazy. In that case, hold down the

key until you’re ready to let go of the clip you’re dragging. They’ll stay still.

Figure 14-7. Top: When you click the film strip icon (indicated here by the cursor), you see your camcorder footage.Bottom: Click the clock icon to see the Timeline Viewer, which reveals your audio tracks (Chapter 17) and shows you the relative lengths of your clips.You can also use the View menu to switch between these views.

Moreover, you can freely drag clips back and forth between the Clips pane and the Clip Viewer. (You can drag clips into the Timeline Viewer, too—just not out again.) ...