iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Getting into iMovie

After you’ve connected and turned on your camcorder, open iMovie by double-clicking its icon. But before you’re treated to the main iMovie screen (shown in Figure 13-3), iMovie may ask you to take care of a few housekeeping details.

Monitor Resolution

All modern Mac monitors let you adjust the resolution, which is a measurement of how much it can show as measured in pixels (the tiny dots that make up the screen picture). If you choose

→ System Preferences → Displays, you’ll see the choices awaiting you.

Why is it important to understand monitor resolution when you’re about to edit video? Because iMovie likes a very big screen—a high-resolution monitor. If your monitor is set to one of the lower resolution settings when you launch iMovie, you’ll get an error message.

The bottom line: Choose a setting that’s 1024 x 768 or larger. Poor iMovie can’t even run at any lower setting.

Caution

If you switch your resolution to a resolution lower than 1024 x 768 while iMovie is open, the program has no choice but to quit. (At least it does you the courtesy of offering to save the changes to the project file you’ve been working on.)

The program is more graceful when you switch between two higher resolutions; it instantly adjusts its various windows and controls to fit the resized screen. In other words, whenever you switch resolutions while the program is open, be extra careful not ...