Making Better Videos Using the Precision Editor In iMovie

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use the Precision Editor in iMovie.

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If you use iMovie to edit a lot of videos you're going to want to learn how to use the Precision Editor. This is where you can make precise cuts between one clip and another and also adjust transitions and audio between clips. 

So here I have three clips in my iMovie timeline. I just put them one after another so after one clip it jumps right to the next one. Now if I want to adjust where one clip ends and another one begins I can select a clip and drag the right side inward to cut off some of that clip. Likewise I can select the next clip and drag that one inward to set where that clip starts. Now if I want to be really precise as to where one clip ends and another one begins I need to use the Precision Editor.

There are a couple of different ways to enter the Precision Editor. One is to double click on this little divider between them like that. But you could also go and choose Window and then Show Precision Editor. Command Slash is the keyboard shortcut. So I'm going to select the second clip, that's usually best, and then use Command Slash to enter the Precision Editor. Now in the Precision Editor I can see the first clip here at the top above this bar and the second clip below it as well as everything else in the video. 

I can drag the box here in the bar to set where one ends and one begins. So I can have less of the first clip and more of the second clip like that or more of the first clip and less of the second by dragging it to the right like that. I can also drag these lines individually. So I can drag the top line here to decide exactly where this clip cuts out. You can see in the preview at the top right I can see the exact frame. So I could really set it with precision. I could always go to the Zoom settings here and drag this left or right to give me a better zoom here so I could see with more precision exactly what frame I'm at. 

So there are so many different ways that you can adjust the video. You can grab the line and drag that. But you can grab the video and drag that instead. The same thing with on the bottom here. You can drag the line or you can drag the video. But if you want you can also use the keyboard for this. Once you've clicked on one of these lines, I want to click on that one just above there, you can use the period and comma keys to move one frame at a time. I can use Shift and period and comma to move ten frames at a time. If I want to switch to the bottom I just move my cursor down there to the bottom and then click on the line again. Now I'm moving the bottom line instead of the top line.

If I click on the box now I can use the comma and period to move both lines at the same time. So this allows you to set the exact point where one clip ends and another begins. To Exit just hit Return or Command and Slash again and you're back to the normal timeline.

Now Precision Editor works a little differently if you have a transition. So let's drag a cross-dissolve right here to make this a transition. With that cross-dissolve selected I'm going use Command Slash to enter into the Precision Editor. Now you can see this box is larger and I have two lines at the top and two lines at the bottom. These lines show the beginning of the transition and the end of the transition. I can click and drag and both lines move here at the top or click and drag and both lines move at the bottom. If I want to I can click and drag the right or left side of the box and expand the time for the transition. You can also click the middle of the box to move all four lines together. So this allows you to set the exact spot where the transition starts for the top and where the transition starts for the bottom. You could use the period and comma keys there as well.

So you can see how this really gives you such accurate control over exactly how one clip transitions into another. If you have a lot of video clips you don't need to exit the Precision Editor and go then back into it for each cut. Instead you can the single quote and semicolon keys on your keyboard to jump to the next cut point or next transition. You can even go to the end or all the back to the beginning. You can use the Precision Editor to adjust the beginning of the clip or if you have a fade from black here at the beginning you can use the Precision Editor to adjust that and get it to exactly at the point that you want. You can even adjust the length of it as well.

Now another thing about the Precision Editor is it helps you a lot with audio. Let's go to this transition here and at the bottom I can see the audio track. So now I can adjust where the audio comes in and out. You would think that it would work with the video and by default it does. But notice there's a line there. I can drag that line and actually have the audio come in before the video even starts fading in. So the audio begins to come in and then the video comes in. Likewise I have the same thing here. I have a line  and I can have the audio actually extend out beyond the end of the track. So it fades out completely as the audio continues to play.

These dots here can be dragged to have a fade out. So here I have some audio that fades out starting with the visual fade out but continues to fade out a little bit afterwards. Having audio carry over from one track to another really helps with some transitions. It's particularly useful if say you go to jump cut like this where there's no transition. I could have say the cut be earlier but the audio actually continue to play a little bit. So the audio from one track lingers into the next track. Or I can have the audio from the next track come in earlier than the visual part of the track. Here it'll fade in before it actually hits the cut and the video appears.

You can also use this at the end of the video. So let's go here to the end and let's say we're going to have a fade to black. I'll just double click there and it should add it. I'll have the fade to black be fairly long like that. I will drag these lines over so that it fades to black and then there's some extra at the end. Now I can click here and drag the audio so the audio continues to play after the fade to black. I could use this dot here and have it fade out. Now the visual part will fade out and then after it's completely black the audio continued to play and fade out over the blackness.

You can see how it's important to master the Precision Editor if you're going to be using iMovie as your primary video editing tool. It not only makes your videos better but once you get good at using it it could actually save you time during editing.