MacMost: iMovie

If you want to have an arrow, circle or other graphic follow a subject or object in a video in iMovie, you'll need to first create the graphic, and then use picture-in-picture and the keyframe animation tools in iMovie to guide the graphic throughout the video action.

There are many ways to control audio from your video clips or effects and music you bring into your projects. Learn how to control volume throughout the track, apply effects and more.

You can use images as video overlays for iMovie on your iPhone or iPad in the same way you do it for Mac. The Keynote app for iOS is a great way to create these images, which must have transparent backgrounds. Switching between Keynote and iMovie you can add text, shapes, lines or almost any sort of overlay image easily.

If you have vertical video shot on an iPhone that you wish to edit on a Mac in iMovie, usually this means cropping the video into horizontal format. But by using a trick in iMovie, you can both edit and export true vertical video.

Instead of creating graphics in Keynote and overlaying them in iMovie, you can bring video into Keynote and overlay multiple special effects, then export a new version of the clip. You can even animate the video itself.

YouTube videos use jump cuts and cropping to create fast-paced interesting videos from simple video recordings. You can do these editing techniques in iMovie on your Mac.

If you want to get really good at making videos with iMovie, you'll want to learn how to use the precision editor. You can adjust the start and end of clips down to the frame, and also where transitions start and end. You can also adjust audio to make the audio from one clip overlap the video in another.

There is no transition in iMovie that lets you reveal video behind two horizontal black bars like you sometimes see in films. But you can easily build a black bar opening effect using a simple Keynote animation as an overlay.

While there is no typewriter effect title in iMovie, you can easily add it with the help of Keynote. This can appear as text by itself anywhere you want, or you can get creative with more graphics like a search box that appears over your video.

There are many unusual ways to use the features in iMovie to create visual effects and filters that you may not think are possible. Take a look at 10 ideas using titles, transistions, overlays and other techniques.

iMovie offers limited setting for exporting videos. You can use Apple's Compressor app to take high-quality iMovie videos and compress them however you like. You can also create stand-alone droplet apps to make repeated conversions quick and easy. You can do the same with audio files creating in GarageBand and elsewhere.

You can use the Maps app on your Mac for more than just finding locations and getting directions. You can create maps to be used in other apps as well. You can export a map into Preview and then annotate it to send in an email or message. You can copy and paste or export a map to use in Pages documents, Keynote presentations and iMovie video projects. You can also export satellite and 3D views.

You can create your own transitions for iMovie using Keynote. But making simple one or two-slide presentations that include a transparent background, you can export short videos that can be used as overlays in iMovie. These overlays can be applied to become a transition between one clip and another. They can also be customize with graphics to fit your style or theme in the video.

You can quickly and easily made a slideshow in the Photos app, but those can't be exported to share. By using the free iMovie app from Apple, you can build a slideshow from a set of photos in minutes and then export it as video to share. You can also customize each photo with filters, cropping, movement and text. You can add music, audio and narration to the slideshow too. The basic idea works on the iPad as well.

You can create a fireball in Keynote and then export it as a transparent video. You can then record yourself with QuickTime Player and place the fireball in your hand. It can move with you and you can even throw it if you put the time in to create animation keyframes in iMovie.

Learn how to create an iMovie project, edit it, and export in less than 5 minutes with this complete tutorial. In this fast tutorial I take four clips, trim and arrange them, add titles, transisions, music and filters, and then export a finished project. Get up to speed on iMovie for Mac fast.

Learn some quick and simple tricks you can use to enhance your next iMovie video project. You can adjust iMovie's backgrounds to make them unique or bring in your own. Add audio narration and adjust the fade in and out of any audio. Use cropping to zoom in and special effects like freeze frame and instant replay.

If you want to go beyond the title text feature in iMovie, you can create your own styled text in Keynote or any image editing tool and use the resulting image as an overlay. Then you can use picture-in-picture keyframes in iMovie to animate the text popping in from one side or scale as it moves. You can use this technique with any transparent image for a variety of effects.

You can use the Ken Burns cropping effect to zoom in to a portion of your video in iMovie. However, this cropping effect will continue over the entire length of your clip. To zoom in starting at a certain point and then to stay at the same zoom level for a while afterwards, you need to split the clip at the right places and use a trick to keep the video zoomed out at the end.

It can be difficult to get text to look good in iMovie since you can only choose from a limited number of title options. But you can use a graphics app or Keynote to create any text you want, and then overlay that text on your video. By copying a frame of your video, you can adjust the text to look good in Keynote, and then export just the text as a transparent image. This text can fit the video perfectly, or be used as a resizable and moveable element to position in iMovie.