MacMost Now 645: Using Chapter Markers In iMovie 11

You can place chapter markers while creating video projects in iMovie. These can be used to jump to parts of your video while viewing it in QuickTime Player, iTunes or on iOS and Apple TV. You can also use chapter markers to quickly create DVDs with iDVD that include those markers. Chapter markers and comments can both be used in your project to allow to you jump to specific times while you are editing.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's look at chapter markers in iMovie. So here I am in iMovie with a simple project, just a bunch of clips that are strung together. Now, I can add chapter markers to this by simply going up here to the upper right-hand corner of the project area. You can see there is comments and chapters right here, these are the two things you can drag into your project. Let's drag a chapter marker like this and let's stick it here at the very beginning of the first clip and I'm going to name this something. Let's name it sunset and then I can just continue to just drag chapter markers as I need them; so I wanna, in this case, put one for every clip, just like that. Make it nice and simple. There now I can also do the same thing here with a comment and a comment looks just like a chapter marker. The only difference is it's just for notes. So you can type anything you want there and it won't actually appear in any video you export or used in any other way. For both chapter marker and notes, you can click here and see a list those comments, those notes and chapter markers, and jump quickly to one that you want. So the comments are very useful for that. So what happens with chapter markers? Well, various things depending on what you do with your video. So, for instance, if we just simply share this, let's just do a plain export movie and if we use any of the options here except for the smallest, expect for mobile, we'll get a video that has these in them. So let's actually just expect a medium size movie to the Desktop and take a look at it in QuickTime Player. So here is the file and I've opened it up in QuickTime Player. Now I can play the whole thing through, can scrub through here and you see I have the different sections. But I could also look here at the chapters and see that, not only does it have them by the names that I called them, but it puts a still frame image next to it so I can quickly jump to anyone I want. Now how about using those chapters as part of the DVD creation. Well, if you still have iDVD, which you should have if you have a slightly older Mac, it doesn't come with newer Macs, you can go to share and then iDVD and it will take the video that you're created and export that as an iDVD project and open it in iDVD. So now it's opened iDVD for me and it has this movie in here. Of course I didn't really name it anything so I can just now switch to the map view, which is this button here, and you see that it includes, in the map here, all of the chapter markers that I've created right there with the little previews of it. So if I were to run this, just a preview here, I can actually go to scene selection and see that they are all there and I can choose a scene and jump right to it. Now with iDVD not being available anymore, you may use one of the many DVD creation tools available on the Mac App Store. I'd imagine some of them support these chapter markers, I'm sure you can check the documentation and see. Chapters markers are also supported by anything that uses the QuickTime playback engine. So for instance, you saw it work in QuickTime Player, it also works in iTunes. It will work on the iPhone and the iPad when you play back videos as well. And it'll even on Apple TV and those will appear as chapters inside the video when you play them on your Apple TV. There's look at chapter markers in iMovie '11. Hope you found this useful. Till next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

Comments: 11 Responses to “MacMost Now 645: Using Chapter Markers In iMovie 11”

VanLoock

12 years ago

Thank you very much Gary, very useful info on iMovie 11, enjoy you're newsletter a lot,please keep it up.

Sharon

Hi Gary,

Thanks for doing these videos! They are very helpful for a new iMovie user like myself.

I am using iMovie '11 on a MacBook Pro 10.7.2. I have edited over 20 clips and put the chapters in the way I learned on your site. When I play the video back, there are no pauses in between the clips. The way the movie progresses, I'd like there to be pauses between some of the chapters, but not between others...

Can you help?
Thanks

Gary Rosenzweig

Simply add background graphics between the clips. Go to the Maps and Backgrounds chooser (button with the globe) and drag and drop a black background between the two clips. Select it and set the length of time for each in the Clip properties.

Rosa

Any idea why the chapter titles don't show up on my iPhone 4S?
I tried exporting the movies in different format. The chapter titles shows perfectly on iTunes or Quicktime,
but my iPhone just shows "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2".. and so on.

Pls help!

Patti

Is there any way to get mobile devices to list the chapter titles rather than Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc? That's pretty useless for me.

Jason A

Thank you so much for your help, this is exactly what I was looking for!

David

I don't seem to have the chapter marker icon anywhere. Can you help

Not sure why you aren't seeing it. Make sure you are IN a project and that you are using iMovie 11. Oh, and perhaps you have Advanced Tools turned off in the prefs?

jonathan

Great easy to follow!!

carol cifelli

Yeah, so glad i found your site. Thank you
My question is, "How can i move or delete my chapter marker?"
I need to move my marker a few frames sooner and it is not doing anything. I am in imovie.
Carol

To move a marker, just drag it. Make sure it is NOT selected. Just click elsewhere. Then click and drag the marker. To delete it, click it again so it has a yellow selection outline. Then press the Delete key.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 645: Using Chapter Markers In iMovie 11

Comments: 11 Responses to “MacMost Now 645: Using Chapter Markers In iMovie 11”

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