iPhoto isn’t just for photos. It can import,
organise and share your videos too
Most modern digital cameras can shoot
movies as well as stills, and of course you can shoot video on your iPhone or
iPad too. Movies are a great way to capture memories and experiences, and video
files are almost as easy to work with as still images.
Movies
are a great way to capture memories and experiences, and video files are almost
as easy to work with as still images.
Things have moved on since the days of
tape-based camcorders, and you no longer have to plug in your camera and
capture videos with iMovie. Instead, movies are saved as self-contained video
files on the camera’s memory card, and you copy or drag them across just as you
would a photo.
The only exception is any camera that
shoots movies in the rather more complicated AVCHD format, but these are in the
minority.
So why use iPhoto and not iMovie? Because
iMovie is designed for assembling video clips into more elaborate movie
productions. Editing movies can be a complex business, and even though iMovie
is a really straightforward program to use, most of the time it’s more than you
need. Often, you’ll just want to find, play back and share your video clips, and
iPhoto does that very well. You can store movie clips alongside regular photos
in events and albums, and you can play a movie back simply by double-clicking
its icon.
iPhoto starts playing the movie straight
away, displaying a control panel underneath so that you can pause and restart
the movie, adjust the volume level, fast-forward and rewind. Underneath is a
playback bar and marker which you can use to set the playhead position
manually, and to the left and right are timers which show your position from the
start and end of the clip respectively.
Movie
files are displayed as thumbnails, and you can organize them into events,
albums and smart albums
But that’s not all. At the far right is a
gear icon: this reveals iPhoto’s secret weapon – its trimming tools. It’s rare
to record a video that doesn’t have a bit of dead space at the start or the
end, and you can dramatically improve your videos with a little judicious
trimming. There are the only direct editing adjustments you can make to your
movie clips. iPhoto’s regular adjustment tools don’t apply here, so if you want
to apply any special effects or enhancements, it looks like you will need
iMovie for this at least…
Or will you? While you can’t print your
videos, or turn them into books, calendars or greeting cards, you can add them
to slideshows. With a regular photo, the slideshow ‘plays’ the image for a
fixed duration with some subtle Ken Burns-style animation. But if you add a
movie it plays back automatically when you run the slideshow, and the ‘duration’
is the length of the movie. You can then add a whole series of movie clips to
your slideshow project to make a ‘mini-movie’ of a holiday, a trip or any other
kind of event.
With iPhoto’s ability to trim over-long
clip, is basic but effective slideshow tools, and its great selection of
slideshow themes, you can actually create smart-looking movies with very little
effort.
Finally, you can export your slideshows as
movie files which you can then upload to YouTube, for example, or send to other
people.
You don’t have to go that far to share
individual video clips, though. You can select a single video clip and click
the Share button at the bottom right of the iPhoto window. Most of the sharing
options, such as printing or emailing, apply only to stills, not videos. But if
you select the Facebook option you can upload your videos straight to your
Facebook wall, choosing the privacy settings as you do it.
So if you haven’t used iPhoto to organise
and play back your videos yet, maybe now’s the time to give it a try! Shooting
video footage is easy with today’s digital cameras, and iPhoto makes it just as
easy to share the fun later on.
How to organise, trim and share your movies
1.
Organizing your videos
You import videos into iPhoto in just the
same way as photos, either directly from your camera or memory card, or from
folders on your hard disk – use the File > Import to Library command, or
drag them from the Finder on to the iPhoto window. Videos are displayed as
thumbnail images, but with a movie symbol and duration, in minutes and seconds.
You can manually add them to events or albums, or you can use a smart album to
bring all your videos into one place. There are no smart album criteria
specifically for picking out video clips, but there is an alternative – create
a new smart album and choose ‘Filename’ from the drop-down menu, set the middle
menu to ‘ends with’ and type ‘MOV’ into the third box. The smart album will
find all files which end with the .MOV extension. There are other movie file
extensions, such as .AVI, so click the + button to the right to add another
search criterion. Choose the same settings for the row below, but this time
type ‘AVI’ into the third box, and make sure the Match menu, top left, is set
to ‘any’.
Sharing
your videos with your friends couldn’t be easier – you can upload them straight
to your Facebook Wall
2.
Trimming videos
To trim a movie clip, double-click it to
begin playback. Hit the pause button on the control bar, then click the gear
icon at the far right and select Trim from the menu. The control bar now
displays the clip as a sequence of thumbnails representing the frames within
the movie, together with a vertical red playback bar which you can drag left
and right. To start with, the entire clip is enclosed by a yellow rectangle
with grab handles at either end. To change the start point for the clip, drag
the left grab handle inwards – and to change the end point, do the same with
the grab handle on the right. The parts outside the selection will be trimmed
and you won’t see them when you play the movie, but they are still there:
iPhoto’s trimming is non-destructive, so you can go back at any time and make
further changes. iPhoto doesn’t support complex edits, so if you want to trim
out a section from the centre, or split the clip in two you’ll need to
duplicate the clip, then trim the end of the first clip and the start of the
second. It’s not elegant, but it is effective.
3.
Videos in slideshows
You can add videos to slideshows in the
same want you add stills, and you can even mix videos and stills in the same
slideshow. When you add a still, its duration is governed by the theme’s
properties or any manual settings you’ve applied to individual slides. When you
add a video, it stays on the screen until it’s finished playing – but you can
control the duration by trimming the video as described in step 2. You can also
add text to your videos in one of two ways: You can click the video to select
it and then click the ‘Tex Slide’ button on the bottom toolbar. This allows you
to type text which will then be overlaid or placed alongside the video clip as
it plays (depending on the theme layout). Alternatively, click the Settings
button on the bottom toolbar and in the All Slides panel, check the Show
Caption box. In the pop-up menu to the right, choose ‘Titles’, ‘Descriptions’
or one of the other options. You can add titles and descriptions to video clips
in the Info panel, just as you can with regular still photos. Using videos in
slideshows is really simple to do, and it’s a really effective way of bringing
slideshows to life. You can even apply iPhoto’s Black and White, Sepia and
Antique effects to video clips too- you’ll find them on the ‘This Slide’ tab of
the Slideshow Settings panel.
A
few moments spent trimming your clips can really improve their watchability
4.
Videos on Facebook
Uploading a video to Facebook is simpler still,
but you will have to connect iPhoto to your Facebook account first. You do this
by opening the iPhoto Preferences dialog and selecting the Accounts tab. When
you click the + button, you’ll be offered a choice of Facebook, Flickr and
Email account types. If you select the Facebook option, you’ll be prompted to
enter your Facebook login and password details. Once you’ve added your Facebook
account, you can select any video clip, then click the Share button on iPhoto’s
bottom toolbar. When you select the Facebook option on the list, iPhoto will
display a pop-up panel listing all your existing Facebook albums. You can’t add
your video to any of these, but on the top row of this panel you’ll see a
‘Wall’ button. Click this, and iPhoto will then prompt you to choose a privacy
setting via a drop-down ‘Viewable by’ menu and a box for writing a comment.
When you click the Publish button, iPhoto will then convert the video to a
suitable format and upload it to your Facebook wall.
