Playing with Video Clips

It is rare that I get to ‘play’ with some of the more creative applications on my computer. I generally use the same old applications day in day out and the usual suspects are:

  • Photoshop
  • PageSpinner
  • Firefox
  • Mail
  • Netfinder
  • Word
  • FileMaker Pro
  • MoneyDance

and maybe a few things like iTunes, some OS X Dashboard Widgets and SuperDuper! to back everything up each day.

However, this weekend I have had chance to ‘play’ with a few of the iLife applications that came with my new version of the Mac OS. I decided it was time to make some DVD’s from the miniDV tapes we have recorded on Anna’s Camcorder. iMovie HD was therefore my first port of call. It took a while to get iMovie to ‘see’ the camcorder but once it did all was plain sailing. Instead of making my own movies I decided the first thing to do was to simply copy everythin from the tape onto a DVD using the Make a Magic Movie option….

How easy was that?? OK, it took longer than I was expecting but it imported all the clips from the camcorder, applied a theme to the movie, created a title sequence and a meu of all the clips, then sent it to iDVD encoded everything and burned the DVD for me… I then stuck the DVD into the DVD player attached to the TV and it worked perfectly. Even with my DualCore 2Ghz PowerMac it took a few hours in total meaning I didn’t get time to really play with any of the apps myself, but now that I have a copy of all the clips on DVD my next task will be to make mini-movies from the best clips within iMovie HD and then make a DVD from those.

Overall, I’m sure these applications are a little dumbed down and only provide limited options for real video-editing, but the results are good and for DVD of your home video they are ideal.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.