IMovie Insights

IMovie Insights

 

IMovie is a very capable tool to use in the classroom to record, in documentary style, any event.  It would also be very easy to use by students to record a simple and perhaps choreographed script based on classroom assignments.

The fact that you cannot cut a selected video track while leaving the sound track unaltered shows up its limited bag of tricks.

I wanted to import video/audio already collected with a camera and possibly already edited in another more powerful program such as Vegas. The first issue was what format. I tried .mov, but ITunes said it was unreadable. Then I tried MP4. Eventually I found the right MP4 settings.

The next issue was how to get the MP4 file into The Ipad’s camera roll. Email and DropBox didn’t work. Finally, I used ITunes to sync the video in the photo tab.

Once into camera roll I used an app “ReelDirector” to import the file, render it and compress it. I then was able to save that file to “camera roll” in a format that IMovie could see.

Once in IMovie I could easily trim the file and then upload to YouTube.

IMovie is a great classroom tool for teachers and students who want to create a simple record or perhaps a more ambitious project which would need to be pre-planned to avoid excessive editing. It can also be used to incorporate different files originating from a variety of sources and mashed up on the Ipad itself.