iMovie is another application in Apple's iLife suite. It's $4.99 in the App Store and offers multi-touch editing capabilities and lots of share options. In this recipe we'll learn some of its basic features and familiarize ourselves with the common iconography.
In order to continue and follow the instructions in this section, you must download iMovie from the app store. Remember, it's a premium app for $4.99.
To start a new project, tap the plus icon. This brings up a menu where we can select New Project or New Trailer, as shown in the following screenshot:
New Trailer creates a short video trailer using pre-made templates and sets it up in the manner of a storyboard. We can use video from the Camera Roll app, photos stored on our iPad, and music stored in the Music app.
Like iPhoto, iMovie has a lot of features, so we're going to be focusing on New Project. A project allows us to make a movie of any length, using the same sources, video, music, and photos. We also have a variety of templates we can use.
Tap on New Project. We're taken to the editing interface with a media browser, timeline, and a video viewer.
The media browser shows us the available media on our iPad. The following screenshot shows the Video tab in the media browser. Sliding your finger within a video will preview it in the video viewer. Double-tapping a video will bring the video into the timeline:
The video icon to the left displays all of the video in our Camera Roll app. The photos icon (shown by two overlapping boxes) in the middle displays the photos located in our Camera Roll app, and the music note icon brings up the music located in our Music app, as shown in the following screenshot:
If no video exists on our iPad, we're able to shoot video directly into the app, using the video camera icon located on the right, just below the video viewer. Once the icon is tapped, our screen goes into record mode. To record some video, simply tap on the record button (the one with a red dot). Let's record some video of our surroundings and use that video to explore the editing interface. Tap on the record button, and when finished, tap again. Then, tap on the Use button in the lower-right corner (shown in the following screenshot):
This brings our video into our project. You can see our video in the video viewer, timeline, and media browser. Editing the clip length is done by tapping on either side of the video and sliding it to the desired length. When selected, the video is highlighted and we can double-tap it to display the clip settings, as shown in the following screenshot:
Here we see Title Style, Location, an audio icon, and a Delete Clip button. We can set the title of the clip, the location, and can adjust its audio. Let's go ahead and select Title Style and type in a title for our video clip.
What determines where our title appears? Our project settings, located in the upper-right hand side menu, determine the look and feel of our project. There's a selection of templates in the upper row. Below that, we see Theme Music, Loop Background Music, Fade in from black, and Fade out to black, as shown in the following screenshot:
Flip both fades to ON and tap outside of the menu. Then play the clip back using the play button. Note that the color changes to black at the beginning and end of the clip.
Try out some of the templates to explore the look and feel of each one.
To view the audio settings of our video clip, tap on the audio icon and then double-tap on the video in the timeline, as shown in the following screenshot:
Go ahead and use some media from the browser mentioned in steps 2 and 3, and select some media by double-tapping on Photos and Music. We want to have something to export, so play around for a bit.
If at any point you want to undo something, there's a handy Undo button in the upper-right corner of the screen. Also located in the upper menu above the video viewer is the iMovie Projects icon. Both the Undo and iMovie Projects icons can be seen in the following screenshot:
Let's tap on that iMovie Projects icon so we can get back to the main menu for iMovie. Here our project is selected. When we have more than one project; they will all display in a row in this view. In the lower menu, we see the plus, play, share, Copy from iTunes, and the trashcan icons, as shown in the following screenshot:
We used the plus icon when we started the project, and the play icon plays back our project. The Copy from iTunes icon will copy projects you have synced using iTunes, something that's a bit more advanced and involves the use of multiple devices editing the same project. The trashcan icon deletes your project.
Let's focus on the share icon. Tap on the share icon to view all of our share options, as shown in the following screenshot:
We can share movies to our Camera Roll and a variety of social media sites. We can also send our project to iTunes. This will allow us access to the project when we connect our device to iTunes. When our iPad is plugged in to our computer, we see our projects at the bottom of the Apps menu, as shown in the following screenshot:
iMovie utilizes the processing power of the iPad while using all of the media on our iPad. It allows us to create trailers and movie projects using a touch interface that is easy to grasp. There's a lot to this app and we've just scratched the surface, but being familiar with the menu options gets us a long way.
Now that we've explored the apps in Apple's iLife suite, let's get into the apps in the iWorks suite. In the following recipes, we'll learn all about Apple's Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps.
This is no easy task. One method is purchasing a Camera Connection Kit. This allows us to plug a device directly into our iPad where images and video can be imported. Another method is e-mailing video files. This isn't always useful as we're limited by file size, and video files are quite large. The last option requires a few steps. We'd need to plug in our device with the video into our computer and import it using iPhoto. Then we'd plug our iPad into our computer and sync the contents to iPhoto.
Apple's iWork suite offers portable productivity synced across all of your devices, including your computer. Keynote, Numbers, and Pages, the apps that make up the iWork suite, do not come native in the new iPad, but if you're looking for an easy way to create, edit, and store your documents, this is the way to go.
Typically purchased as the whole suite, the option of purchasing individually is available in the App Store. Each app goes for $4.99.