How to Use iMovie’s Advanced Features: 

If you have a Mac, the power of iMovie allows you to create incredibly effective videos for your business, YouTube channel, or anything your heart desires!

We have already covered the absolute basics of iMovie to get you started. In this article tutorial, we will discuss a few more advanced features to help you use iMovie to its fullest potential.

Recording Video From Your Mac’s Web Camera

iMovie makes it super easy to create a vLog or shoot video directly from your web camera.
To activate the web cam, simply click on the “camera” button in the middle left corner of the toolbar.

Adding Titles to Your Video

Titles give your video a professional look and let you convey information on screen.
To add titles, click the “T” button, located in the middle right of the toolbar.

iMovie has dozens of title special effects like the Star Wars credits, fade ins/outs, and even a bundle of lower thirds to keep your video looking professional.
Once you’ve found the one that you would like to use, drag and drop it right above your footage in the timeline.

From here, you will see the text appear on the preview screen on the right. You can modify what your font will say by clicking directly on it in the preview window.

To change the font style, size, or color, click on the “Show Fonts” button in the top left corner of the Preview window.
This will open up a Fonts popup box, where you can modify the look and style of your font.

Adding Music to Your iMovie Video

Adding music creates an elusive emotional undertone to your video.

To do this, just click on the little musical note icon in the middle right of iMovie.
This will pull open your iTunes music, where you can use any song in iTunes as a soundtrack to your video!

Choose the song you’d like to use, drag and drop it into your video wherever you’d like for that song to start.

Adding a Transition

Adding a transition to your iMovie video allows it to flow nicely from clip to clip or Photo to photo.

To do this, click on the square looking icon in the tool bar to open the Transitions Window

This will reveal a ton of transitions that iMovie lets you play with.
To use one, simple drag the desired transition into your timeline on the left and place it between any two clips to make that transition occur.

PRO TIP: Try not to get too carried away with the “box rotation” or “page curl” effects. Those effects come off a bit amateurish to most people. Instead, keep it professional and stick with a Cross Fade effect or Cross Blur.

Adding Photos to Your Video

Adding photos to create something like a slideshow is always a fun way to use iMovie. Or, if you’re just trying to cutaway to a photo to represent something while you are talking to the camera, that’s definitely another option as well.

To add a photo, click on the camera icon in the toolbar on the right.

This button opens up your iPhoto database (the one that tries to open up every time you plug in your iPhone.)
If you would like to grab a photo from another place inside of your computer, just click on the drop down menu that says “Photos” to choose the desired location of your photos.

Once you’ve got the right photo folder opened, select which photo you would like to add to your movie. Drag and drop the photo over to your timeline and place it where you’d like to see it show up in your video.

In iMovie 11 or higher, you will see this window pop up with multiple “overlay insertion” functionalities.
For this particular tutorial, we are going to assume that you want to insert the photo ON TOP of the video that is already playing.
This is called a “cutaway” and will allow you to keep hearing the audio from your video, while the video “cuts away” to the photo at the same time.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of iMovie’s more advanced functionalities.

Please let us know if you have any questions or tutorial requests in the comments section below!

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