iMovie 2: The Missing Manual
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
iMovie 2: The Missing Manual Details
Amazon.com Review Macintosh products are known for being easy to use, and deservedly so. You can muddle your way through pretty much any Mac OS program, and make it do what it's supposed to, without a manual or the online help. The latest version of the video-editing software for Mac OS, iMovie 2, is no exception, but David Pogue delivers real value in iMovie 2: The Missing Manual. Composed in Pogue's trademark friendly style, the book contains enough excellently written explanations and examples to significantly flatten the iMovie 2 learning curve, so it's a pleasure to read, bookmark, and refer back to. For an example of how this book is technically precise in an engaging way, consider how it explains the purpose of the QT Margins check box, which has to do with compensating for a margin-cropping characteristic of televisions. Pogue proposes an equivalent label: "'QT Margins' means 'Assume this movie will be shown as a QuickTime movie, and therefore won't have chopped-off margins.'" The meaning of a fairly cryptic label becomes absolutely obvious. Further kudos go to the book's designers for their liberal inclusion of illustrations. Where multiple frames are needed to illustrate a point, they're included. Tips and notes serve a valuable purpose, and are likely to introduce even seasoned iMovie editors to features they've missed on their own. --David Wall Topics covered: Capturing video with a camera, then editing it on the Mac to include appealing transitions, effects, titling, and audio. The process of exporting edited video from the computer (such as for videotape or Web publishing). Read more About the Author David Pogue, Yale '85, is the weekly personal-technology columnist for the New York Times and an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News. His funny tech videos appear weekly on CNBC. And with 3 million books in print, he is also one of the world's bestselling how- to authors. In 1999, he launched his own series of amusing, practical, and user-friendly computer books called Missing Manuals, which now includes 100 titles. Read more
Reviews
The saying, "All I asked for was the time, and he built me a clock," probably best describes the scope of this book. This isn't simply a comprehensive manual covering the how-to of using iMovie and troubleshooting; it includes mini-courses on selecting a digital camcorder, home video filming, special-events filming, professional editing techniques, using QuickTime, making movie CDs, putting your movies on the web, and detailed instructions on how to create your own graphics using popular programs such as PhotoShop, AppleWorks, PhotoDeluxe or GraphicConverter. It even includes a chapter on Final Cut Pro, Premiere and EditDV for anyone thinking about eventually going in that direction. Almost all of the questions raised in the iMovie forums at the Apple, MacWorld, MacAddict and other web sites are answered in this book. I glanced through a couple other iMovie books at the bookstore, and, altho they cost about the same, they fall far short of "The Missing Manual" in terms of scope, tips, workaround hints, and an enjoyable writing style. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone thinking about getting into digital video editing, as well as for anyone who already has all the hardware and uses iMovie. I would place myself in the "prosumer" category, have been using iMovie2 for five months, and thought I knew it all. Well, I didn't. But, after reading The Missing Manual, NOW I know it all. Buy it!