As with most software training, we will begin by taking a tour of the iMovie workspace. Lucky for us, the workspace is very simple and easy to understand. When you open iMovie for the first time, you will see the Welcome screen, which has links to Getting Started lessons and Help files. Close that window.

Assuming that you have no iMovie projects or video clips imported into iMovie^R, the workspace will be empty. At the upper left, you will see the Project Library section and a new empty project called “My First Project”, with a default 30 frames per second and today’s date. You can double-click on the “My First Project” and rename the project.

When you click on the icon for your new project, the Project Library will close to open the Project Storyboard or Project Browser, which is where you will build your movie by adding your video clips, pictures, titles, transitions, audio and other assets. To the right of the Project Storyboard is the Viewer. This is where you will preview your project.

Just under these two areas is the Toolbar. At the left are the controls for importing your videos and on the right are the icons that open several browsers. Each browser contains resources that can be added to your movie.

Music and Sound Browser
Photo Browser
Title Browser
Transition Browser
Map, Background and Animatic Browser

In the center are the icons for the iMovie editing tools. But only the most needed tools are listed by default. Let’s tell iMovie to show us all the tool icons.

1. From the Menubar, click iMovie - Preferences to open the dialog box.
   
   
2. Under the General tab, check the box next to Show Advanced Tools.
   
   
3. Close the dialog box.
   
   

You should now see all the tool icons in the middle of the Toolbar. We will talk more about these tools in a later tutorial.

Arrow
Edit tool
Favorite Tool
Unmark Tool
Reject Tool
Keyword Tool
Record a Voiceover
Crop, Rotate and Ken Burns
Inspector

Under the Toolbar and to the left is the Event Library where iMovie will list all the video that you have imported into iMovie. As with most video software, you have the option to organize your video into what iMovie calls “events”. Of course, an event can be anything you wish. By storing your video in this way, all of your video is available for any project, which saves storage space on your hard drive.

Finally, on the right we have the Event Browser. When you select a video in the Event Library, the raw footage of that video will appear in this area. From here you will select the sections of each video that you wish to add to your movie and drag them into the Project Browser.

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