Unlike the first iPad, you can edit short films with the iPad 2, thanks to iMovie. But editing by touch involves a lot of gestures and without knowing what they are, you could end up being frustrated by the whole process. So we’ve compiled a few tips to help you hit the ground running.
Before you even think of launching iMovie, you need to consider what you’re going to shoot. Recording for minutes on end (unless you’re saving a performance) isn’t ideal as it fills your drive with footage you may never use, you could also end up having problems previewing your clips in iMovie’s browser: each clip, no matter its duration, takes up just one line in the browser, so the longer it is, the harder it becomes to find and select just the piece you need. Ideally, try to shoot in quick bursts - no longer than a minute, and preferably less. If you’re afraid that you might miss the “perfect moment,” consider investing in Precorder ($1.99), an app that saves the last few seconds of video before you tap on the record button (it only works natively with the iPhone and iPod touch for now but an update for it to run full screen on the iPad 2 is in the works).
If you’re upgrading from an earlier version of iMovie, you’ll appreciate the fact that you can now name your projects. To do this, you need to be in the welcome screen where thumbnails of your films are represented as posters under a movie theater marquee. Once the one you want is front and center, tap on its current name and replace it with one that’s more relevant.
Selecting part of the clip you need from the browser is at best a rough guess, and you’ll then have to trim your footage further once it’s in your project’s timeline. The most obvious way to do this is by selecting the clip and dragging one of the yellow handles that appear on either side of it. Unfortunately, this isn’t an exact process and it’s all too easy to overshoot and accidentally remove the part you really wanted. Thankfully, there’s a much more precise method: drag your clip left or right until the playhead is exactly where you want to cut your clip. Next, tap on the clip to select it then swipe your finger down over the playhead: your clip is cut at that exact location and you can now discard the unwanted portion.
The above tip is also a great way to limit how long titles remain on the screen. iMovie’s current titling tools are primitive at best: on top of all their other limitations, titles can’t span multiple clips and when you do add a title, it has to be for the entire duration of the selected piece of footage. However, if you split your clip in two, the title will remain on the first part and gently fade away as you move to the other.
If you’re planning on shooting with your iPad 2, you may get frustrated by the fact that unlike your camera on the iPhone or iPod touch, the controls insist on being at the bottom of the screen. This means that when you’re holding it in landscape, the record button is nowhere near any of your fingers. To get around this, you could hold it in portrait, hit the record button and turn it ninety degrees to shoot your scene, but this creates another problem: just like the other iOS devices, the iPad 2 uses its accelerometer to determine your shot’s orientation, but this takes place only as you tap on the record button. This means that if you used this method, all your shots would be recorded in the wrong orientation. Thankfully, there’s a solution: add the clip to your project and move the playhead over it. Once there, place two fingers over the main preview section (top right of the interface) and do a rotate motion with them: your clip will rotate ninety degrees in the direction your fingers were moving.
The timeline is where you build your edit. Place two fingers on it and move them away from each other to zoom into it, and bring them closer together to zoom out so you can see more of your project in one go. Most of the time however, you’ll want to be fairly zoomed in so you can do precision work which is where swiping left or right to get to the start or end of your film can get frustrating, especially if you’re working on a long project. There’s a quick way around this though: tap and hold anywhere, on either end of the timeline. After a second, you’ll be moved to the start or end of your project - depending on which side of the screen your finger was on.
