If you’re a Mac user wanting to edit home movies or basic YouTube videos, iMovie might be for you!
iMovie is the free film editing app for Mac users, and it does a pretty great job. It’s the only program I’ve ever used for video editing, and if I’m honest that’s because:
- It’s free
- It was already on my laptop
- It’s easy to learn
- …and did I mention it’s free?
Here’s a very meta walkthrough video (7min), where I talk through the iMovie editing process using a recent video (which is now live!):
The basic steps are:
- Record my ‘talking head’ video using an iPhone while simultaneously recording my screen with the Quicktime app
- Drop both movie files into iMove, along with an image file of the Producing Paradise logo
- Bookend the video with the logo, using a cross-dissolve transition at both ends
- Align the talking head with the screen recording (using the audio to find the perfect timing match)
- Detach the audio from both videos and delete whichever audio is worst quality — I usually go with my iPhone audio over the laptop, but it entirely depends on your equipment and setup
- Edit out the ‘umms’ and ‘ahhs’ throughout, and make any other content tweaks along the way
- Export the audio to use in Otter.ai for subtitle transcription
- Export the video to upload to YouTube — I use 1080 resolution with ‘high’ quality and ‘better quality’ compression but that’s just to keep the export/upload timeframe reasonable (ie. I know I should probably export at higher quality but I go for efficiency over perfection!)
