using iMovie: converting MOV to MP4, editing

Learn the basics of iMovie: importing a screen record and doing a bit of minor editing, audio adjustments, and export to your resolution of choice as MP4. Very handy for making video for social media etc. Self-publish your own video files easily.

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Closed Caption:

so today we're going to have a look at
using iMovie this is a program that
basically comes with most of mac
software and it's a very nice very easy
to use program for creating short videos
that are in any format you want so from
movie files to mp4 so whatever you need
whatever size you need resolution you
can adjust audio and color make other
enhancements crop it down and so on
so what we're going to do is we're going
to take a screen recording that I made a
little while ago and exported as an mp4
which is going to be a whole lot heavier
if you go into your files here you can
look at the difference between in screen
size between a movie file mov you can
see that that is a hundred and fifty two
megabytes and that same file is going to
be 50 when it's exported as an mp4 so
that's the goal here the qualities and
all that much worse in an mp4 but this
is the standard that everybody uses to
export and import video so we want to
get out of this whole scene this whole
movie scene and and get ourselves into a
much lighter format here you have the
same file 233 megabytes and the exact
same thing that I did 127 so it's it's
less than half its it's very much
lighter
alright so what we're going to do i have
i will be open i'm going to create a new
movie so you just go to file new movie
you can choose from a whole bunch of
different themes i tend to go sort of
low profile here with the no theme but
you can go all over the place
this one here i'm going to give it a
name and in this case it's a screen
recording that I just did talking about
PowerPoint
okay go ahead and read that
alright so what it's doing is its
setting up a new workspace for us i'm
going to just get rid of some of these
things here because it's going to
basically move it to the trash clearing
my workspace just a little bit and you
do that by selecting all this stuff here
and right-clicking move into the trash
okay that's a little bit nice little bit
easier to deal with
so I now have a new project I'm going to
go to import i'm going to import that
movie file that i just created which is
a screen recording all right let's go
find it here we are
import this whole thing it's gonna take
a little while because it's a big heavy
file and it's going to populate this
area here this is your raw footage area
and this is your final footage area
all that stuff now it's finished
populating so we're all got the entire
screen recording in here it's about
maybe 10 minute thing so this is it
right here it starts here this is the
last thing that we important and it's a
little difficult to see but you can kind
of get an idea of it by looking at the
content to see where things started and
this one here will end right there is a
little gap here and then this file
starts i'm going to select this whole
thing all the way to the bitter end here
by just dragging my mouse across and you
see that is turning yellow and when it's
yellow is selected so I'm just going to
pull this whole thing down into this
area right and this is this is my work
area and this is the place where i can
make cuts and make other selections so I
had kind of an of a goof up in here
where I was talking about something and
I and I could the wrong file and I just
want to reset that this doesn't look
right so I'm just going to go ahead and
using my mouse here this is the end of
the file using my mouse here i can
adjust where I want a video to break so
i'm just going to scroll along and kind
of pull it out until I find the place
that I want to cut that piece out I just
take my mouse and I kind of scroll along
there we go
it's right about here that I want to
break it
alright so and you can see here with the
audio underneath where you want to break
it just to make sure you click on that
area where right before the break and
with the right mouse click you say play
it and you can hear the video going on
and you can see okay this is exactly the
spot where i want to make that break
ok now I'm going to take that same item
again and pull it in right next to it
this is a copy
of the original piece that we had and
this time I'm gonna cut out this first
part so that it's effectively skips the
stupid mistake that I made so I'm going
to just scroll this all the way over
until I cover that silly part up right
there
I think that's about right just like
that and you can go ahead and listen to
it and make sure that the cut is right
if you put your mouse down here and you
press play
you'll be able to hear the audio and I
have headphones on so everybody doesn't
hear that but i can listen to it and I
can decide okay that is exactly the
right spot to make those cuts
ok now the other thing i want to do is I
want to pump up the volume a little bit
on this because the volume is a little
bit too light so you have an enhanced
area here i'm going to take it volume
ok it's currently in a hundred percent
but i would like to have it higher
I don't push it up to about three and %
maybe that's a bit too high you want it
might do the trick
you can already see down below that the
audio levels are rising so it's going to
be much easier to hear this and you can
always check by right-clicking play and
you can hear the audio going off and you
say that is fine with me now i am all
done
technically not going to be sitting here
making more adjustments and fussing
further but for this purpose I am
finished i'm going to share this style
and i will be don't have an export or
save as like you might be used to with
other packages but you do have a share
button and that's how you're going to
make this fresh air
there are lots of ways you can save it
you can upload it to CNN if you think
it's newsworthy but in my case it's not
you can share with your friends on
Facebook but you don't want to bore them
with sort of technical boring stuff
send it as an email too heavy so i'm
going to save it as a file
ok
you can choose a number of different
resolutions high-definition all the way
down i'm gonna go with something pretty
small
it's plenty of resolution for me for my
purposes I'm going to click Next and I
say but right here it's already got the
title in there because i put the title
in earlier and I'm saving now it's gonna
take a little while this share does take
some time so you have to be a bit
patient if you click on the theater tab
at the top here you can generally get a
glimpse of what's going on and you can
see how hard it's working its kind of
panting to keep up but here we go this
is the area where it's telling me that
it's working on a video you can see that
this one that we just shared creating a
powerpoint thing is puffing and huffing
and on its way and these other ones are
already finished and once you're
finished you will see it appear right
here where you have it right next to the
other one and that's it