7. Editing Video Color, Brightness, and More
In this chapter, you find out how to make adjustments to your movie clips to make them look and sound better. Topics include the following:
→ Letting iMovie automatically enhance your movie clips
→ Adjusting color balance, brightness, temperature, and saturation
→ Fixing rolling shutter and stabilizing shaky video
→ Adjusting movie clip volume and overall sound
When you import movie clips into iMovie, unless you are an expert videographer the clips will likely need some attention to make them look and sound better. You might even need to stabilize shaky video. Luckily, iMovie has all the tools to turn your amateur video into a professional movie.
Using the Adjust Menu
Before you can make any adjustments to your video, you first must show the Adjust menu.
1. Click on a movie clip or select part of a clip.
2. Click Adjust. The Adjust menu opens.
Adjusting Color Balance
If you need to adjust the color balance, or intensities of colors, globally across a movie clip, you can use the Color Balance menu.
1. Click the Color Balance icon.
2. Click Auto to allow iMovie to automatically enhance the movie clip for you.
3. Click Match Color to match the color in the movie clip with the color in another movie clip. Follow the steps in the “Match Color” section later in this chapter.
4. Click White Balance to adjust the color in the movie clip based on a part of the clip that you know is white or gray. Follow the steps in the “Adjust White Balance” section later in this chapter.
5. Click Skin Tone Balance to adjust the colors in the movie clip based on human skin tone of someone in the clip. Follow the steps in the “Adjust Skin Tone” section later in this chapter.
If you don’t feel like experimenting with adjusting the color balance in your movie clip, you can let iMovie take a stab at it. Just click Auto and iMovie analyzes the clip and makes global color adjustments to it to make it appear as natural as possible.
Match Color
1. Skim through your movie clips by hovering your cursor over the frames. The cursor looks like an eyedropper.
2. Click a frame to preview how your movie clip will look using the colors from the frame you have clicked on.
3. Click the check mark to save your changes.
Adjust White Balance
To use the White Balance feature, make sure you are viewing a frame within your movie clip that has white or gray in it.
1. Click an area in the frame that is white or gray, such as a cloud or a white wall.
2. Look at the preview to see if you like how the color has been adjusted.
3. Click the check mark to save your changes.
Adjust Skin Tone
To use the Skin Tone Balance feature, make sure you are viewing a frame within your movie clip that has a person in it so you can use his or her skin tone.
1. Click the face or body of someone in the frame.
2. Look at the preview to see if you like how the color has been adjusted, and if the skin tones look natural.
3. Click the check mark to save your changes.
Correcting Color
If you need to correct the colors in a movie clip, you can use the Color Correction menu to adjust contrast, brightness, color saturation, and color temperature.
1. Click the Color Correction icon.
2. Slide to adjust shadows in the clip to be lighter or darker.
3. Slide to adjust the contrast between light and dark colors in the clip.
4. Slide to adjust the overall brightness of the clip.
5. Slide to adjust the highlights in the clip to make them brighter or darker.
6. Slide to adjust the overall color saturation of the clip.
7. Slide to adjust the overall color temperature of the clip to be cooler or warmer.
Cropping
If you need to crop your movie clip to show only part of the frames, rotate the clips, or use a Ken Burns effect, you can use the Cropping menu.
View the Cropping Menu
1. Click the Cropping icon.
2. Click to make your clip fill the entire frame. This is the default for all clips.
3. Click to select which part of the frames in the clip are displayed.
4. Click to use a Ken Burns effect on your clip, effectively creating a postproduction zoom and pan.
5. Click to rotate the clip counterclockwise.
6. Click to rotate the clip clockwise.
Crop
You can crop your movie clip so that only a section of the frame is displayed. This effectively zooms into a specific section.
1. Click Crop.
2. Drag the selection box by its corners to adjust what part of the frame the viewer will see.
3. Click the check mark to save your changes.
Use the Ken Burns Effect
The Ken Burns effect enables you to gradually move what the viewer sees from one area of the image to another. Think of this as a virtual camera.
1. Click the Ken Burns button.
2. Click the Start selection box and drag it around if you need to.
3. Drag the Start selection box by its corners to adjust what part of the frame the viewer will see. In this example, we made the Start area smaller than it originally was and dragged it to the top left of the frame.
4. Click the End selection box and drag it around if you need to.
5. Drag the End selection box by its corners to adjust what part of the frame the viewer will see. In this example, we made the End box smaller than it originally was and dragged it to the bottom right of the frame.
6. Click the check mark to save your changes.
Correcting for Stability and Rolling Shutter
If your movie clip is shaky, you can let iMovie stabilize the clip so that it looks like it was recorded with a steady hand. If your camera uses a rolling shutter, fast-moving or vibrating footage, objects can appear misshapen. You can use iMovie to correct that footage.
Rolling shutter is a technique used by many digital cameras when you use them to record video. This includes many point-and-shoot cameras, Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras, and smartphones like the iPhone. Most of the time, you will not see the effects of rolling shutter, but in certain instances, like when images are moving very fast, the way the scene is captured on video appears to wobble or the objects appear misshapen. iMovie allows you to correct for the aftereffects of rolling shutter. You can read much more about rolling shutter at www.diyphotography.net/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-rolling-shutter.
1. Click the Stabilization icon.
2. Click to turn on stabilization.
3. Slide to select the amount of stabilization to use.
4. Click to fix the effects that might be caused by rolling shutter.
5. Click to choose the amount of rolling shutter correction to use.
Adjusting Volume
You can adjust the overall volume of your movie clip, or, if you have two audio clips associated with your movie clip (such as a voiceover or background music), you can reduce the volume of one of them.
2. Click to let iMovie automatically adjust the loudness of the volume in the movie clip.
3. Click to mute or unmute the audio in the clip.
4. Slide to adjust the loudness of the volume in the clip.
5. Click to reduce the volume of the unselected movie clip or extra audio clip so that it is softer than the audio in the other associated clips.
6. Slide to increase or decrease how soft the audio in the other clips must be adjusted to.
How Do I Use Lower Volume?
Let’s say you have added some background music to your project. It appears as a second audio track. If you want the background music to be softer than the audio in the main movie clip, you would select your movie clip, and use the Lower Volume feature described in steps 5 and 6 to lower the volume of all other audio clips, other than the audio in the movie clip itself. The reverse can be done, too. For example, if you record a voiceover for part of your movie clip, you would want the audio in the movie clip to be softer so viewers can hear the voiceover. In this example, you would select the voiceover audio clip and use steps 5 and 6 to lower the volume of the unselected audio clips (which include the audio in your movie clip).
Using Noise Reduction and Equalizer Settings
If you need to adjust the audio in your movie clip so that the background noise is reduced or want to enhance the audio using preset equalizer settings, you can use the Noise Reduction and Equalizer settings.
1. Click the Noise Reduction and Equalizer icon.
2. Click to turn on background noise reduction.
3. Slide to choose the percentage of background noise reduction.
4. Click to choose a preset equalizer setting such as Voice Enhance, Music Enhance, Hum Reduction, Bass Boost, and so on.
Using Video and Audio Effects
You can apply cool video and audio effects to your movie clip to change the way the clip looks and sounds.
1. Click the Video and Audio Effects icon.
2. Click to open the Choose Video Effect dialog box.
3. Hover your cursor over a video effect to see a preview of it.
4. Click a video effect to select it and use it.
5. Click to open the Choose Audio Effect dialog box.
6. Hover your cursor over an audio effect to hear what it will sound like.
7. Click an audio effect to select it and use it.
