Import To iMovie Right From Your iPhone Or iPad [OS X Tips]

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iPhone to iMovie

Sure, iMovie is now available on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but nothing beats a big old screen to edit your video on. You no longer have to export the video from your iOS device to your iTunes or iPhoto, then import into iMovie. With iMovie ’11, you can bring it right into the app with no middle steps. How refreshingly simple! Here’s how.

First up, launch the camera app on your iPhone or iPad or what have you, and shoot yourself doing something clever, like playing the uke. Then connect your iOS device to your Mac with the white sync cable.

Depending on your Mac setup, iPhoto might open – go ahead and quit it. Image Capture is what I have set to open when I connect a camera, so I quit that instead. Launch iMovie with your preferred method, either via a click on the iMovie icon in the Dock, or double click from the Applications folder, or with a launching app like Alfred.

iMovie should open its own Import window automagically, but if it doesn’t (mine didn’t), click on the little videocamera icon on the left side, about halfway down the iMovie window. The Import window will now open, and you’ll either select the clip you want to import, or just hit the Import All button. iMovie will bring up a set of options. Tell it where to save the resulting imported video, put a new name in the Create new Event box, and then decide whether your video needs analyzing for Stabilization, People (faces), or both. You can then click on the Optimize video option box, choosing a final size from the drop down menu. I went for the Full – Original Size optimization option, because that’s how I roll.

Just so you can plan ahead, remember that one hour of standard video takes up 13 GB of hard drive space on your Mac while an hour of HD video takes up as much as 50 GB of your precious hard drive space.

Boom! You’ve just brought in video from your mobile device, straight through, without muss or fuss. You feel pretty good about it, don’t you? Now you can just edit with iMovie, and output as per usual.

Got an OS X tip? Need help troubleshooting OS X? Drop me a line or leave a comment below.

Via: About.com

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