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When assembling your video clips into a movie, some experienced digital-video editors prefer to skip the storyboard and go straight to the timeline. The reason? The timeline provides more information and precise control over your movie project than a storyboard. To switch to the timeline, click the Timeline button.
Not all clips are the same size. In the Timeline view, the width of each clip represents the length (in time) of that clip, unlike in Storyboard view, where each clip looks the same size. In Timeline view, longer clips are wider and shorter clips are narrower.
Adding clips to the timeline
Adding a clip to the timeline is a lot like placing clips on the storyboard. Just use the drag-and-drop feature to move clips from the clip browser to the timeline. Figure 1 shows a clip being inserted between two existing clips on the timeline. Clips that fall after the insert are automatically shifted over to make room for the inserted clip.
Figure 1: Use the drag-and-drop feature to place your clips in the timeline.
Zooming in and out on the timeline
Depending on the size of your movie project, you may find that clips on the timeline often appear either too wide or too narrow for you to work with them effectively. To rectify this situation, adjust the zoom level of the timeline. You can either zoom in and see more detail or zoom out and see more of the movie. To adjust the zoom, follow these guidelines:
- Apple iMovie: Adjust the Zoom slider control in the lower-left corner of the timeline (which you can see in Figure 1).
- Microsoft Windows Movie Maker: Click the Zoom In or Zoom Out magnifying glass button above the timeline, or press Page Down to zoom in and Page Up to zoom out.
- Pinnacle Studio: Press the plus key (+) to zoom in or press the hyphen (minus sign) key (–) to zoom out. Alternatively, you can hover your mouse pointer over the timeline ruler until the pointer becomes a clock, and then click and drag left or right on the ruler to adjust the zoom.
Tracking timeline tracks
The timeline displays several different tracks. Each track represents a different element of the movie — video resides on the video track and audio resides on the audio track. You may have additional tracks available, as well, such as title tracks or music tracks.
 | Some advanced video-editing programs (such as Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro) allow you to have many separate video and audio tracks in a single project. You may find this advanced capability useful for layering many different elements and performing some advanced editing techniques. |
When you record and capture video, you usually capture audio along with it. When you place one of these video clips in the timeline, the accompanying audio appears just underneath it in the audio track. You may find being able to see the audio and video tracks separately important for a variety of editing purposes.
Locking timeline tracks in Pinnacle Studio
Pinnacle Studio offers a handy locking feature on timeline tracks. Locking the track doesn't prevent burglars from stealing it late at night, but it does let you temporarily protect a track from changes while you manipulate other tracks. For example, if you want to delete the audio track that came with some video but don't want to delete the video itself, follow these steps:
1. Click the track header on the left side of the timeline.
A lock icon appears on the track header, and a striped gray background is applied to that track.
2. Perform edits on other tracks.
For example, to delete the audio track for one of your video clips, click the audio clip once to select it and then press Delete. The audio portion of the clip disappears, but the video clip remains unaffected.
3. Click the track header again to unlock the track.
What did iMovie do with my audio?
Apple iMovie 3 offers some useful improvements over previous versions of the software — and a few changes that you may find less welcome. The timeline doesn't automatically show the audio clips that accompany video clips. Each clip in the timeline includes both audio and video, but the timeline shows only a single track.
To view combined audio and video clips separately in iMovie, you have to extract the audio from each video clip individually. To do so, follow these steps:
1. Click once on a clip on the timeline to select it.
2. Choose Advanced --> Extract Audio or press Command+J.
The audio now appears as a separate clip on the timeline.
3. Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for each clip on the timeline.
 | You may want to wait until later (like when you're done editing the video portion of the movie) to extract audio from your video clips. If you still need to trim the video clip, you have to trim the audio clip separately if you've already extracted it. |
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