Digital Video: Getting to Know the iMovie Effects Panel

You accomplish all of your iMovie effects wizardry in the Effects panel. To open the panel, click the Effects button at the bottom of the Shelf pane. Now you see the Effects panel interface, most likely with the Adjust Colors effect selected (see Figure 1).

You certainly recognize the Effects panel if you've worked with the transitions or title panel, but this panel also offers some subtle differences. Select an effect in the list of effects, and the controls at the bottom of the panel change. Some effects, such as Adjust Colors, offer various sliders for changing the effect. Others, such as Black and White, don't have sliders. Every time you select a different effect or change one of the settings, a preview appears in the Effects preview area in the top-right corner — as long as you have a clip selected on the timeline.

Above the list of effects, you find two more sliders; these sliders determine the timing of the effect. (These sliders represent the amount of time from the beginning of the clip for Effect In and the amount of time from the end of the clip for Effect Out.) If you want to affect the entire clip with the selected effect, you need to set the Effect In time to 00:00 (all the way left) and the Effect Out time to 00:00 (all the way right). When you apply the effect to the clip, that effect applies to the entire clip. (For instance, the entire clip is sepia tone if that's the effect you select.)

If you select different Effect In and Effect Out times, something else happens — the effects happen more gradually. If you set the Effect In time for a few seconds after the clip has started and set the Effect Out time for later in the clip, the effect takes place over time, as the audience watches. In this case, if you choose Sepia Tone, the clip becomes increasingly more sepia tone-ish (that can't be a word) as it plays.

After you set the sliders, you're left with either two or three buttons in the top-left corner of the Effects panel (depending on the effect and your previous action). The buttons are Preview, Update, and Apply. Here's what the buttons do:

• Preview: As with transitions and titles, the Preview button on the Effects panel displays a frame-by-frame preview of the effect in the Monitor.

• Update: Apply any changes that you make to an existing effect (which usually means that everything gets rendered all over again).

• Apply: The button that you click to begin the rendering process. (Go figure.)

So you see how to set effects: Just select a clip in the Clip Viewer or timeline, make some selections in the Effects panel, and then click the Apply button. iMovie places a tiny checkerboard square icon in the clip's thumbnail to let you know that it has applied an effect.

Interestingly, emptying the Trash in iMovie (File --> Empty Trash) doesn't affect your ability to restore an effects clip to its original state, even though it does affect any other sort of Undo command within iMovie. So, don't worry about being able to reverse your special effects, even after emptying the Trash.

When you apply effects to clips, iMovie doesn't split the clips into more than one clip, even if the effect doesn't span the entire length of the clip.

Like transitions and titles, effects have to render in iMovie after you select a clip and an effect and click the Apply button. A small line appears under the thumbnail, filling with red as the rendering progresses. As with other rendering, you have to wait for the process to finish before you can view the clip in the monitor, full screen, or through your camcorder.