I use iMovie (free, bundled) to tweak raw video, cutting bits out, covering up things (e.g. for work, adding an update to a recording of slides), changing speed etc and find it rather pleasant to use. YouTube has its own free video editor (you can upload your video as private to work on it) if you don’t have a Mac or iPhone.
In this post I did everything on a Macbook Pro using iMovie 10.1.9 so yours may look different if you have a different version. The iPhone and iPad have an iMovie app which does mostly the same.
The combined length of the four instructional videos (1-4) and excluding the original and final footage is 2m 58s so this is a quick overview, full details of what you can do with the software can be found by searching YouTube and Apple has its own iMovie helpfiles.
00. Downloads
If you want to play along you can download the raw files below.
Download a copy of the movie, and here’s the image-text (says ‘Blue’) which I used to add a picture-in-picture overlay in video 2.
0. Original video clip
Video has sound
This is a recording taken at the Wilderness Festival in 2019, of a colourful fairground ride.
In the clips below I’ve managed (rather unhelpfully!) to set the screen recording (Mac: Command+Shift+5) window a little smaller than ideal so it doesn’t show the File / Edit menu, but I’ve added on-screen subtitles and will add notes as we go along.
1. Instructional – import a video file into iMovie
I’ve used drag and drop from File Manager (called ‘Finder’ on a Mac) but you can also use iMovie’s File » Import media and navigate to your file.
Video has no sound
2. Instructional – use picture-in-picture to add an overlay / subtitles
I’ve imported the image-text file to add as an overlay, set it as a picture-in-picture, positioned and resized it so it appears on-screen in the right place for the right time. Its default appearance is as ‘cutaway’ so the playback shows ‘Blue’ instead of the footage but selecting Picture in Picture converts it into a smaller frame which you can move around on the screen and resize. Guidelines will appear telling you if it’s at the edge of the screen or in the middle. Make sure the upper layer image is selected in order to change it to Pic-in-pic, and move it etc.
You also need it to be selected in order to drag it into the correct position to appear at the right point or to shorten or lengthen its duration on-screen.
In the video below I’ve successfully dragged and dropped the overlay to the upper layer but sometimes you’ll drop it to the right of the main footage. It’s easy to select and drag it above.
Video has no sound
If you add multiple (sequential, see 6. Useful notes) overlay ‘subtitles’, wanting them to appear on screen at different times you can set the on-screen position for one of them and copy the settings onto the other images. Use Command+C (⌘C) to copy, then select another overlay and then Edit » Paste Adjustments » All. You’ll have to repeat this for each overlay.
3. Instructional – changing speeds
Command+B (⌘B) lets you break the footage at a particular point letting you clip it into sections and change their speed individually (or delete, or move to a different position). Command+Z (⌘Z) aka Ctrl+Z will undo any action. Then it’s Modify » Slow Motion or Modify » Fast Forward to adjust speed.
All the ‘del’, ‘delete’ etc files in the menu on the left are just from me briefly creating something but not having yet deleted it. The other on-screen images are from videos I’ve edited or been editing for work.
Video has no sound
4. Instructional – exporting the final video
You don’t need to get rid of the blue marks but I did so because I like the way they vanish in a puff of smoke when you drag them to delete 😉 Because the File » Share menu includes the email address to upload to our work YouTube I’ve covered that with a privacy bar.
Look at the top right of the screen once you’ve exported the video as a little white circle will fill up to indicate progress.
Video has no sound
5. What the final video looks like
I could finesse the positioning and timing of ‘Blue’ but as an illustrative thingummy it’ll do 🙂
Video has sound
6. Useful notes
Command+Z will undo any action.
Spacebar plays or pauses playback.
You can’t have two picture-in-picture frames on the same bit of footage, only sequentially because the picture in picture is added to the second layer and there are only two. The simple workaround is to add one p-in-p, save the file as a new file and re-import it then add the second p-in-p overlay. This effectively collapses footage + overlay 1 as a single layer on which you then add second overlay.
Here’s the video I learned how to do this from.
How to do various techy things 