Copying edited "sections" of iMovie

[eclipse]

Hi,
I have a number of family movies I'm slowly working through in iMovie HD and they tend to be big... about 50 minutes each.

1/ Movie verses actual DVD space. I try to keep the movie around 50 minutes to allow for DVD space + enough space for sound files & iDVD edits etc. How much movie time verses iDVD extras do people find they need?

2/ I have all these hour long family files, and would like to copy the edited "portions" of the movie to other projects for friends. EG: I put time and effort into a fun birthday party edit, and decide to give that party, and a New Year's eve party, in one DVD to a friend.
What is the best way to copy the EDITED birthday party from one project and EDITED New Year's party from another project both into a new project? Copying the actual "clip" from the media folder in the older iMovies was annoying a/ because I did not really know what number clip was what bit of footage and b/ because I had to re-edit all the stuff again.

is there a way to drop and drag a 12 minute edited "party" from one project into another, or should I select all the clips & edits and drag onto a 3rd party application like Quicktime, make a movie there, and reimport it back in?

Can we have 2 iMovie projects open at once now for this purpose?

 

[super_kev]

You could export each finished movie in DV format (depending on what version of iMovie you have, it should be under "Share" or "Export") then reimport the DV clips into the new project in iMovie.

 

[eclipse]

Cheers super-key,
so in other words, I must basically copy the entire movie anyway and then trim out the "non-party" irrelevant stuff to my friends, and basically create a new mini-movie? Then I import the "Party" to my new friends project. Then I go through the whole exporting process again, and import "New Years Eve" as well? OK — I feared it might be something like that.

It's time intensive, but hey? Once I set it to export and it's processing, I'll just have to grab another coffee.

 

[super_kev]

Yes, that's what I'd do. Otherwise it's a mess.

 

[kiwi-in-uk]

In "Share" there is a tick box "Share selected clips only".

I do this all the time - shoot a continuous DVD of mates in a band, then split at the beginning & end of each song, "Share" each song separately as a named DV, play around with each song in iMovie or Motion, then compile a DVD.

Quite flexible really.

Re your question about "extras", I try to limit myself to about 500MB of photos, sound clips etc, or compile a separate CD with soundtrack & stills and package the whole lot in a double-DVD case with cover and brochure insert. Can make a nice gift. Extra nice if you have can print on the disks.

 

[eclipse]

thanks Kiwi... I'll look into it!