Customizing Finished Video with Your Organization’s Information in iMovie

A How-To Guide

By Gab Rich Atlanta Legal Aid Society, Inc.

Funded by a Technology Initiative Grant from

the Legal Services Corporation

Table of Contents

1. Customizing PowerPoint Slides with Your Organization’s Info 2. Opening the Finished Video in iMovie 3. Adding PowerPoint Slides to the Video 4. Adding and Editing Transitions Between Slides 5. Finalizing the Project

1. Customizing PowerPoint Slides with Your Organization’s Info After downloading the PowerPoint template from ShareLawVideo.org, you will need to customize it for your organization and state. Customizable slides include information for: Your organization State and/or local bar associations

Organizations outside your jurisdiction Statewide legal aid website(s)

There is also a slide to give credit to the organization that uploaded the video (to place at end of video)

All customizable content is designated by [text in brackets].

Once you have edited all of the customizable slides with your information and logos, you are ready to set up the slides so they can be added to iMovie. In order to add your slides to iMovie, you will first need to save the PowerPoint template as pictures. To do this, click File, and select Save as Pictures.

When you save the slides as pictures, a new folder will be created that contains JPEG images of all your slides. Decide what you want this folder to be called and choose a save destination. After you save, you will see a message that looks like this:

2. Opening the Finished Video in iMovie Once you have downloaded the “original branding removed” finished video from ShareLawVideo.org, you will need to share it to iMovie so that you can edit it there. Start by opening the video file (.mov or m4v) in QuickTime Player. Next, click Share, and then select iMovie.

You will receive the following message:

Click Share, and then your video will be exported to iMovie.

Open iMovie, and you will receive this message:

Click Import Now. Choose which Event (existing or new) you want to import to and how you want your video to be imported. This Apple Support discussion provides more information on the different options for importing (Optimized, Full, etc.).

The Event will be processed, and then a thumbnail of the video will appear.

If you haven’t already done so, create a new project in iMovie. Click File, then select New Project to create a new video. Choose a title for your video. There is no need to change the default theme (No Theme), aspect ratio, or frame rate. You do not need to automatically add transitions.

After you’ve created your project, click and drag the video thumbnail into the timeline to begin editing it.

3. Adding PowerPoint Slides to the Video When editing, it can be helpful to detach the audio from the clip. First, select the clip. Then click Clip, and then select Detach Audio.

Here’s what it looks like when the audio is detached:

There will be uncustomized versions of the PowerPoint slides in the “original branding removed” finished video that you downloaded from ShareLawVideo.org. These slides serve as placeholders. There are placeholders for the state and organization-specific slides, as well as a placeholder for the credit slide.

Move the playhead over the video in the timeline to find where the state and organization-specific slides start.

Playhead

Move your playhead to the point in the clip just before the placeholder slides start. When you have found the right spot, you will need to split the clip. With the playhead in the appropriate place, right click and select Split Clip.

You will also need to split the clip at the spot where the placeholder slides end. This is often the spot where the credits from the agency that created the original video begin.

Make sure you also the clip at the end of the video where your customized credit slide will go. Split the clip just before the placeholder version of the credit slide appears on screen.

Once you have isolated the clips that contain the placeholder slides (aka “placeholder clips”), it will be time to add your customized slides, which you saved as photos.

It is very important that you take note of the length of the placeholder clips.

When you add your customized slides, you will need to make sure to change their duration so that the total duration of all your slides is equal to the total duration of the placeholder clips.

For example, the total duration of these placeholder clips is 21.5 seconds (16s + 5.5s).

You would need to make sure that the photos you add are set to play for a total 21.5 seconds.

The purpose of this is to make sure that the audio track of the original video syncs with your video after you delete the placeholder clips.

Now it’s time to add your customized slides to the video. The best photo placement for this type of video is Fit in Frame. This will allow the whole slide to be seen clearly in the middle of the screen. Before adding photos, click File, and then select Project Properties. Make sure the Initial Photo Placement is set to Fit in Frame.

After you’ve done this, add photos by opening their folder in the Finder and selecting all of the photos. Next, Copy and Paste or drag the photos into the iMovie project. You can place these before or after the “placeholder” clips, which you will eventually delete.

Now it’s time to set the duration of the slides. Remember, at this stage, it is important to make sure that the duration of your slides equals the duration of the placeholder clips. To change the duration of the slides, hover over a slide and click the gear icon in the lower left corner.

Select Clip Adjustments, and enter the number of seconds you want the slide to appear on screen. As long as the total duration of the slides is equal to the duration of the placeholder clips (in the case of this video, 21.5 seconds), it does not matter how long each individual slide is.

4. Adding and Editing Transitions Between Slides For aesthetic purposes, you may want to add transitions between your slides and video clips. Open the Transitions Browser in the bottom right hand corner of iMovie to choose your transitions. For the purposes of this video, I prefer Cross Dissolve transitions.

Click and drag transitions onto the video timeline.

You can change the length of transitions by hovering over the transition symbol , clicking the gear icon that appears, and choosing Transition Adjustments.

I typically like this type of transition to last for about 0.5 seconds. If you want all of the transitions to be the same length, check the box that says Applies to all transitions.

You may also want to add a Fade to Black transition to the very end of your video.

5. Finalizing the Project Watch your video all the way through to make sure everything looks and sounds the way you want it to. If so, it is time to finalize the project so it can be shared and uploaded for your audience to view. Click Share, and then select Export Movie.

Choose the size for your video. Large is generally a good size.

It will take around 5-10 minutes for the M4V (Apple’s version of an MP4) video to be created.

Now your video is ready to be uploaded!