(2005-04-29)
Sebastopol, CA--"Don't let the rumors fool you," warns number one bestselling Mac author and Emmy-award-winning CBS News correspondent David Pogue. "iMovie may be simple, but it isn't simplistic. It offers a wide range of special effects and flexible features for creating transitions between scenes, superimposing text in your video, layering multiple soundtracks together, and more. Unfortunately, many of the best techniques aren't covered in the only 'manual' you get with iMovie: its electronic help screens."
iMovie is the first digital video (DV) editing software for nonprofessionals--that is, people who have lives outside of video editing. "iMovie HD [the new iLife '05 version] represents a deep overhaul of the program, one that will challenge even the iMovie veteran with a good deal of unlearning and relearning," says Pogue. In the new, full-color iMovie HD and iDVD 5: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, US $29.95), Pogue explains iMovie's big-ticket features and improvements as well as the finer points--the intriguing little enhancements that typically go unmentioned but, "taken together, will make a big difference in your moviemaking career."
And then, along with guest author (and bestselling digital-video goddess) Erica Sadun, Pogue includes an invaluable book-within-a-book on iDVD, exploring all of iDVD 5's new enhancements that make home DVDs look even more like commercial Hollywood DVDs.
With very little jargon and plenty of humor and wisdom, Pogue offers a complete course in Macintosh filmmaking and DVD design, including:
Essentials of film technique: iMovie may deliver the technical tools to produce amazing videos, but Pogue delivers what readers need to master the artistic side of shooting--lighting, sound, and composition--and shows them how to use the dozens of buttons adorning the modern camcorder.
Editing basics: These pages burst with clever workarounds, hidden features, and editing tricks from the Hollywood film world.
Finding an audience: Aspiring moviemakers can export their masterpiece to tape for high-quality standard or high-definition TV playback. Or they can save it as a QuickTime movie for posting on a web page, emailing to friends, burning as a Video CD, or even uploading to a Bluetooth cell phone.
Mastering DVDs: Using a Mac with a DVD burner, readers "can preserve their movies on home-recorded DVDs that look and behave amazingly close to the commercial DVDs they rent from Netflix or Blockbuster." They can distribute their movies at much higher quality than VHS tapes or QuickTime movies by creating Hollywood-style DVDs--even in widescreen.
Well illustrated and in full color throughout, iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual contains hundreds of undocumented secrets for extending iMovie HD and iDVD design tools and countless little-known tips of the pros so that anyone can create and distribute professional-quality films from the comfort of home.
Praise for the previous edition:
"Perhaps it's a good thing that Apple doesn't include manuals with their products, as they simply wouldn't be this good."
--Kirk Hiner, Applelinks
"An absolute 'must-have' for getting the most out of iMovie 4 & iDVD software, highly recommended for amateur and professional moviemakers and movie editors working on the Macintosh."
--Library Bookwatch
iMovie HD & iDVD 5: The Missing Manual
David Pogue
ISBN: 0-596-10033-7, 516 pages, $29.95 US, $41.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
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