So -- I filmed myself a little Doritos commercial for the Superbowl ad contest. For one, I wanted to exercise our little "Mac Apps" and for another, I wanted to try and get up to speed on some of the new features in iMovie '08. I mean, the new version is so radically different from the previous iMovie HD, it's really something of a "back to the drawing board campaign". Anyway, my Superbowl ad was rejected on the grounds that I had failed to eliminate the Apple and Dell logos from my 30s shoot. Alas. I attempted to rotoscope those bad-boys out using Final Cut, but ran out of time before the revised deadline passed.
Nevertheless, I did learn something excellent and important about iMovie '08 that you might not have known: it's not in the help -- and that is:
If you take a PNG snapshot with Q@mera (or DotMatrix) and the resulting image contains transparency (indicated by the fact that the checkerboard background shows through) THEN you can overlay the still image ON TOP of an existing clip in the iMovie 08 timeline. It's a basic form of compositing.
So if you want to punctuate the results of your video shoot by overlaying and informative or clever snapshot, you can do so with Q@mera. Many of the built-in Q@mera effects can be turned into semi-transparent effects simply by turning off the background image and color (requires opening the Inspector).
Well, I thought it was revolutionary.
Labels: iMovie 08, iMovie HD