You may not have paused (a pun!) to think about it, but we're living in the golden age of home movies. Forget dad's old Super-8 films and the stinky celluloid in grandma's basement: A reasonably priced digital video camera and a Macintosh computer give you the ability to not only record moving images, but modify and assemble them in order to tell stories more effectively than ever. David Pogue, Mac maven, shows you how to make movies using iMovie and iDVD, the video editing and burning software that ship with all modern iMacs. iMovie and iDVD: The Missing Manual documents its two eponymous programs fully, but without straying from the tone of lighthearted competence that characterizes Pogue's best work.

This book includes plenty of nods to total Mac novices--the author explains such terms as resolution and pixel--but appeals as well to competent Mac users who just happen not to be cinamatographers. Obvious stuff that authors often neglect--such as the approximate disk-space requirements of movies of various lengths--appears in this book. Plus, Pogue makes extensive use of a question-and-answer format (particularly in sidebars) that's simultaneously easy to read and extraordinarily fact-dense. This is the book you need if you're planning to do any video work with an iMac. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to use Apple iMovie and iDVD to record, edit, and publish digital video. It's a soup-to-nuts treatment, covering selection of a camera, filming (including lighting and composition), assembling clips into a meaningful narrative, adding special effects and titles, and burning the product to DVD for distribution.

Book Description
At first glance, iMovie 4 looks identical to iMovie3. But under the hood, dozens of annoyances have been eliminated and dozens of polished touches have been added. The program tweaks include: editing enhancements, better navigation, and audio improvements. iDVD 4 has undergone a more thorough overhall that makes DVDs look even more like a commercial Hollywood DVD. iDVD removes many of the limits in the previous versions. Improvements here include: increasing the number of buttons on a menu page from 6 to 12, extending the background music on the menu screen to 15 minutes, allowing up to 99 chapter markers, and extending the amount of burnable video to two hours.iMovie 4 & iDVD: The Missing Manual has been updated to reflect all of these changes in detail and with scrupulous objectivity. This witty and entertaining guide from celebrated author David Pogue covers every step of iMovie video production, from choosing and using a digital camcorder to burning the finished work onto DVDs. The book also provides a firm grounding in basic film technique.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

With iMovie and iDVD, Apple made history by tearing down the barriers to pro-quality filmmaking. iLife '04 comes with deliciously polished editions of these programs -- new tools, new techniques, even new menus -- but still doesn't include a proper instruction manual. In this funny, authoritative, updated guide, David Pogue provides a complete course in Macintosh filmmaking and DVD design. Whether you plan to make the next Blair Witch Project or just better home movies, iMovie 4 & iDVD: The Missing Manual lets you marry the stunning quality of digital video with the power of your imagination.

SYNOPSIS