These tips have been put together during workshops run as part of BristolStories.org. Most of them are for Apple iMovie, but some of the information is useful for all digital storytellers.

Digital Storytelling workflow

A storyboard (part of the storyboard for “Truth” by Paddy Uglow):

1. Think about the story – it’s what you’re aiming to create, not a slideshow or gallery or music promo. Plan it out – think about the start, middle and end, and what style of story it will be (comedy, thriller, soap opera, documentary, happy or sad ending…)
2. Write and re-write the script and storyboard: make sure everything will ‘work’ for someone who is seeing the story for the first time.
3. Gather together your images, film and sound effects, making sure you get details of copyright or creative commons clearance.
4. Record your voice over.
5. Edit and normalise audio tracks, crop and retouch image files.
6. You may wish to create your soundtrack using Audacity (recommended for complex soundtracks) or use the video editing programme.
7. Import all files into the video editor and follow your storyboard. Often it is easiest to import the audio file containing the voiceover first, then fit all the other media around it.

It can save time to wait until the end before adding effects, titles and transitions. Try saving a new version of the project before you do, in case anything goes wrong. And don’t get carried away! Too many sound effects can make your story like a Tom & Jerry cartoon, and effects, transitions, pans and zooms can make your audience sea-sick.

iMovie (for Apple Macintosh computers)

Should I use iPhoto and iTunes to import media into iMovie?

iMovie is designed to work alongside iPhoto (a photo library) and iTunes (a music library / player). Any images in iPhoto and sounds in iTunes can be accessed from the Photos and Audio panes in iMovie.

The advantages of using iPhoto and iTunes to access your pictures and sounds are:

• You can choose from a large library of media without having to import it all into the project.
• Project file sizes are smaller.
• You can organise pictures into albums, and import audio from CD (from within iMovie) and sort audio by name, artist and length.
• The length a photo appears for can be increased to any length on the timeline.

The disadvantages are:

• If there are a lot of files in the two programmes, it’s hard to find the one you want.
• Working in three programmes rather than one can be confusing and complicated.
• If you need to edit or delete a picture or sound, it can be hard to find on the computer, and you may have more than one copy.
• When more than one person is using a computer, you may have hundreds of files to trawl through before you can find the one you want.

The quickest way to import pictures, audio and film clips is simply to select them and drag them all onto the Clips Pane in iMovie.

To get photos into iMovie, you can just drag them in to the Clips Pane. To get Ken Burns or resize/lengthen them, put the clip on the timeline, select it then click on Photos. Make adjustments (with or without Ken Burns ticked) and click Update.

If you want to do any retouching of photos in a photo editor (eg PhotoShop or Gimp), do it before putting the photos in iPhoto. So the workflow is:

1. Take or scan picture
2. Save pictures as files onto the computer
3. Retouch in Photoshop
4. Create your story in iMovie.
5. iMovie Troubleshooting
6. These tips were written using iMovie HD 5.

I can’t open my iMovie project!

Problem: I keep backups of iMovie files on a network drive, using an FTP application to copy files to and from it. When I tried to open a restored backup, I got an unexpected quit.

Quicker solution: An iMovie file is a “package”, a bit like a folder, containing files. I right-clicked on the file and chose “show package contents”.

I found that all the DV files and WAV files inside didn’t have proper icons had lost their associations and many wouldn't open in QuickTime, even when dragged onto the icon.

I added .dv extensions onto them and opened them in QuickTime (using File/Open from within QuickTime), then exported them all to files WITHOUT the .dv extension, then put those back into the iMovie package, replacing the old files. I opened the WAVs in Audacity and saved as a new file, which I also replaced the existing file in the iMovie package with. All the .DV and .WAV files now had icons and the iMovie project then opened OK and played back/exported fine.

More complicated problem:

BUT when I uploaded it to my network backup, then downloaded again, the same problem turned up. What had happened was that the original files that had been imported into iMovie didn’t have any extensions like .dv or .wav. Normally that’s not a problem, but copying them over FTP had lost the Apple “resource forks” so there was nothing to say what kind of files they were.

More complicated solution: Open the iMovie project file from the package in a text editor (it’s an XML file!) Find the names of all the resources etc (like Clip01) and put “.dv” onto them, and rename all the relevant filenames with a .dv extension. You’ll probably have to do this with .jpgs and .wavs (which may be .tiffs or .mp3s of course!) This MAY work straight away, OR you may have to open all the files in QuickTime and re-export them and put them in the package.

In the XML file, filenames will have a : instead of a space, so “my file” will appear in the xml as “my:file”.

Avoid the problem in the future: Always make sure the files you use in your project have an extension!

Titling is a nightmare! I get errors when adding titles.

Here are some tips:

1. You may have to drag your title to the left of the clip you want it to appear on, otherwise it’ll appear on the wrong clip.
2. Make sure “over black” is not ticked, unless you want the title to be a new clip on a black background.
3. Make sure the combined fade in/out and pause times of your title are not longer than the clip you want it to appear on.
4. Make sure the clips all join together: if there is a gap between two clips, you may run into problems. Zoom right in to check.
5. Try removing transitions and effects (right-click the clip and choose “Revert Clip to Original”) from the clip.

I’m having trouble putting on a transition.

1. Make sure the clips all join together: if there is a gap between two clips, you may run into problems. Zoom right in to check.
2. If there is a Ken Burns move or an effect on the clip, try right-clicking the clip and choosing “Revert Clip to Original” to remove it.
3. Is the clip a copy? Try using an original dragged from the Clips Pane. You may need to import the original again.

I can’t change the length of a clip.

1. If the clip is a piece of video, it may be impossible to make it any longer than it actually is.
2. Try turning off View Audio Waveforms and Audio Volume Levels.
3. If the clip has a title on it, you may have to delete the clip and re-import it.
4. If the clip is a photo that has been imported to the Clips Pane, select it, click on Photos and use the length settings to make the clip longer. If you type in the length rather than using the slider, you can make the clip last for longer than 30 seconds.

How do I make all my clips the same length?

1. Select the clips you want to change the length of.
2. Click on Photos, change the clip length slider (the hare-tortoise one) and click Update.

My sound has all gone out of sync / my clips have changed length.

• If you are using the Cross Dissolve transition, you will probably find that it has changed the length of the clips, which will probably have put it out of sync with your sound. Try using the Overlap transition instead - we’ve compared the two and Overlap seems to give the desired effect without shortening clips.

Useful iMovie tips

Selection

• Use Apple-click (hold the Apple key while clicking) to select a few clips. You can use Select All, then Apple-click to un-select the first clip, then move the rest of the clips, making a space.
• Use a Marquee to select: hold down the mouse button in one of the audio tracks and drag a marquee over the clips you want to select.

Audio

• Create a complex audio multi-track soundtrack in Audacity before starting the iMovie project. Import the audio file into iMovie.
• If you’ve run out of audio tracks in iMovie and you want to make the sounds more complex, choose Share and export the soundtrack only by using “Expert Settings” and “Sound to wave”. Open this file in Audacity, add the extra sounds you want, export it from Audacity, then import it into iMovie, replacing the sounds you had before.

Other tips

• Hold down alt while dragging clips from the Clips Pane to make a copy of a clip.
• Cut and paste clips to create identical copies, including all titles and effects. This would be useful if you wanted to copy a title and just change the words.
• Apply two effects to the same clip. It is possible to apply several effects to the same clip, but be careful not to overdo it!
• Create titles as images in Photoshop and Gimp. Import them into iMovie and pan/zoom them, apply effects and transitions, for visuals not possible with the iMovie Title feature.

iMovie links

www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/ - iMovie tutorials and tips. Look elsewhere on the site for links to extra effects, transitions and useful digital storytelling programmes.

www.apple.com/support/imovie - Apple’s iMovie support page.

PhotoStory for Windows XP

Which is better: Photo Story or MovieMaker?

Photo Story creates better quality images from stills, and has the panning and zooming feature which is called “Ken Burns” in iMovie. However, it only has one track of audio, will not import video clips, and can be tedious to use.

PhotoStory links

www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn - Lots of information for digital storytellers and filmmakers.

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/faq.mspx - Microsoft’s Photo Story Frequently Asked Questions.

agfacts.tamu.edu/~pflores/photosproducer/ - video tutorials for Photo Story.

MovieMaker for Windows XP

Should I use MovieMaker or Photo Story?

Movie Maker doesn’t display still images to as high a quality as Photo Story, and has no panning and zooming feature (apart from the preset “ease in” and “ease out” effects. However, it has more flexible timeline editing, motion effects and moving titles.

MovieMaker links

www.windowsmoviemakers.net/PapaJohn/ - Lots of information for digital storytellers and filmmakers.

www.mightycoach.com/articles/mm2/index.html - Tips and tricks for Movie Maker.

Audacity (for Windows, Linux and Macintosh)

The effects menu is greyed out, or other features won’t work.

1. Make sure you have selected part or all of the audio to apply an effect to.
2. Make sure that playback is stopped, not paused.

Some of the effects won’t work.

• Try going into Preferences and changing the sound quality from 32bit to 16bit. Some effects won’t work at 32 bit quality, including the Apple Matrix Reverb.

Audacity links

audacitybook.org/html/ - online Audacity tutorials.

Written by Paddy Uglow on behalf of BristolStories.org, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5