Movie Making - 'Best Practice' question

but that simply was NOT the question I was asking.

let's make this assumption - that I use one song as a soundtrack and make a movie with all the photos, clips, transitions, titles and the like. and it's simply 'perfect'.

Now, I use a different song and make yet ANOTHER movie with clips, photos, transitions, effects and the like.

and now I do this 5 or 7 or so times - all different movies.

NOW I want to stich them together into iMovie as a new single movie, using quicktime format as the 'transition' for each of the movies built.

maybe with that thought in mind, how do my original questions look now?

thx

I have movie clips AND photos, and am using iMovie effects, music and the like.

how does 'photo to movie' help me out here? am I missing something?

I appreciate your helpful reply.

I guess I need to mess with this 'photo to movie' thing - lots of folks are recommending it.

rory

Before answering your specific question (about making
separate movies, and then pulling them all together
into one) I thought that the first thing you
ought to know - just in case you didn't know - was
that ..and this flummoxes and floors many other
people who come here after they've tried doing
what you're doing, and they have their head in their
hands.. if you "..use one song as a soundtrack and
make a movie with all the photos, clips, transitions,
titles and the like.." you do need to be aware - in
case you don't know it - that adding transitions,
after you've arranged your clips and photos to music,
will shorten your clips or photos so that they become
out of sync with your music.

Yeah, I went through that about two years ago and figured that one out. that's why I mostly use 'Overlap' as that does not mess with the timing of the transition as opposed to 'cross-fade'.

I personally build my movies linearly anyway - (starting from the beginning to end anyway) and also learned quickly to turn off the volume level in video clips so you can 'stretch' or 'shrink' the ends of the clip with the mouse. I had to stumble onto this one too (as opposed to attempting to 'split' the clip into exact time sequence - that SUCKED).

But having mentioned that (..and having enjoyed the
Choc Choc Chip and Vanilla mixture..) I agree in
every way with Roy who did answer your
question.

Gotcha - maybe I should have stated that I have only one camera - yet with all the editing I plan for each of the 7 songs within the one movie - and because of the issue of timing tracks to the video - I feel rather vulnerable putting all that work into one single movie with the potential to mess things up later in the movie if I tweak a scene earlier in the entire movie.

hence my thought of doing this:

build iMovies (1 song per movie - LOTS of clips, pics, transitions, etc within that movie).

iMovie1
iMovie2
iMovie3
iMovie4
iMovie5
iMovie6

I can edit iMovie 'objects' individually without touching the others....

THEN when I am happy with the separate movies then convert them to full quality QT movies.

iMovie1 --> QT1
iMovie2 --> QT2
iMovie3 --> QT3
iMovie4 --> QT4
iMovie5 --> QT5
iMovie6 --> QT6

Finally, stich them back together in iMovie (as I have some personal 'interviews' that go in between each of the Songs/iMovie'x'/QTx

the Final iMovie looks like:
QT1 + interview1 + QT2 + interview2 + QT3 + QT4 + QT5 + QT6

Adjust the timing between the finalized QT movies and interviews, put in chapter markers, then it is done and go to iDVD.

And yes, I don't allow iMovie to render, I pull the project into iDVD for redering....

So I was simply trying to be helpful, and to
anticipate any problems which you might have, before
you'd realised that you might have those problems.

Thanks, I probably should have mentioned a disclaimer about a certain level of experience with iMovie...