I am editing football film for my son so I want to add arrows, etc. to the movie. I can find the Emojis and symbols and copy them but no idea how to paste them into the movie clip. As an Apple fan I hate to admit it but I was able to do this in 1 minute using Movavi but I'd rather stick with iMovie.
I'm using iMovie 10 and running OS 10.15.3.
When in Picture in Picture you can select the top clip and so a Crop/Rotate with the crop tool. You will get rotation rectangles when you click on the crop tool in the tool bar (the one that looks like intersecting angles) at the upper right of your screen. However, that only gives you a 90 degree rotation option. That might work for you.
Also, as you probably know, in Picture in Picture you can drag the arrow around the screen, but just can't rotate it except as explained above.
To rotate the arrow freely to any position you would need to do that when you are creating it in the transparency screen. So you would have to start over and create a new arrow pointing in the direction that you want.
-- Rich
When you click on Edit/Emoji and Symbols, you get a display of various symbols. There are some arrow selections among them. However, they can only be added to a title. So, if you drag a title and overlay it above your sports clip, you can click on one of the symbols and it will automatically appear in the title. However, that will not do you much good, as you will not be able to adjust the position of the arrow or animate it so that it follows the player.
The way you can insert an arrow into your video is to create a transparency screen (see below) in the Preview app on the Mac, insert an arrow into it, and save to your desktop. Then import the arrow transparency that you created into iMovie and overlay it onto your sports clip. Then use the Picture in Picture feature to insert the arrow into the clip.
You then can animate the arrow with the Keystrokes feature of PiP so that it follows the player. See this Help menu link that describes how to use the Picture in Picture feature and animate it.
https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mova1aaa682b
Creating the transparency screen is easy. Take a duplicate of any random photo and click on it to open it in Preview. Then, in the Preview menu, do Edit/Select All, Edit/ Delete. The picture will disappear leaving you with a blank transparency screen. Then go to Tool/Annotate/Arrow and insert an arrow into the transparency screen. You can use the tool bar at the top of the Preview screen to set the color and size of the arrow. Also, there are drag handles that let you adjust the position and configuration of the arrow. When done, do a File/Save to your desktop. Then import the transparency arrow that you created into iMovie. Insert it above your sports clip and select the arrow clip. Click on the overlay tool (the one that looks like overlapping rectangles) in the tool bar at the upper right of your screen. Click on Picture in Picture in the selection box that appears. Adjust the position of the arrow, and the size of it by dragging the corners of the outline of the arrow photo. Then click on the blue reset button to apply your adjustments. Read the link that I inserted above for a more detailed explanation of how to use the PiP feature and how to animate the arrow.
-- Rich
Hey Rich, really helpful - thanks! Can you give a little more detail on how to edit the position of the arrow? I got everything to the point where the arrow is showing up on the video, but i cant get it to point at the correct thing
can i add a special character i.e. arrows into a movie clip?
