In iPhoto, iMovie's sibling in the iLife suite, keywords play an important role in helping you manage tens of thousands of photos.
A keyword is a text label that you can slap on a picture, a tag that will help you pluck that photo (and ones like it) out of a haystack later. Some people make keywords for the people in the pictures: "Casey," "Mom," "Robin," and so on; others use them to identify what's going on in the photo: "Vacation," "Home," "Kids." Either way, the point is that if you're consistent in using keywords, you can later round up all photos bearing a certain keyword ("Robin") with one click.
Well, iMovie works with keywords as well, but you wouldn't know it at first. iMovie keywords belong to the handful of miscellaneous efficiency features that Apple calls the Advanced Tools, so most people don't even know that they exist. To make them appear, turn on Advanced Tools as described on The Orange Stripe.
Now, if you look carefully, you'll see that a new button has appeared on iMovie's central toolbar—one that looks like an old-fashioned key. Click it to open the Keywords window (Figure 4-4).
Figure 4-4. Top: When the Advanced Tools are turned on, the Keywords button appears. Click it to open the Keywords window (bottom). You can now "paint" a selected keyword, or several, onto a filmstrip, using the Auto-Apply tab. Or, on the Inspector tab, you can select some video first on the filmstrip and then turn on the relevant keyword checkboxes.
You can see that Apple has started you out with several sample keywords: Indoor, Outdoor, Landscape, People, Pets, and so on. You can also see that the Keywords window has two tabs at the top, Auto-Apply and Inspector. They correspond to the two ways that you can apply keywords to your filmstrips: by "painting" across them, or using the select-then-apply method.
To make up new keywords, click the Auto-Apply tab. Click in the Keyword box (lower-left), type a keyword, and press Enter. Type the next keyword, and press Enter. And so on.
To edit a keyword name, double-click it.
You can also rearrange the keyword list—to put the most common ones at the top, for example. (The top nine keywords get numeric keyboard shortcuts.) Just drag the keywords themselves up or down the list.
To remove keywords that you're not using, click the Auto-Apply tab, click the keyword you want to eliminate (not its checkbox) and then click Remove. If that keyword is actually in use—if you've applied it to some footage—iMovie warns you in a confirmation box. Click Yes to proceed with the keyword vaporization.
This method is wicked fast. It's especially good if you want to apply the same set of keywords to a slew of different filmstrips. When you get back from your Disney World vacation, for example, chances are good that a lot of your video will fall into the categories "Vacation," "Family," and "Kids." Using this method, you can leave those keyword checkboxes turned on and then whip through the clips, "painting on" the keywords as necessary.
Start by opening the Keywords window and then:
Click the Auto-Apply tab.
If you want to add a new keyword to the list, type it into the box at the bottom of the list and then click Add (or press Enter).
Turn on the checkboxes for the relevant keywords.
As noted above, you can turn on as many as you like.
Drag across the filmstrip sections that should have those keywords.
As always, you can skim and play to review a clip before you paint the keywords onto it.
As you drag, a blue line appears at the top of the filmstrip, indicating that you've applied keywords to it.
When you have a more motley assortment of video and you'll be applying a lot of different keywords as you go, it might make more sense to use this second method. Here, you highlight some video first and then turn on the keyword checkboxes.
Start by opening the Keywords window, and then:
Click the Inspector tab.
The keyword list appears.
Select some video.
You can use any of the techniques described on Phase 2: Select the Good Bits. Of course, you can skim and play to see what you've got before you apply a keyword.
Turn on the appropriate keyword checkboxes.
Click to select the checkboxes—or press the number keys on your keyboard that correspond to the numbers in the keyword list.
Once again, a blue line appears at the top of the filmstrip, indicating that you've applied keywords to it.
If you see a hyphen (-) in one of the checkboxes, it's because part of the selected video has that keyword, and part doesn't. Click that checkbox once to apply the keyword to the entire selection, or twice to remove the keyword from the entire selection.
Now you can repeat steps 2 and 3, selecting, then applying keywords; selecting, then applying keywords.
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