How do you mark your 'in' point with the keyboard?

Question

I know you can mark the first frame of your selection by hitting the mouse button but I find I press the spacebar to start previewing the source footage and stop the playhead at just the right point where my 'in' should be. Now as soon as I move the mouse the playhead jumps to a different part of the clip, this results in me losing my 'in' point.
What I want to do is hit the spacebar to stop at just the right point, hit a key to mark my selection, hit spacebar to resume playing and then finally hit shift-A to mark my out. Any ideas?
Thanks,
Dave

Answer 1

Could you describe your workflow in producing Quicknotes. 
Basically I use a screen/system audio capture application to capture what I am doing in an application along with any audio being produced. There are many such applications available, but I tend to stick with Snapz Pro X which I have been using for years. My somewhat old PPC G5 limits me to captures of about 960x540 at 24 fps. This step, of course takes place in "real time." With iMovie '08, I would had to transcode the captured data to compatible compression formats, but with iMovie '09 it looks like I can go back to using the default Animation video codec which I prefer.
Once the screen captured data is stored to a file, I bring it into iMovie for a quick edit -- usually just a quick trimming of the length, adding a title, and adding simple opening/closing cross-fades. When done, I output the edited content via the "Export Using QuickTime" option -- normally as AIC/AIFF but will likely try Animation/AIFF on my next one. The editing process takes only a few minutes but exporting adds additional time.
At this point I import the edited file to GarageBand for a quick voiceover. I use this approach so I can keep a copy of the iMovie exported file for reuse at some later time. (My original intention was to eventually go back and correct my voiceover mistakes but I never seem to get around to doing this as some new project is always coming up.) For this step I generally use a Blu "Snowball" USB mic. In any case, the voiceover is also in real time. I normally export the finished file using the "Full Quality" mode so as to avoid a further transcoding of the video track. (It also saves time if no video re-compression has to be performed.)
At this point it is merely a matter of targeting my final output. For my web content, I usually use MPEG Streamclip to convert the GarageBand file to an H.264/AAC file with a targeted video data rate of 1.0 Mbps. If I decide to post the file in an MOV file container, I then open the file in QT Pro and set the "poster frame" for iWeb use. If for any reason I wish to preserve the MP4 container, I use iTunes to "poster frame" the file.
As previously implied, I use iWeb to actually post the file. In this case, the tutorials are posted to a separate "Podcast" page collection since the are easy to maintain; allow user comments, RSS notifications (which I've never tested), and searches (also untested). Primarily I liked the ease with which I can duplicate a previously posted video entry and simply drop in the new clip and modify the text changes. Posting the update is, of course, as simple as pressing an icon button and waiting got the upload to finish.
I have completed the work flow in as little as an hour but my average is closer to 90-120 minutes since my wife and/or pets usually want some sort of attention during the process. You may have noted Gracie (a Congo African Grey) or Mango (an Amazon Orange Wing) in the background of some of my voiceovers. And that, as they say, is all there is...
You should really consider posting these on YouTube.
Not really something I ever wanted to do. I have my own MobileMe account, most viewers I'd want to reach are Mac owners and users, so I am not really interested in reaching out to the "world at large."