I'm lost in imovie

Question

I've just started using it for a couple of different things, and i'm lost. I can't find any 'how to' to do what i thought would be straightforward but isn't.
I dont' even know how to ask my question, what i need is some kind of iMovie for Dummies that is available on the web, like right now, not something i have to buy, like a book, i don't mind buying one but i don't have time to wait for a book to get here. Are there any tutorials that start at the beginning?
I created a project tonight (for example), and i don't even know what that means, 'create a project.' When i first started working on this, i thought i knew what that meant, but now, I have about 15 projects in the Project Library, but most of them are blank, including the last one i recorded. Mysteriously, that one is now a Quicktime movie that i can play in the Quicktime player. I didn't make it a Quicktime movie. I guess i must've hit a button that did that. I was trying to cut half of the video off because it ***** and i wanted to make a new video without that sucky part, and i was trying to just copy and paste it. I did that with earlier videos but can't find the path i took to do that. I 'shared' a couple other ones as Quicktime movies from the Share menu and happily was able to get the .mov file onto my desktop--that's something i can understand, a discrete file. but this last thing i recorded, i tried just selecting the frames i wanted to turn into a finished product but i couldn't do anything with them. I couldn't drag them to that window were you drag stuff, i couldn't copy and past it anywhere. I copied it and then i selected 'New Project' but creating the new project didn't produce something i could paste those frames into. Then, right after that, while i was groping around and trying to do what i was trying to do, i ended up in another project, just because i clicked on it in the Project Library, but when i tried to go back to the one i was working on, it's nowhere to be found, not in the Project Library, not in that lower big window where all the frames are, where it was before it disappeared. And then, magically, i found a KB sized link to it in the Movies folder, which opened it in Quicktime. But it's still unedited and i still want to get rid of those frames i don't want.
I tried importing the movie back into iMovie but it's grayed out in the window where you choose what you want to import.
I just don't get iMovie. I tried using the Help file but no luck. It presupposes that i know how to do the basics, which i unfortunately don't.
What would be straightforward to me would be to hit record, then hit stop/capture, and save the movie, and it would be a movie file that i could then edit and save again, etc. I sort of did that on some earlier projects but dont' know how i did it. I shared on in You Tube and then made another edited version of it, and sent that one to You Tube and removed the first one. But this time, i can't remember how i edited that earlier one, and when i did it, it was just by groping around.
Is there a How To beginners tutorial for this program? Any idea why this project i'm working on is not showing up all of a sudden? The name is in the project Library but it's just dark, nothing there. But it is some kind of quicktime file, somewhere. Is there any way i can edit this? I mean, just cut off the part i don't want? i can't get it back into iMovie so there's not much else i can do on this project at this point.
sorry i don't have a clear question. All i know how to do is describe what i'm trying to do, and what has seemed to happen that's not working for me.

Answer 1

Judy444 wrote:
.. Is there a How To beginners tutorial for this program?
here: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/
and the built-in Help of iMovie (as any other Apple app) explains a lot..