IMovie '11 Navigation Help - The Basics

Question

Hi. I am using iMovie for the first time. iMovie 11 to be exact. I'm reading the Apple tutorials. They make reference to many iMovie elements, such as the "clip viewer" and the "return" button. But the tutorials do not indicate where these items are located on the iMovie screen. For example, there is nothing on the iMovie screen that I can see that is titled "clip viewer". Also, when I want to save a project or rename a project, I don't see the normal SAVE AS or RENAME options under the FILE menu that most other applications have.
Can anyone point me to a navigation guide that shows me where all these basic elements are located in iMovie? Thank you

Answer 1

Ken Stone has created a [great tutorial here.|http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/imovie_09stone.html]
The clip viewer is the area on the right side of the Project pane.
The Enter key is the one on your keyboard.
There is no Save command in iMovie, because it automatically saves after every action.
It may help for you to know how imovie works. When you import video clips into iMovie, they are stored in an Event file, much like an iPhoto event. This is where the raw video is kept. It is not changed or edited, and is available for multiple projects.
The Project in iMovie is a list of instructions to be executed when the project is shared in final form. For example, a project may have instructions that say "go to this clip in this event and get these frames of video, then insert a title here and a transition there, and add music here." None of the actual video is in the project, but it references the event video. Every time you make an edit in your project, it adds or subtracts an instruction in the project file and it is saved instantly. So there is no Save command.
However, Murphy's Law says if something can go wrong it will, and sometimes projects can get corrupted. In this case it is good to have a backup. By far the easiest way to backup is to make sure that you Movies/iMovie Projects folder is included in your Time Machine backup.
Another way is to select your project in the Project Library view, right-click, and select Duplicate Project. This gives you a duplicate of your project at a time when it was working so you do not have to start over.
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