Good editing is part of what makes a great movie. Editing long clips to their essential elements helps keep your story going, and makes the movie interesting for your audience. With iMovie, you can easily edit out the parts of a clip you don’t want.

iMovie includes two easy ways to edit your video clips. You can split a clip in two or roll up the end of a clip to hide the part you don’t want shown. Best of all, iMovie is a “non-destructive editor,” so you can go back and undo your edits if necessary.

Steps

Trim your clips to include the best parts

1. In the clip viewer, select a clip and play it to approximately halfway through the clip.  Use the red line to monitor where the playhead is in the clip.
2. From the Edit menu, choose Split Video Clip at Playhead. This will cut your video clip into two pieces. Notice the second clip has a new video thumbnail to display its first frame. This helps you identify what video is associated with your clips after they’ve been cut.
3. Use the Left and Right Arrow keys to move back and forth between the two clips. Follow along by watching the playhead as it moves between the two clips.
4. Choose Undo from the Edit menu to undo this cut and join the two clips back together. Leave the clip selected. Now we’ll apply an edit using a different method.
5. Switch to the timeline view by clicking the timeline viewer button. Notice your clips expand to show their relative length. Also notice the ends of the clips have slightly rounded edges. This indicates they are full clips and haven’t been edited yet.
6. Move the arrow to the end of the selected clip until it changes to a vertical line with an arrow pointing left. This indicates you are positioned to do direct trimming.
7. Drag the end of the clip towards the center. The clip shortens as you roll up the video. Release the mouse to complete the roll edit. Notice the clip edge now shows a straight line instead of a rounded edge. This indicates the clip was rolled up underneath.
8. To show how you can adjust a roll edit, drag the right edge of the clip back to its original starting point.
9. Now that you understand the basics of applying cuts and roll edits to your video, practice editing your video to include only the best parts.