As you make movies, you quickly find that the clip is the basic denomination of the media that you work with. You spend a lot of time with video clips, audio clips, and even still clips (you know, those things that used to be called "pictures" or "photos").
A still clip usually consists of a single picture, an audio clip usually consists of a single song or sound effect, and a video clip usually consists of a single scene. A scene most often starts when you press the Record button on your camcorder and ends when you press the Record button again. When you import video from your camcorder, most video-editing programs automatically detect these scenes and create individual clips for you. As you edit and create your movies, you may find this feature incredibly useful.
Almost all video-editing software stores clips in a grid-like area called a clip browser. For example, Apple iMovie and Pinnacle Studio further subdivide clips by content. Each program has separate browser panels for video clips, audio clips, and still images. In Studio, you can access these panels by using tabs along the left side of the clip browser or album, as Pinnacle's documentation refers to it. In iMovie (see Figure 1), you can access the panels by using buttons at the bottom of the clip browser or pane, as Apple's documentation calls it.
The clip browser doesn't just store your clips, it also tells you some important information about them. One of the most important bits of info is the length of the clip. If you've already imported clips, you see a set of numerals (like 19.04) next to each scene. These numbers tell you the length of the clip - in this example, the clip is 19 seconds and 4 frames long. If you don't see names or lengths listed next to clips in the Studio clip browser, choose Album --> Details View.
A video image is actually made up of a series of still images that flash by so quickly they create the illusion of motion. These still images are called frames. Video usually has about 30 frames per second.
Each clip also has a name, of course, and you can change the name if you want. If, for example, you think that "Starship" is a more descriptive name than "Scene 5," click the clip once, wait a second, and then click the clip's name once again. You can then type a new name. When you're done typing a new name, just press Enter or click in an empty part of the screen.
Figure 1: The browser helps keep your various clips organized.
If you have a lot of clips in the browser, they may not all fit on one screen. In iMovie, simply scroll down (using the scroll bar on the right) to see more clips. In Pinnacle Studio, you can select different groups of clips from the menu at the top of the browser. If you have too many clips in a group to fit on a single page all at once, you can click the arrows to view additional pages.
In iMovie's clip browser, you can manually rearrange clips by dragging them to new empty blocks in the grid. You can move the clips wherever you want. This handy feature lets you sort clips on your own terms, rather than just having them listed alphabetically or in some arbitrary order.
