Digital Video: Make iMovie ’08 work your way

Despite iMovie ’08’s seemingly missing features, the program has hidden depth. It can still perform some of its predecessor’s tricks—just not in obvious ways. And a subsequent update, version 7.1, adds other enhancements. Here’s how to get the most out of the software.

Excerpt: Take Control of iWeb

Even if you include fancy graphics or podcasts on your Web site, the text is the heart of your site and is worthy of your attention. In this excerpt from Take Control of iWeb: iLife ’08 Edition, Steve Sande covers a grab bag of techniques related to working with text on your Web project.

Songwriting with GarageBand

Jim Dalrymple’s efforts to create his first record album on a Mac continue, with a glimpse into the songwriting process. When it comes to composing music, GarageBand takes on a leading role.

Adding some magic to GarageBand songwriting

Stuck on how to achieve that perfect sound for your song? Try GarageBand’s Magic GarageBand feature, which is also a great way for beginners to get started with music-creation software.

Launch iPhoto only on camera, not iPhone, connect

I have been continually annoyed with the way that iPhoto would start whenever I plugged my iPhone into my computer. The only pictures I take with my iPhone are to help me find my space in a parking lot, or so I can reassemble something I am taking apart. I do not want to archive these pictures. However, I do still want to use iPhoto to take the pictures off my digital camera. My previous solution was to set Image Capture to disable launching iPhoto in every case of camera attachment, and then manually launching iPhoto when necessary.Luckily, Sam Stephenson at 37signals provided me with a solution that will launch iPhoto when a camera is attached, but not when my iPhone is attached. Sam realized that within the preference pane of Image Capture, an arbitrary application can be set to launch whenever a camera is connected. This solution utilizes the shell command ...

One way to randomize order of an iPhoto slideshow

There are two ways to have a slideshow in iPhoto. From within an album, you can click the Play button and get a quick slideshow. With this method, you have the option to shuffle the order, and play music -- but you can't "fit" the duration of the slideshow to the music. The other way is to create a slideshow in the sidebar. Here you have the option of setting the duration of each slide to match that of the music (in my case, I had a 20 minute montage), but there is no way to randomize the order -- you have to drag by hand to set the manual order. My idea is to title the photos with a random number, then sort by title, thereby randomizing the images. Run this AppleScript in Script Editor to do just that: tell application "iPhoto" --tell album "photos" -- Note: change the album name above to reflect the album -- whose images you'd like to re-title, then remove the "--" -- at the beginning of the line. Note that if you leave it -- as "photos," th...