Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Be sure to ask the lab consultant for a piece of candy today!

The 2007 Insomnia Film Festival

The Insomnia Film Festival is back—and while the world sleeps, you could be making film history.

Calling all high school and college filmmakers.

On Saturday, October 13 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern time), Apple will post a top-secret list of elements — special props, dialogue, settings — you get the idea. Choose any three to include in your movie. Then all you and your team have to do is write, cast, shoot, edit, score, and upload your 3-minute masterpiece within 24 hours. No problem, right?

Once the films are in, your friends, family, and adoring fans will be able to watch them online and rate their favorites. The 25 entries with the highest rating on November 9 at 12:00 a.m. EST will be screened by industry professionals, including Barry Sonnenfeld, James Mangold, and Nora Ephron.

If your film is the biggest hit with either the public or the pros, each member of your team will receive a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, and Shake so you can get started on that first sequel. How’s that for a Hollywood ending?

You must register in advance, so if you even THINK you MIGHT be interested, please register ASAP at http://www.apple.com/education/insomnia/

Adding YouTube videos to your iMovie project

[UPDATE, FEB 2010: THESE INSTRUCTIONS APPLY TO iMOVIE HD/06. FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON USING YOUTUBE CLIPS IN iMOVIE 09, see http://wic.library.upenn.edu/multimedia/tutorials/youtube_imovie09.pdf]


We've received many many questions about adding clips from YouTube to iMovie projects. And until now, we haven't been able to do that in the lab. But today we've started to add that functionality to the lab workstations thanks to a free, open-source plugin for QuickTime Pro called Perian. Basically, the steps are:

1. Download the YouTube FLV file to your workstation using a service like keepvid.com
2. Export the FLV file to a QuickTime file with QuickTime Pro and Perian
3. Import the resulting QuickTime file into iMovie.

Keep in mind that YouTube video is notoriously low quality, but when you don't have a source of high-quality video, this method will do in a pinch.

Right now, Perian is installed only on the lab consultant's machine, so if you need to use a YouTube clip in your iMovie project, just ask the lab consultant on duty for help. We'll be installing Perian on the remaining lab workstation in the coming days. We'll also post a step-by-step tutorial so you'll be able to do it all without the help of a lab consultant.

Workshops this week

The lab will be closed this week:

• Monday, October 1, Noon-1pm
• Tuesday, October 2, 1pm-3pm
• Wednesday, October 3, 3:30pm-5pm

For classes and workshops.