Making a Movie in iMovie HD and iDVD 5: Visual QuickProject Guide

Now that your footage is in iMovie, you need to become familiar with the way video is measured: timecode. A movie is made up of thousands of frames, so clips are measured in terms of minutes, seconds, and frames.

In NTSC video (the standard for television in North America), 30 frames equals 1 second; so, for example, a timecode value of 1:23:15 is equal to one minute, twenty-three and a half seconds.

Timecode notation

Many European countries use the PAL standard, which is 25 frames per second. In PAL format, our example of ten and a half seconds would be a timecode of 1:23:12.

iMovie automatically determines which type of camcorder you're using (NTSC or PAL) and creates a project matching that rate.