Photo and video 
Out of the box, your Mac comes with some excellent hard- and software to import and edit digital video and photography.
When you hook up a digital camera or a flash-card reader, the iPhoto program will open automatically:
Now you can import and orden your photographs:
(iPhoto supports Jpeg and RAW format)
Enhance them:
Edit them:
Compile your own slide-show:
Order professional photo prints online:
(of course you are not obliged to use the build-in photo-order system)
Create a photo album, calender, postcard or a slideshow
Order a photo album
If you like you can let Apple send you a complete photo album, calender et-cetera of your choice:
Email
You can e-mail your photographs directly from iPhoto:
After choosing a size, 'Mail' automatically opens:
TIP
Export at a certain size
Choose 'Export' from the 'Share' menu and adjust the size you want (in pixels):
Am I obliged to work with iPhoto?
No, you are not. Every time a camera or flash-card connects to your Mac, you'll find its hard drive on your Desktop:
You can take your photos from there and edit them in any other program of your choice.
WARNING
Allways eject Flash-cards properly
Never pull a Flash disk out of a flash-card reader just like that. First remove the disc from your Desktop! Otherwise, your data can be damaged.
Digital video: feel like 'Spielberg' or become the new 'Hitchcock'.
Every modern Macintosh has a FireWire port on board. The official name is IEEE 1394, Sony calls it 'iLink'. A FireWire port is a fast connection to external hardware like hard disks. It is also used on digital video cameras.
With the iMovie program you can import your video directly from camera. With FireWire you can also operate your camera with iMovie.
iMovie supports the following video formats:
DV (Digital Video)
HDV (High Definition Video)
Widescreen HDV widescreen (16:9) high-definition (HDV 720p and 1080i) video
MPEG-4 video (used in the new Flash media video cameras)
QuickTime
iSight (Apple's own web cam)
BTW: Sony's own MV-format, Aif, DivX and WMV won't work. For some of these formats there's third-party conversion software.
How does iMovie work?
First, iMovie will ask what video structure the movie will be in. In this case, we will record with the build-in iSight camera:
Midden onder het grote venster kun videocamera bedienen en zo alleen dat deel importeren dat je wilt hebben. iMovie zal geïmporteerde film indelen in fragmenten (zoals je ze hebt opgenomen) en als scenes plaatsen in het vak rechts. Deze kun je vervolgens bekijken in het grote venster. In dit geval heb ik de ingebouwde iSight camera van mijn MacBook bediend vanuit iMovie:
In case you use a DV camcorder, iMovie gives you the opportunity to operate your camera directly and import what you recorded. It will take every separate film scene and place it in the right compartment called 'Archive'. These scenes can be viewed and edited on the big screen:
After editing a scene, you can drag & drop those i in the window below, in the order you like, to create your Movie:
After that you can edit them and make transitions in between scenes. For example a fade-in at the beginning of your movie:
There are several options. Here you see the effect at its place:
You can also choose to show your movie at a time line:
Off course you can add text to your movie. The sci-fi adepts will probably recognize this effect:
You can add sound effects from the sound effects database or from iTunes or Garageband, or record your own commentary directly into iMovie.
It is also possible to import photographs (for example directly from iPhoto).
iDVD chapter markers
In case you want to burn your movie to DVD, in iMovie you can add chapters and choose a theme to prepare the movie for iDVD:
Publishing your work
You can publish your movie to different media. Use the 'Share' Menu to choose an option:
Exporting your movie
At the 'Archive' Menu you'll find 'Export. Choose the right file format and how large your movie file will be:
Note: YouTube doesn't accept movies larger than 100 MegaByte
This is the movie I made about finding out guitar chords of a song at YouTube. Mind that it's quality is poor, but it can give you an idea of the use of text and transitions in iMovie:
Storage
There are numerous possibilities with iMovie. But remember: digital video uses a lot of hard disk space and random access memory. At least 1024 MB of RAM are advisable, and do not fill your hard disc totally with video. An external hard disc and Superdrive are very useful.
iDVD
When you have a Superdrive in your Mac, you can eat your heart out with iDVD after you compiled you movies in iMovie. In iMovie you can already make iDVD Chapter markers.
iDVD example
Start the iDVD program and you'll get these questions:
We'll go the easy way and choose the 'Magic DVD' option.
I have downloaded the 'Get a Mac' advertisements with QuickTime Pro. They are now located in the 'Movies' folder on my hard disk. I put them there because the 'Movies' folder can be accessed from iDVD directly.
First, we name our DVD-to-be at 'Dvd-title'.
Below that, we can choose a theme for our dvd. I decide to choose the 'Mirror' theme.
We can access our movies in the right-side window. Just drag and drop them into the main window to add them to your dvd project:
After that, click on the 'Make a project'.
To see the structure of our DVD-to-be we use the 'family-tree' like button 
on the right:
With this, we notice that we still have tot add a movie for the dvd menu. Just drag and drop the movie of your choice:
And there we have the preview of our DVD:
Click on 'Movies' to display all movies on the DVD:
Note: you can also change or add movie titles here.
Satisfied? Now put a writable DVD in your drive. A 'burning' icon 
will appear and you can burn your DVD by clicking on it.
TIP
Using iDVD without a Superdrive
In case your Mac isn't equipped with a DVD burner but you have an external one, you can use iDVD.
You can make DVD's with iDVD and burn them with an external dvd writer. Just save your DVD project as a Disc Copy:
Copy this disc copy to a DVD disc and use Toast Titanium software to burn it.
BACKUP TIP
Backup your DVD's on the Mac.
You can use programs like FastDVDCopy and Roxio Popcorn to easily backup your DVD's.
However, it can be done with freeware:
First, you need to copy the data to your hard drive. Use MacTheRipper to do this. Now you have folder with two folders in it, called VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Burn these folders as a DVD.
Note: the AUDIO_TS folder isn't always present. If not, just create an empty folder with that name to burn to dvd together wit the VIDEO_TS folder. This is necessary for most dvd players to play a dvd properly!
Common problem is that the usual dvd is a lot bigger than normal empty DVD' discs. Full sized discs (8.6 GigaBytes) are expensive. So you need to make the files smaller to fit on a 4.4 Gb disc. Buy DVD2OneX to do this job. It gives you the option to remove languages and special audio tracks too.
Remember: the quality of the movie will be not as good as the original by sizing a disc. So buy a few rewritable dvd discs to experiment with the best configuration.
Legal notice: only copy DVD's you own and do not give them away.
Downloading Flash movies (for example from YouTube.com)
Wait until the movie has loaded into Safari. Now go to the Window menu and choose ' Activity Monitor'.
In this window, you'll find a list of all the items on the web-page. Look for the biggest file and double-click on it. It will now download as a "xxxxxx.flv or 'get-movie' file. Next thing to do is to convert this file.
Now go to Versiontracker.com and look for the iSquint program. Download and install iSquint, open it and drag and drop your downloaded movie into its window. Now choose a quality for the conversion and let iSquint do the job. Done!
Front Row
Recent Macs come with a small remote control and the Front Row program . With the Apple Remote and Front Row you can easily display your music, photograph, movie and dvd collection on your Mac or - with a suitable extension cable - on any other screen or TV To start up the Front Row program, just push the 'MENU' button on the Apple Remote. The shortcut Command-Escape will also take you there:
Use the Apple Remote to navigate through your media. In case your Mac has a fast internet connection, you can also watch film-trailers located at the Apple.com website.
Note: Front Row is an integrated service in Mac OS X, not a stand-alone program
Fun with the Apple Remote
A nice example of programming for the Apple Remote is iAlertU. It also uses the 'sudden motion sensor' in your MacBook. It works like a car alarm, including the familiar sounds of an infrared car-key!
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