Playing Your New Movie

iMovie includes many options for playing your movie, from playing one or more clips to playing the entire movie. You can jump to any location in your movie or scrub through the movie at your own speed. You can also play your movie in full-screen mode to see how it will appear outside the iMovie editor.

Tips

Using the keyboard

You can use the Left and Right Arrow keys to move a single frame at a time or hold the arrow keys down to play forwards and backwards. Hold the Shift key while pressing the arrow keys to move ten frames at a time. Press the Home key to move to the start of your movie.

Anticipate upcoming edit points

As you preview your movie, get in the habit of watching the playhead to tell where you are in the timeline. This will help you anticipate upcoming edits, such as a the start of a new clip or a transition. You’ll find you use this technique a lot when deciding where to place an edit or polishing off the final version of your movie.

Steps

Play your iMovie project

Click the Rewind button to go to the start of your movie. To make sure all clips are deselected click the blank area to the right of your clips.
Press the Space bar a few times to start and stop playing your movie. You can also click the Play and Stop buttons, but you may find that the Space bar is more convenient while you are editing.
As you play your movie, follow along by watching the playhead in the iMovie scrubber bar. You can also follow the playhead in either the clip viewer or timeline viewer.
In the timeline viewer, drag the playhead in the scrubber bar back and forth. Try dragging the timeline playhead back and forth too. In both cases, you can scrub through your movie to quickly get a feel for how it plays.
Click anywhere in the scrubber bar to jump to a new point. Click the Return button when you are finished to move to the start of your movie.
To watch your movie in full-screen mode, click the Full Screen button. To exit full-screen mode, click the mouse.
Practice navigating around your movie in both the clip viewer and timeline viewer, as well as the scrubber bar. When you are finished, save your movie.