How to Get Previous Video into Camera Roll to Edit with iMovie on iPad 2

I am still playing with the new iMovie app for iPad 2 and have noticed several things.

iMovie seems to import or load only videos that are stored in the Camera Roll section of the Photo Album on iPad 2.  Some have assumed wrongly that you can only edit movies you made using the video camera function on the iPad 2.  I have been playing with various means to edit video that I have in the Movie tab of my iTunes library that are viewable on my iPad 2 but are not located in the Camera Roll section.

It is probably a good idea to make sure that the video or movie you wish to edit with iMovie app on your iPad 2 is in the proper format for viewing on iPhone.  As we all know, iTunes can handle this conversion for us by selecting our video movie and then Advanced>Create iPod or iPhone Version from the menubar in iTunes.

 I figured out a way to get this movie that I have in iTunes library into my camera roll.  Drag the movie from iTunes to your desktop and then into an email as an attachment.   Email this to one of the existing accounts you have setup on your iPad 2.  (Note:  This is a way to get photos or videos to and from your iTunes or Mac without having to sync your device to your Mac and iTunes).

 Once you receive the email on your iPad 2, select the attachment icon in the body of the email (allow the movie to fully load in your email window) and then click on the curved arrow in the upper right hand corner of the email display page.  You will be given a choice to 'Save Video'.  This option will save the video to the camera roll section of photo album on your iPad 2.

Now, you will be able to run the iMovie app on your iPad 2 and access this video for your project.  You  click on the + to create a new project then tap the upper screen or select the square movie icon to bring up the available video clips to edit from your camera roll.  You then click on the video clip you wish to edit and then the arrow to download it into the frame for editing.

As I explore iMovie, I will post tips and things here on my blog periodically that I discover.  There seems to be a lot of things to explore and frustration by users in getting some of their previous videos from other devices into the camera roll to edit.  Personally, I see the primary function of the iPad 2 video camera and iMovie app for editing an occasional movie that I might take on the iPad 2, but for any serious editing of longer movies that I might take with a video camera I would probably use iMovie on my Mac which has so many other features readily available.  Not sure if Apple intends to add more features to the app, but I secretly hope so as well.

One of the other things that I learned in my exploration of iMovie today is that you should also have the location set to ON in your Settings on your iPad for iMovie to be able to access your camera roll.

In addition, I emailed a movie from Talking Tom app of the cute cat from my iPad 2 to myself.  I then saved the movie to the camera roll from the email, but it did NOT show up in the list of videos that I could edit.  It seems that the format that came directly from Talking Tom app was not set to the format needed by iMovie.   So I dragged the video into iTunes and then using the Advanced>Create iPod or iPhone Version from the menubar in iTunes to convert it to a format that would work with iMovie app.   I then dragged Talking Tom converted video to my desktop and then emailed it back to my iPad 2 and saved to camera roll.  I was then able to edit the Talking Tom video, adding a music theme and title.



TEST:   I recorded a brief video using my iPhone 3GS and emailed it from the iPhone 3GS to an account that I could access on my iPad 2.  I then accessed the email on my iPad 2, allowing time for the video to load in, I then clicked Save Video (which went to my Camera Roll).   I was able to load that video into the iMovie app on my iPad 2 and created a new project, adding theme music and title.   While doing this edit, I discovered if you tap on one of the audio tracks in the movie timeline, you can adjust the volume of each one.  




Once the videos were edited, I uploaded both of these last two videos to YouTube using iMovie share option on my iPad 2.  The uploads seemed to work fine if I selected Public.   I had problems uploading them as Unlisted.