imovievideo
I have an hour long video that I have from a trip and I want to create a highlight film (around 5 mins).. Using Imovie, is there any particular feature to do this. I see there are the movie trailers but those seem much shorter (around 30 seconds) and I don't see a way to make it longer.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Quicktime can't encode and capture at the same time that's why the files produced are so big.
Adobe provide Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder free. You should try with it.
Be aware that encoding live 1080p take a lot of ressources.
If you're looking for a video tutorial, this screencast on YouTube is pretty helpful:
Apple provides a very detailed guide on iMovie, available from Help → iMovie Help or online.
Best Answer
If you like the movie trailer format but you want to customize the length of the clip segments, you can convert the special movie trailer project into a normal iMovie project by going to (File>Convert Trailer to Movie).
Video Tutorial about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lBbqgqgTVA
Otherwise you need to edit your project manually. A trick to limit the length of a project is to first insert a blank image into your project and to make it the length you want your video to be. Then you can start adding clips to your project by dragging the clips over the blank image (if it doesn't cover the clip completely select the cutaway function). This method can help your project stay a certain time length.