ZDNet Reviews iMovie

ajw1976 writes "David Coursey of ZDNet reviews iMovie in his 'Month on Mac' series. It's a pretty a good article that tells how easy it is to create a movie and burn a DVD." A lot of people seem to think home movies/photos/music (the Apple "Digital Hub") is the killer app for consumer Macs these days. iPhoto has a long way to go, but iTunes works great, and I've heard little but good about iMovie.

Dead simple to use

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time I used iMovie, I turned 20 minutes of raw video into a snappy presentation just under six minutes long. My mini-masterpiece includes 11 edits, eight transitions, a fade-in with titles at the beginning, and a fade-out with credits at the end. And all this took about an hour to create--the very first time I ever used the program.

Re:Dead simple to use

[President Chimp Toe]

all this took about an hour to create--the very first time I ever used the program.

This is all very good (and quite typical of Apple.) However, ease-of-use almost allways requires a sacrifice of power and complexity. I can imagine that iMovie contains all the snappy, whiz-bang cool stuff that you might want to use first time you use it. But dig a little deeper....
(This is quite typical of Apple.)

Is this program feature poor?
How does it compare to other programs?

The various Windows systems I've seen were just too complex....
...my iMovie is by no means professional

Which answers my question. I guess it depends what you want really - professional quality Vs ameteur and easy.

Re:Dead simple to use

[speculums]

Lack of advanced features in a free, bundled program benefits 3rd party developers who create applications for people who want to do more than play around with something once in a while. I like how Apple is creating a platform with a broad baseline functionality which I can add more sophisticated applications to if I so choose. I really don't want to pay the development cost on programs I'll never use that much (it costs Apple money to put these programs together).

Re:Dead simple to use

[Morganic]

I guess it depends what you want really - professional quality Vs ameteur and easy.

iMovie is targeted at home users and non-professionals, and for that niche it has proved extremely powerful.

No professional would likely find iMovie sufficient, of course -- but that's why Apple also has Final Cut Pro, which has received equally high praise within the professional community.

Morgan

Re:Dead simple to use

[jeffehobbs]

However, ease-of-use almost always requires a sacrifice of power and complexity.

Wrong. Ease-of-use has nothing whatsoever to do with power, and complexity by itself is hardly a virtue. Some of the most fastest and powerful race cars in the world have a control panel simpler than your average low-end Toyota.

What Apple has done with iMovie is remove elements of video editing that are unnecessary for the average user, yet keep the ability to do 90% of what complicated high-end packages are able to do; and finally wrap the whole thing in an intuitive, graphically oriented interface. It's brilliant, high quality software.

~jeff

And plugins becoming available

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of plugins that are now available (e.g. http://www.virtix.com/)that allow you to add special effects. I suspect that this will become a huge area for the add on market.

Which, of course, brings you Final Cut Pro ...

[daviddennis]

which is true industrial strength professional quality.

It's a fantastic program; I've used it for a wide variety of projects and really love it. The ultrasophisticated interface and features let you do just about anything you'd want.

Of course for special effects-oriented projects After Effects reigns supreme, at least at price points the average dabbler hobbyist (like me!) has a prayer of meeting.

D

Re:Which, of course, brings you Final Cut Pro ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Special effects in iMovie aren't too shabby, either. Apple's bundled transitions and effects aren't much, but GeeThree [geethree.com] and Virtix [virtix.com] have some nice iMovie packages for around $30. Just ten minutes ago I was looking at Virtix's new Bravo filters [virtix.com], and their "Laser" and "lightning" look like they would be pretty handy for those backyard Star Wars reenactments...

And anyone who dismisses the power and flexibility of iMovie obviously hasn't used it. It is a compelling reason to buy a Mac!

--R.J.
"Slacker Survivor" T-shirts! [digiserve.com]

Re:Dead simple to use

[TwitchCHNO]

Have you even looked at iMovie. It is definately a robust application. It supports multiple audio formats - multiple video codecs. Has oodles of wipes, fades, and effects. And supports multiple audio tracks.

I do not belive iMovie supports time code however. But I do know (after using both programs) that iMovie is a more fully featured program than Adobe Primier LE. & best of all, it's free!

Complexity is a good thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

For folks who care to do more than iMovie can provide, there's Final Cut Pro.

iMovie is movie making for the AOL crowd. FCP is for the, well, Mac crowd.

Re:Complexity is a good thing?

[foobar104]

iMovie is movie making for the AOL crowd. FCP is for the, well, Mac crowd.

I agree and I don't. A division of my company does video integrations for broadcasters and post production companies. Two years ago those places were overflowing with Avids, a few Expresses but mostly Media Composers.

Now it's G4s with FCP as far as the eye can see.

Final Cut Pro on a Power Mac (about $6,000 total) is replacing Avid Media Composer systems (around $100,000) in professional settings.

I don't think anybody saw that coming.

Re:Complexity is a good thing?

[phyxeld]

iMovie is movie making for the AOL crowd. FCP is for the, well, Mac crowd.

Thats a silly comparison where none is needed (and I'm only replying because it got modded up).
iMovie is for consumers who have DV cameras but don't have experience with video editing.
Final Cut Pro is for serious professionals to do serious video editing work.
Users' choice of ISP isn't a factor at all, and both products are for the mac crowd, of course.

In defense of iPhoto

[daviddennis]

For anyone who doesn't want to spend hours tweaking and digitally redoing their photographs, iMovie reigns supreme. It's really easy to use, and the organizational scheme of rolls is simple and makes it trivial to find your pictures.

Even though I have a high-end camera (EOS D30), I've been very pleased with iPhoto as an organizational framework for my pictures.

D

Re:In defense of iPhoto

[ek_adam]

I think you meant to say iPhoto reigns supreme. On the other hand, my preferred cataloging program is iView MediaPro [iview-multimedia.com]. It's much more flexible in html or print output. It catalogs my files from their existing location instead of copying them to a set of application folders. Finally, if you move files while the application is open, it automatically updates its database to note the new location.

Re:In defense of iPhoto

[daviddennis]

Yikes! I'm sorry, of course you were right :-).

Guess I shouldn't get up quite so early.

What I like about iPhoto is that I plug my camera in, have it download pictures automatically, and I never even worry about where they are. I just export any that I need outside of the iPhoto universe.

D

Re:In defense of iPhoto

[HomeGroove]

I'll have to agree with daviddennis. I may not be using iPhoto to touch up photos, but I do use it to organize my photos. And the combo with iDisk is just great. The export to homepage does come in handy when you need to just display some photos on the web quickly. (And there's BetterHTML [versiontracker.com] export for those that want, well, a better HTML export).

And everyone developing plug-ins for iPhoto [oreillynet.com], it will just add to the functionality.

And here's a good article on digital photo goodies for Mac OS X [oreillynet.com].

Re:In defense of iPhoto

[Dephex Twin]

Yeah, it's those extras that I love too. I can organize my photos, then use some 3rd party app to touch them up. Then I can order prints to be delivered (I've been using this a lot). It's not like iPhoto is the only place to do this, but it is so simple and, well, fun!

mark

New Virtix plugins for iMovie

[nedron]

Virtix has released plugins for iMovie (X and classic) that include both effects (Bravo) and transitions (Echo).

They were well worth the $39 I spent on them. You can see a quickie test [nedron.net] I did with the "Sparkle" transition, which is basically a transporter effect.

I agree with everyone who says that iMovie is the best entry level editor around. For one-offs and quickies (like the above), I use iMovie and iDVD. For more involved projects, I own Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro.

well you know..

[paradesign]

FCP has just a little bit of competition from the likes of Adobe Premier and After Effects. I find myself using AE more than Premier and FCP3 combined. Especially not thet AE 5.5 is in X.

It all boils down to personal preference. For some people M$ Paint is all they need, for others its Painter or Gimp or PS or Studio Paint, whatever gets the job done well.

$0.02

Re:well you know..

[pressman]

Premiere is being dumped left and right by small and big studios alike in favor of FCP. Hell, some production houses are even dumping their Avid's in favor of FCP.

From a performance and usability standpoint, Premiere just doesn't even hold a candle to FCP. Avid and Media100 still have an edge over FCP, but they are cost prohibitive in the smaller markets; hence FCP being chosen in their stead.

AfterEffects is used for totally different reasons than FCP. It's more motion graphics oriented than it is editing oriented. AfterEffects is also a low end solution for motion graphics. High end shops are going to go with products from Discreet and Nothing Real.... er Apple.

The i product series

[littlerubberfeet]

I dumped iMovie in favor of premiere, but thats because I work on larger, much more complicated projects. iTunes is wonderfull as a database prgram for music. I like it (version 2) quite a bit. iPhoto, i dumped that for Photoshop. Overall, these extra programs are exactly what apple needs to regain some market share among computer users who just want something that works. That is the wonderfull thinag about these programs. They have some depth to them, but if I wanted, I could use them really simply, use them if I was my great grandmother, with a new-out-of-the-box iMac. iTunes for instance, you can balence by using a pre-selected option like 'vocal' or 'techno'. or, I can adjust the ranges for each Hertz range.