iMovie has been part of Apple’s iLife suite for a long time, and it’s a great program for consumer editing videos and has made some more advanced functions simple. Unfortunately, some people have a lot of problems with iMovie. Ever since iMovie 08 came out, there has been a lot of debate about how it has a new confusing interface, a lot of features were taken out, etc. In fact, it’s become such a big fuss that Apple offered iMovie HD as a free download for iLife 08 users.
I don’t believe that was for the sake of these arguments; the reason why iMovie HD was offered as a download was because iMovie 08 only ran on G5 or Intel processors. Older users with G4 processors and below had to use iMovie HD, and could not upgrade to iLife 08 without iMovie HD.
However, iMovie 09 has been released with iLife 09. And with this release, I believe that iMovie has become the perfect balance between usability and advanced features. The new iMovie 09 has the easy to use interface of iMovie 08, such as skimming through clips in your event library and then dragging them to the project window. Some people don’t like that, but it makes editing video as easy as editing text; it’s like highlighting text and dragging it to form something else.
And iMovie 09 includes pre built themes, which was a big complaint about iMovie 08, as well as my favourite feature, video stabilization. With this, consumers can now stabilize shaky video, a feature that was once only available to pro level users. And iMovie 09 comes with more features as well, to make your videos look excellent.
But, with iMovie 09, the free download of iMovie HD is now gone. Users will either have to stick with what they already have, or upgrade to a newer machine with the capability for iLife 09, which is also Leopard only. However, that does not seem to be the biggest problem people are complaining about.
Many people who are already familiar with the interface of iMovie HD protest the forced transition to iMovie 09. But in my opinion, that’s just a load of crap. Some people say that iMovie HD is capable of doing Final Cut level work, but that’s just garbage–iMovie does not even support two levels of video. iMovie is a consumer program, and iMovie 09 has made it easy for consumers to create fancy videos that they would not have been able to do by themselves.
iMovie HD is something of the past, and it’s time to give it up. All these people out there are complaining about the new iMovie, but that’s really just garbage; if you want pro level features, get Final Cut Express or Studio. If you’re just a consumer, stick with iMovie. In fact, in iMovie HD, there was no way to skim through your video and pick the best parts, and that’s probably what’s most important–you’re not about to shoot hours of video and then spend hours sorting through them in iMovie HD.
iMovie 09 contains advanced features that are easy to use, and yet a simple layout that makes it easy to manage video, and find the parts you want best. If you think iMovie HD is better, you really don’t understand the point of iMovie, and you might as well stick to something else. And if you’re a serious video editor, I’m surprised you’re not using Final Cut. I think that everyone should understand the point of iMovie as a consumer level video editing program, and iMovie 09 fits that perfectly with advanced functions yet simple layout and simple to use. What do you think about this? Leave a comment below if you want.
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Well written; thank you very much.
The iMovie ‘09 user interface *does* have a bit of a learning curve (for those of us used to previous iterations), but it’s quickly growing on me.
I’m pretty underwhelmed by the built-in themes. After a half-hour and a few tries I feel I’ve used ‘em up; they don’t look professional in the least, rather amateurish (IMHO). I’m very much looking for what will be third-party add-ons.
Again, thanks.
I totally agree. My only concern with imovie9 is the issue with how it is dealing with interlaced video. If a person uses certain functionality such as a wipe, background or 3d functionality such as a map-the quality of the output is significantly reduced. That is unacceptable. It forces you to be very careful with the workflow if you want high quality output for an HDTV.
iMovie usually asks you if you want to convert your HD video to half the resolution of full HD. That video is progressive. If you use the full HD option, I think it becomes interlaced. Most consumers probably won’t notice the difference, and they’ll probably use the half HD option because iMovie recommends it.