Take what you know about iMovie , put it into an fanciful box , and store that box in a recess of your brain for now . When Steve Jobs unveiled iLife ’ 08 and mentioned that Apple is “ entirely replacing one of the key apps with something that take it to a whole new level , ” he was n’t exaggerating.iMovie ’ 08is a completely new video editing course of study that just happens to have inherit the iMovie name .
For some , the covering is a welcome change . Until recently , most video has been shoot using camcorder that stack away high - quality telecasting on MiniDV tape recording , but those tapes are piling up , unedited , because of the time it takes to import and okay tune the footage . iMovie ’ 08 is designed to make video recording editing simple and tight .
For hoi polloi who ’ve used iMovie in its late looping , this novel variant may be especially frustrating . Not only does iMovie ’ 08 cast off out the conversant iMovie interface , it ’s missing some features that have been used for years . It also ditches long - endure video redaction conventions , such as timecode , in favor of simmpleness , making iMovie ’ 08 feel a bit like Apple has created an iMovie Express .
iMovie ’ 08 also has unconscionable system requirements : an Intel - based Mac , a Power Mac G5 with dual 2.0 GHz or faster processors , or an iMac G5 at 1.9 GHz or fast . The iLife ’ 08 installer retains the previous version of iMovie HD 6 on your knockout drive if your machine does n’t play off the spec or you want to stick with what you do it ; for those corrupt a young Mac with just iLife ’ 08 pre - establish , Apple has made iMovie HD 6 usable as a free download .
Multi-format support
In the yr and a half since iLife ’ 06 debuted , the camcorder marketplace has set about a geological fault off from taping - base camera to those that store footage on MiniDVD discs , solid - res publica memory cards , and hard magnetic disc drives . Those mass medium option have also pushed manufacturing business to come up with video single file formats that can pop the question decent paradigm quality while occupy much small storage spaces . alas , iMovie HD 6 ’s backup for other formats was fairly limited — something many folks key after shoot video recording and discovering they could n’t bring it into iMovie , or they call for to go through a conversion process using third - party tools .
iMovie ’ 08 finally catches up with the market place by import most current DVD and tapeless formats . I shot some test footage with aSony HDR - SR5 camcorder , which hive away video in AVCHD ( Advanced Video Codec High Definition ) data format on a build - in grueling disk . When I connected the camera to my MacBook Pro via USB and found iMovie ’ 08 , the Import window appeared , lean each clip and giving the selection to spell them all or individual time . ( The footage is transcoded into Apple Intermediate Codec ( AIC ) for editing within the program ; the same conversion applies to HDV ( High Definition Video ) format , which iMovie HD 5 first supported . ) SeeApple ’s Web pagefor details about iMovie ’ 08 compatibility , including some authoritative exceptions ; the model from which I successfully imported footage is not listed there , plausibly because it was supplant by the HDR - SR7 , which is on the list .
A new look, a new approach
At first coup d’oeil , it ’s obvious that this version of iMovie is dissimilar . The film viewer is at the upper - rightfield instead of the upper - left ; the movie you ramp up ( formerly the timeline ) now seem in the undertaking web internet browser at the upper - unexpended ; and the lower one-half of the window is dedicated to your source materials — imported video as well as music , picture , titles , and transitions . It ’s possible to also trade the projection web browser app and the program library ( which put the movie back at the bottom where , at least ab initio , it seems to belong ) .
iMovie ’ 08 ’s independent port
time also take on a different visual aspect . Previous versions of iMovie gave you the pick of seeing either a mellow - quality thumbnail picture of a cartridge holder ’s first frame or a stretched out stripe that point the snip ’s duration . Now , you get a stretched out legal profession that contains multiple thumbnails , offering a filmstrip opinion of your video . you’re able to adjust how many seconds of footage elapse before iMovie displays a newfangled thumbnail : setting a slider to All shows each clip as a single thumbnail , while correct it to 1/2s ( one - half minute ) offers more thumbnail image and therefore more granularity in previewing the footage without having to wager it back in the viewer .
go are the exclusive telecasting racetrack and two disjoined audio tracks . Instead , TV clips dragged to the task Lucy in the sky with diamonds appear like a paragraph of text : when a course of clips reaches the correct edge of the pane of glass , it breaks to the next line down ( using a jaggy border to indicate when a cartridge clip is split across lines ) .
That does n’t mean the “ track ” are go , however . A birdcall use as setting music appear , literally , behind the TV in the window pane , while other audio point such as other songs or profound effects show up as horizontal audio clips that can be stacked . It looks rather chaotic , but does provide for a more optical manner to discern each elements compared to iMovie HD ’s approach of layer sound snippet on top of each other in the audio track .
A song is pinned to a location in the video and shows up as the purple background . The gullible horizontal measure indicate other song snippets or sound effects . Just for fun , I ’ve toss some overlapping voiceovers into the mix .
Movie library
One of the welcome new features of iMovie HD 6 was the capability to open more than one undertaking file at once — well , that did n’t last long . We ’re back to the individual monumental window , but with a good twist : iMovie ’ 08 instead keeps rails of all your video in a individual depository library , the mode iPhoto storage all your digital photograph . spell picture is form into event , which are listed chronologically .
iMovie ’ 08 can also handle offline video lay in on international book , though in a more limited elbow room than I ’d like . If a backbreaking parkway is n’t mounted , the Events salt away on it do n’t appear in the library at all ; if your project include video from that Event , gratefully , the magazine stays in place but derive up blank when you meet back that incision of your flick . However , it would be nice to have the option of storing just the thumbnails on my master hard disc , so I could still look for footage in iMovie even if it ’s not available ( standardised to how Aperture handles offline prototype ) .
The library hold several contextual cues to indicate which piece of TV are in enjoyment . orangeness bar at the bottom of a clip indicate the portion is being used in the current labor . Green clips have been distinguish as favorites .
Similarly , all of your motion picture project appear in a projects leaning instead of as disjoined iMovie Indian file . Want to catch a sundown range of a function from a film you delete last month ? Click the project name and find the footage without a single trip to the Finder or an unfastened duologue .
Skimming
Moving your computer mouse arrow over a clipping “ skims ” its content : The preview pane display the footage below the playhead , and the thumbnail does , too . When you ’re retrospect lots of footage , you do n’t have to snap your eyes aside from the clips to see what appears in the preview . This is one of the principal time - saving feature film Jobs cited in his introduction , because you also do n’t have to click a clip and play it back in real clip .
Keyword support
A great and mostly hidden novel feature is backing for assigning keywords to your footage . By nonremittal , you could select a clip or scope of footage in the library and click the Favorite clit ( or press F ) for section you like , or click the Reject Selection push ( or pressing R ) to serve weed out the good and bad turn .
But that ’s just the source . Open iMovie ’s preferences and turn on the Show advanced tools selection to make a Keywords HUD ( or heads - up display ) usable , where you’re able to create your own keywords and give them to your footage . you may then use the Keyword Filter battery-acid to display ( or chuck out ) only the clips that match the keyword criteria .
Assign your own keywords to footage to make it easier to find later .
Video and audio adjustments
iMovie ’ 08 offer a few video accommodation instrument that take the space of some of iMovie HD ’s effect ( more on that later ) . A Video Adjustments HUD provides better controller over place setting such as picture , impregnation , and livid tip values . clip can also now be cropped ( you could finally remove the man in the badly - notify G-string that turn up at the corner of your vacation television ) and circumvolve in 90 - degree increase ( for those meter when your still - photo instincts adopt over and you wanted to becharm a waterfall lengthwise ) .
The audio frequency in clips can be normalized to aid quash striking volume differences ; the loud portion is set to 100 percent and the rest of the cartridge holder is adjusted accordingly . iMovie ’ 08 also supports “ ducking , ” which optionally lowers the backdrop audio when new audio is preface , such as a voiceover . You could accomplish that in iMovie HD manually by line up the audio levels within the clip , but that capableness seems to be scatty this clip around .
More sharing options
There are now more options for getting video out of iMovie , including the potentiality to upload videos directly to YouTube . Clips can be save in several dissimilar sizes , which are helpfully displayed in a mesa point which devices and services ( iPhone , Apple TV , .Mac ) are support . An option to release to Movie browser app arrange the telecasting so that it can be used by programs such as the respite of the iLife suite and iWork that habituate Apple ’s computer architecture for sharing media in this room .
After you grant YouTube permit to swallow subject from iMovie , you may upload single file directly to the service .
Missing in “Action!”
After I got past the shock of how different iMovie ’ 08 is compared to late version and played with it for a while , I realized that much of the same functionality is still present in this re - engineered app program . But not everything , and some of the omission could be enough to work iMovie editors aside from this translation .
For model , iMovie ’ 08 ca n’t open old iMovie undertaking . It ’s always been a good idea to finish a labor in whatever translation of iMovie you started it in , but this time around you have no selection . iMovie ’ 08 can import honest-to-goodness projects , but only in the sensation that it ’s sucking in the raw footage ; forget about transitions , effect , and the like .
The much hail themes of iMovie HD 6 are also run , although several of iMovie ’ 08 ’s claim now incorporate lower - third mental imagery reminiscent of some of the old theme conception .
Unfortunately , iMovie ’ 08 also offers no support for third - party cud - Indiana , choking off ( for now anyway ) a healthy recess commercial enterprise that has provided gist and transitions not found in iMovie itself .
blank out about the restroom of setting bookmark to locate plane section of your movie while editing .
Gone , too , are videodisk chapter marker — Apple understandably believes that the future of distribution is online or via mobile twist , because the connection between iMovie and iDVD is now thin at well . You ’ll have to export your movie to QuickTime , open up it in iMovie HD 6 , and add markers there before pushing it out to iDVD if you want to keep on the capability to have multiple chapters on a DVD .
But most disturbing to me , as a longtime iMovie editor , is the absence seizure of timecode . Footage is no longer expressed in terms of minutes : seconds : frames , a criterion adopted by the rest of Apple ’s video offering . Everything is counted in second and tenths of seconds , nominate it far more difficult to do precise editing .
But that really gets to the core of iMovie ’ 08 . It was contrive to hack together television quickly , to make it well-situated to tape your buddies repulse market carts downhill in the middle of the Nox and then post the video online . People see for more dominance , Apple seems to be saying , should exploreFinal Cut ExpressorFinal Cut Pro .
Current iMovie HD users are in for some modification , and I ’m desire Apple does n’t waitress a class to fill in gaps such as accompaniment for third - political party plug - ins and videodisc chapter marker . But for those who are experiencing iMovie and video editing for the first time , iMovie ’ 08 might be just precisely what they need .
Macworldwill have a full review of iMovie ’ 08 shortly .
[ Jeff Carlson is the managing editor program ofTidBitsand the author ofiMovie HD 6 and iDVD 6 for Mac OS X : Visual QuickStart Guide(Peachpit Press , 2006 ) . ]
