Justin Cox
iMovie ‘09
iMovie, Apple’s little video editing app that could, is kind of a nice bonus to the iLife suite. I rarely edit video, but when I do it’s nice to have a, more or less, full featured editor handy.
Apple changed the video editing game with iMovie ‘08 by taking out the traditional timeline view and leaving the actual editing to a drag-and-drop interface. This angered some and liberated others. Me? It didn’t matter that much. It seemed to make editing videos much easier but tweaking fine details and making pinpoint cuts very difficult.
Precision Editor
iMovie ‘09 brought some minor refinements to the new system introduced in the ‘08 model, but ones that raise the video editing bar. Added back, in the form of a “Precision Editor,” is a modified timeline that is very simple, yet allows for very precise cuts and timing. It’s very, very cool. In fact, the Precision Editor is so smooth, that it seemed to make the whole video editing process much easier.
Precision Editor
I broke iMovie ‘09 in editing a video for Operation BLIND. The original video was the same speech given by nine different kids. It amounted to about thirty minutes of footage. The task was to edit the video together so that entire two minute speech was given with a different person speaking each line. A tall task. But with this new Precision Editor I had the whole thing chopped and put together in a few hours. Thats it. I had planned to work on this for most of the week, but it took a few hours — with a break for lunch and a trip the drum store. (To see the complete video please visit the link above.) Needless to say, I was impressed.
Dynamic Themes
If you’re familiar with iDVD (which oddly wasn’t touched with this update to iLife) then you get the basic idea of Dynamic Themes. Basically it’s a themed video with drag-and-drop zones for videos or images as well as specialized title graphics and transitions to match the theme. This thing is pretty incredible.
It’s very easy to use; you can simply select a group of pictures or videos, drag them into an empty project with a set theme, and iMovie will place all the videos/images into the drop zones and add the specialized transitions and title cards. That’s it. You can refine it and tweak it from there, but you don’t have to. And let me tell you, these themes are slick. I’ll be using the photo album one for the annual senior video I make for the youth group and I can’t wait to put it together.
The only thing I don’t like about the Dynamic Themes is that there’s only six of them. As Apple expands upon the idea and continues to update iMovie, I’m sure they’ll add more. I just wish there were more to play with now. They’re that cool.
Animated Travel Maps
This new feature is also known as the Indiana Jones effect — you know, where the little red line goes from airport to airport on the map while the travel music plays? It’s a little gimmicky but still pretty cool. It seems just about every global airport is available in the setup, along with a mileage between points (in case you were wondering). The only thing I couldn’t figure out how to do was have a map show multiple stops. Not a big deal, but I might not have been looking hard enough.
Final Thoughts
iMovie ‘09 is pretty much a knock out. If you’re a video editing hobbyist like me, you’ll be very happy with the changes made. If you’re an editing purist, you might be pleased with the direction Apple is heading. Sure, it’s not Final Cut Pro, but as part of a $79 suite of apps, it’s well, well worth the cost of upgrading. To put it in context, I can see paying $79 for iMovie ‘09 by itself. It’s that good.
iMovie is a part of iLife ‘09 and sells for $79 (or a little less through Amazon — and I get a small kickback). This is part two in a series reviewing iLife ‘09. Look for a review of GarageBand sometime in the foreseeable future.