iMovie 08 was widely derided as a downgrade from iMovie 06, but given my previous video editing experience had consisted of once using Sony Vegas, I didn’t have a lot of preconcieved ideas.
There’s a lot to like about iMovie 08. Editing is insanely simple, and it supports direct uploading to YouTube, a feature I’ve found myself using already. It lacks some features, like inline text shots, and not having a timeline and marking is a little annoying, but for most of the video I’m going to cut that’s not a big issue.
My big issue is HD. My new Canon HG10 records in 1080p (or i…but 1080 something) so it’s “Full HD.” Importing isn’t particularly fast because the biggest flaw in the Camera is a USB2 connection instead of Firewire…I should have checked that pre-purchase, but it’s minor, it still takes amazing pictures. iMovie 08 imports the AVCHD file format (apparently earlier editions didn’t) and its just like editing any other video. The problem is then exporting to HD. iMovie doesn’t, at least it doesn’t for me. I can export it to a Quicktime .mov or mp4/ mv4 in HD, but I cant simply export it to a DVD, either directly or even via iDVD. I tried the mp4 export in HD and the quality was shite, .mov export sat for 30 minutes and hadn’t moved past 10%, so I gave up, which left me to export the file in SD to iDVD. It shouldn’t be this hard, and with HD camcorders soon to become the default in the market over the next few years (mine was the amazing cheap $850 US, with 40gb HD built in), you’d think Appple, which prides itself on ease of use for consumers, would cater to that.
On a bright note though, once I got the now SD file into iDVD, the rest was plain sailing. God iDVD is a good program. The DVD intro I made in seconds was kick ass, and the burning wasn’t super quick on the MacPro superdrive, but it was reasonable enough. End result was great, SD instead of HD aside.
Apple, please fix!
