Apple stirs controversy with iMovie's '08 overhaul - Page 7

The probability that leopard breaks iLife 06 approaches zero.

There is a thread on Apple discussions. I contacted Panasonic factory in Japan. They blame iMovie. Their response is on the Apple thread. I contacted Apple helpdesk with all this info. They told me to take this serious and are investigating the problem. Hope they will have a solution real soon!

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....readID=1076647

I certainly agree that iMovie 8 is a useless program for me. I like to make quality vacation videos. I am not at the Final Cut level, nor do I feel I want to spend that kind of cash on a program for vacations and special events.

I can see that if I wanted to replace a segment within an almost finished production without disturbing audio tracks or timing, or try to match the beat of dance steps or playing to an audio track, it would simply be impossible to do in iM8.

If I just wanted to throw something together, then iM8's a possibility.

My big problem with many of the people on this and other boards is when they say "you can still download iM6.. what's the problem?". iM6 was never was a perfect program although it was very good, it is still in need of some updating. Do you think that is ever going to happen now that Apple's direction on iMovie has changed? It will soon become outdated with a lack of support. What then?

Maybe I'm just of a different personality type than Apple is shooting for. I like to craft something that is quality, not just slap some half hearted junk together in 5 minutes just so I can say I posted something to youtube.

I really hope the folks at Apple realize they have made a mistake and hopefully keep both versions of iMovie going. Next time Steve, do better market research!!

I think Apple is wanting you and everyone else that thought iMovie 06 was great for them to move to Final Cut Express. This should be obvious. I do think that iMovie '08 will get updated with some great features but knowing Apple, it might be a year from now before we get them or it might be in January 08. You just don't know with all the secrecy.

I find iMovie 08 great for quick projects, although I am having some problems with video screen captures at the moment exporting to a QT movie, but I think it is clear that Apple has simplified the process and is pushing us one way or the other.

I use Final Cut Studio and it is really not hard to pick up on. I do miss the Star Wars intro in iMovie 06 though.

I think it comes down to selling more FCE seats and making video easier for those less inclined to make them.

Thanks, I am following the thread but I wonder how serious Apple is about this because this is the exact camera Steve Jobs himself pimped on stage! Pretty pissed right now with a vacation to Hawaii coming up in under 2 months. There is a fix posted and it will do for the time being. ;-) Was sucks as well is the same is true for Final Cut Studio. Now that $$!$ is not acceptable to me after dropping that kind of money into Apple's pocket for professional grade software.

Seems the argument is over a differing philosophy. Is iMovie a mini Final Cut or is iMovie an app that's supposed to be easy for anyone to use. It seems Apple has decided it to be an app easy for anyone to use. Of course that points anyone who wants certain pro like features towards buying apps instead of using the one that came with the computer.

I saw this blog posted, doing more with less

in what he calls a review, david pogue spends the bulk of his time listing the features apple removed from imovie and complaining that now he cant do what he used to. however in the process, pogue made it perfectly clear that he was using imovie for pro-level like work. and now that he cant do that anymore, hes upset because he has to go buy final cut express. i cant really blame pogue, who wants to pay $250 for features that he was getting for free. but what about all those other people, mr. pogue? the ones who just looked at imovie and said i cant figure this shit out. too many buttons and windows and choices. forget it.

after reading pogues review i decided to try imovie 08 for my latest video review. i admit i had to make a few changes to some of the things i normally put in my video reviews but the joy, the joy of being able to quickly select the good parts from all the video i imported, string it together, add titles and the credit screen, and then crop the video from HD to standard definition with 3 clicks 3 clicks!

so, mr. pogue, for those of us who arent pro level users who refuse to admit it. for people who want to edit video quickly and easily, imovie 08 is a huge leap forward, not a step back.

Good find. I am a pro user who likes to fiddle with a movie for hours, but I also like being able to throw something together instantly as I did tonight with footage from my new HG10 AVCHD camera. It was a breeze.

I bought the camera two days ago and spent the day yesterday driving around taking shots here there and everywhere. When I got home I had about 70 short clips, ranging from 20 seconds to 3 minutes. Clips of mountains, a ferry port, people in a park, birds in the sky, a rocket launching facility, fireworks, a volcano, all shot in super HD. Importing to my iMac did take some time as the files are huge and the cam has a USB 2 (no FW800).

As I put the movie together, I noticed I wanted to cut most of the audio from the clips (noise from other cars, wild drunks howling, engine noise form the ferry) and add commentary. This was easily done. I also watched a pro documentary this evening and noticed they used only three different transitions during the entire 2 hour show but t looked slick; the focus was on the content. So, I only used three transitions in my movie.

iMovie '08 made the whole effort a breeze. In the end, I shared to iTunes, my homepage and a QT movie for the heck of it.

That's what the discussion was about though. iMovie was never a pro level app, I really didn't think it even had pro like features. I also really don't believe that iMovie 6 was inherently difficult. If a timeline was too difficult to comprehend, that's not a problem, because you didn't have to use the timeline mode. I do agree that iMovie 8 does bring new things to the offering, but I just don't get the rationale on many of the things that it leaves behind.

If anything needed to be simplified like that, I think it would be Garage Band. I "got" iMovie 6 in minutes, Garage Band was a series of bafflements that I've never surmounted to get a finished project.

Even some PVR boxes have functioning eSATA ports now. FW800 is too expensive for just about anyone, IMO. At least for the external boxes, it doesn't look like eSATA costs anything extra, FW800 seems to cost an extra $50 per drive. If Apple pushed FW800 into their consumer systems a couple years ago, maybe it wouldn't be a problem.

Once you introduce timelines, time code, and multi-track audio. You are most certainly entering "pro like" nomenclature. If you already have a grasp of these concenpts you are ahead of the curve of most people out there. It seems the point of '08 is to shrink the learning curve. The pure test of the ease of '06 or '08 is to have someone who knows nothing about video editing try them both and tell what they think.


Perhaps it plays to a different mind set. I know people who do music and think Garage Band is as simple as it gets.

Are there consumer video apps that don't have time line? There's a point where it ceases to be consumer and becomes Fisher-Price. Anyone that didn't want to use a time line didn't even have to use it.

Did iMovie have time code support at all? I'm fine with that not being in iMovie, on this point, I would agree.

There wasn't much to iMovie 6's multi track capabilities, it's hardly what I would call a pro like capability.


There's a parallel here. A lot of us thought that iMovie was as simple as it gets.

Not sure if 40 people are going to be enough to convince Apple to throw millions more in resources at "correcting" iMovie '08.

Probably not but that is only because the timeline and time code are a convention taken from pro apps which was adopted from linear video editing to make it easier for video editors to transition from tape to tape to computer hard drive based editing.

Editing is essentially timing and knowing where to make a transition from one action to another. The skill in editing is knowing where to make a cut and it doesn't matter what tool you use to make that cut.


I don't call it "pro like" because its not as developed as some other NLE. Its "pro like" becasue multi-track audio increases the learning curve. To properly use it you have to learn.

I can understand why people are upset at the changes from 06 to 08.

However, I never used iMovie 06. I could use it - I knew how - but I never did. The main reasons were: 1. destructive editing and 2. I had access to FCP.

Now, even if I use FCP for more advanced work, iMovie 08 still has value to me in how quickly I can put something together. Also, the library is really useful (although, because I have a MacBook as my primary machine, I can't keep much in the library at the same time). As the tech adviser to my family, I can say that they are MUCH more likely to use iMovie 08 than 06. iMovie 08 is much more like an iPhoto for video. Just as iPhoto is not Photoshop Elements, iMovie does not need to be Final Cut lite.

Now, however, to justify this change in iMovie Apple really needs to bring out a much improved version of FCE which is easier to use, has the cool themes etc but has the power. And it needs to be substantially cheaper. Make it US$99 and it is a winner.

Sorry, double post.

That's the crux of it, right there.

What other programs, on the Mac, could this not be said of? Every application I am aware of has an implicit assumption built in: you will need to learn at least a few conventions to begin to use it. As you gain familiarity, you can take advantage of some additional functionality.

This is true of Page, Garage Band, iPhoto, Mail, Keynote, even iTunes.

But somehow, there is a new standard, just for video editing, that declares there must be no learning curve at all, and anything that isn't instantly graspable at the level of drag and drop is "too complicated" and must be removed.

I've made the point several times now, but if Apple had taken a similar hatchet to any of the apps above, I'm pretty sure most of the people who are satisfied with iMovie '08 would be screaming bloody murder, no matter how "streamlined" the interface had become, and no matter how many assurances they received that now that Pages, say, was reduced to a handful of very basic options, many more people would be able to tackle that whole, esoteric world of "page layout". I'm guessing that even quite a few anecdotes about how various cousins, siblings and pets were delighted that they, too, could now pick one of three document formats or one of ten fonts and use the "upload to my blog" button without having to really think about it or learn anything, wouldn't do much to win too many people over. They might forgiven for being of the opinion that there is a trade-off between simplicity and functionality, and that it is quite possible to err on the side of the former.

I would also like to point out that many people are conflating some of the modern improvements in iMovie '08, such as a ubiquitous media browser, real time transitions and non-destructive editing, with "ease of use", as if those things couldn't have been added to something very much like iMovie '06, or adding those things without removing, say, control of audio level within a clip would have made iMovie '08 harder to use.

Pages and Keynote are part of iWork. Garage Band is arguably harder but also arguably even less used. iTunes is simpler. Mail is trivial.

Some folks hate iMovie 08. Other folks are picking it up where they never touched iMovie 06. I'd say that if the latter outnumbers the former then Apple did a good job but from here and now and where we stand that's hard to tell.

Vinea

So? If the "get people using software that they otherwise wouldn't use by making simpler by removing features" idea is a good one, why shouldn't it apply across the board?


Which suggests that Apple should have done something about that by removing even more features from Garage Band to make it even simpler to get more people using it.


Only because you've actually been motivated to learn how to use them. Go into the menus in Mail and tell me that there is less there than in iMovie. I bet a lot of people don't use things like smart mail boxes because they can't figure out how. Apple should remove that functionality to make Mail more inviting. Also, they really need to get rid of that "Advanced" tab in iTunes. It makes me nervous just knowing it's there.


That's true enough, up to a point, but pandering for market share isn't really Apple's thing, is it? Why not change up some of the OS UI conventions to make them more like Windows, and if market share increases then we'll know it was the right thing to do, right?

At any rate, my suspicion is that iMovie '08 will, in fact, have more people fooling with video, for a while. The trouble is, without any depth of functionality, there isn't much there to hold one's interest. After importing a bunch of old footage kicking around on your hard drive, and tossing a few clips on top of each other, the novelty will wear off, and then we'll be back to people who actually want to do something with video. And then what?

The theory seems to be that if you can make video editing something that you barely have to think about then you have made it "accessible" and "fun". In my experience, accessibility and fun only stick around when you have the chance to get better at something. The new iMovie almost militantly guards against that possibility-- the movie you found so easy to make the first time out will be the movie you make the tenth, and twentieth, and hundredth time. Assuming anyone even bothers to take it that far.

Put together another two short films today, one in 06 and one in 08, very similar format. 08 beat 06 hands down, for my purposes: I was finished in 30 minutes whereas 06 took about an hour (I had to adjust video color and that takes ages in 06, especially if you don't get it right the first time around).

I honestly do not understand the fuss, and I know 06 pretty well and have every GeeThree collection. iMovie 08 is a fabulous app.

Addabox, you made some very good points there and I'd have to agree with you. Why 'simplify' something that was once an extremely useful tool for many just to appeal to a potential market of users that will dabble for a while then get bored with it. Sure, a 'movie' will be knocked out in less time with minimal effort, though as you say, it will be the same movie again and again. Now that's progress!

Was it not possible to re-write iMovie 06 to include the new features as well as the old, keeping the familiar UI with timelines etc. (maybe as an 'advanced' feature)? Ah, no. Lots of FCE boxes to shift.

iMovie 06? ... God forbid anyone should have to learn something?!! We couldn't allow that!

The future? ... Apple. The choice for people who think "Taco Bell" is a phone company.

Scrubbing, a ubiquitous media browser and real time transitions are fabulous features, and almost certainly account for your speed up.

I can't imagine how, given those improvements, it would be any more difficult or slower in iMovie '06 to drag clips to the timeline, drag transitions between clips, and drag sound onto that.

Then, you could change up your transitions, vary the sound levels with simple dragging, have some actual control over your titles, maybe add an effect or two (I know, I know, it involves dragging the effect onto the clip you want to effect, so it's pretty hard, but still.....) and send it off to iDVD for archiving.

The point being that the features that make iMovie '08 faster and easier are in no way incompatible with the features that made iMovie '06 more powerful.

Right? People keep saying something like "scrubbing is great, couldn't do scrubbing in iMovie '06, so iMovie '08 is much better and just what the doctor ordered."

Improvements and reduced functionality are not somehow obliged to go hand-in-hand.

It is in that the entire UI has been completely changed to make it more intuitive for people who know nothing about video editing.


The point isn't for people to dabble and get bored. The point is to make it easier to use and more useful to a larger group of people.


People will still have to learn to use 08. Its about shrinking the learning curve for people who do not want to spend a great deal of time or effort to cut home movies.

Well, I still disagree that any of that requires dropping functionality. I also just can't see what is so bewildering about a timeline. How is having the linear elements of your movie running from left to right less intuitive than having line breaks with little jagged edges to indicate that the shot continues?

Just imagine the media browser, scrubbing and real time transitions combined with something much like iMovie '06's timeline and flexibility. I honestly can't imagine how that was going to be harder to use than what we got.


But again, without much in the way of discoverability or depth, people will dabble and get bored. There's nothing very interesting about making a movie of 4 second shots with 1 second dissolves and an iTunes song on top of it, which is the model the UI encourages you to use. And God knows there won't be anything very interesting about watching that.


I'm still not convinced that iMovie '06 required all that much in the way of time and effort, but at any rate it should have been possible to directly address its areas of slowness-- importing and transition rendering-- while keeping some fine grained control, even if only quarantined by an advanced tab.

It's not that it's a bad idea to make a program that allows new comers to dive right in, it's that it's a bad idea to begin and end with that level of functionality, if only because new comers become seasoned hands and start wanting to try something a little more advanced.

Because Keynote is as much "Pro" vs Powerpoint as FCP is "Pro" vs iMovie?


Perhaps they should. I dunno...I've never had much inclination to play with it although I might now with iMovie.


Are you seriously trying to say that reading email using Mail is an equal or more complex task than using iMovie HD?


We're not talking about market share. We're talking about serving their existing iLife userbase. If most iLife users didn't find iMovie HD approachable then simplification was correct if more customers end up using it where fewer did before.


It may be hard to believe but for some folks making movies isn't fun as much as it is a chore. I do not want to spend 40 minutes much less 40 hours making a movie from my kids B-day party. I want to put something together quickly that looks nice that I can toss on the web page so friends and family can see it. I will do this about 5 times a year. Anything I learn is likely forgotten between these sessions. My skill improvement from video #2 to video #20 isn't likely to really increase all THAT much.

Just like I'm not using Aperture to do significant post-processing on my photos I'm taking with my point and shoot digital camera. I use iPhoto and play with levels at most. Do I occasionally wish I had more post-processing options? Yes. But not all that often. 99% of the time it's: delete fuzzy photos, rotate all photos upright, batch apply image enhacement, tick on Automatic Ken Burns, pick music and BOOM. Instant Album that doesn't look too horrid. Minimal thought process and effort.

Oh...and I sure as heck hope my kids have a tenth and twentieth birthday so its pretty likely there will be a twentieth time. If for some reason I suddenly have the yen to take video up as a hobby I'll go buy myself FCE.

Vinea

Dear god, I hope Apple isn't listening. In terms of features, usability and price, GarageBand is probably the the best music production app ever. Ever try to use Logic?

I would guess that there is a fairly large number of people out there--amateur musicians who can't justify spending $300 to $500 on a professional app, or invest the time to learn it--who have been terribly underserved by developers. If Apple decided to lobotomize GB the way they did iMovie, I would be very, very disappointed.

Horses for courses.

iMovie 08 will suit some people just fine if they only want to throw a few clips together and stick the end product up on the web. Thats Ok, though you are still limited to what you can produce. IMHO iMovie 06 is good enough for doing just that, and it also has the power and feature to produce something more altogether pleasing to view.

I'd rather iMovie 08 was a "quick" feature of a familiar and powerful product because I believe that time spent on producing a superior video or DVD with a tool such as iMovie 06 pays in the end. I'd like to watch these kind of DVDs in the future and think to myself "now that looks awesome! I'm glad that I put some effort into producing it" rather than "hmmm, it's kinda nice".
If it feels like a chore then why bother at all? The fun is all in the production and end product.

My $0.02

For other folks to enjoy? Like 4 grandparents? Naaaaaaah.

Vinea

No, for my wedding clients who pay me $900 a pop for their iMovie 06/Gee Three plugin-produced wedding day film on DVD....

If that's a serious post, I'd think that you would benefit from a Final Cut Express workflow. iMovie 6 was great (IMO) for simple, quick & dirty movies, but you can get much nicer titling and more editing flexibility with FCE.

Exactly.

That's why iMovie 06 was scrapped. Because people like you need to be using a professional program. How long would it take you to recoup the cost of FCE?

Kinda like when Pogue said he edited his show on iMovie06.

I don't think Apple had that in mind when they developed iMovie 06. I'm guessing Apple wants these users in a flavor of Final Cut. But I could be wrong.

Pogue's videos could easily be thrown together in '08, at least the ones I have seen. Then he trashes 08; doesn't make since. He also is a pro user, so he should be u there with the Real Men.

Yes, It was a serious post. It is not my full-time job, but rather a part-time gig. Obviously a very fun and rewarding part-time gig. I have found that iMovie 06 with the Gee Three plug-ins has done everything I want and need. I suppose if I started playing around with FCE I would begin to think "How did I ever edit without this!" My "problem" is that with a different (non-video) full-time job, family, home, etc. it is hard to find time to learn FCE. Maybe over the winter when my wedding work slows down a bit....

Do any of you have some suggestions for the best way to learn it? I am open to suggestions. I like teaching myself through books. Seems like a while back I was looking at the Apple Pro Training Series book and it looked pretty good, well thought out, and easy to follow.

Could you elaborate on the titling and editing flexibility one could gain with FCE. I am not questioning your statement, just trying to learn more and open my eyes some more to what else is out there! Thanks!

How long to recoup? One-third of a wedding before taxes.

If it was my full-time job, I likely would have been using a "professional" editing program by now. When I got into this 4 1/2 years ago, I actually played around with FCP 3 but found that iMovie plus the Gee Three plugins did everything creative that I wanted.

Taking the time to play with it. The package included a quick video on how to do the basics, though they didn't include copies of the items (or assets) that they used in the video.

Book:
Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Express HD (Apple Pro Training) (Paperback)
by Diana Weynand (Author)


I understand. I wouldn't be insulted by such a request. That said, I haven't used the plug-ins that you've described, it's hard to make a good frame of reference.

It looks like the Gee Three company does offer something to give you more than stock flexibility, but FCE's LiveType allows you to do seemingly anything with regard to 2D animation of text and objects. I'd give links, but I don't have anything on the web. When a LiveType object is imported into FCE, it's its own object so you don't have to rerender it every time you make adjustments, and you can easily reposition it in the time line. With a Livetype object, you can save it and reuse it & adjust it for later projects.

The non-destructive editing is nice too. You take clips of a sub clip by marking an "in" and "out", and you can make as many copies of that or variations on that subclip without wasting disk space because it's just a reference back to the original video file. If you need to make adjustments to a clip, you adjust those two points. iM08 has this, but has the drawback of not supporting the other things that you want.

Starting out was a bit frustrating, but it's pretty nice once it's understood. I dabbled in FCE with the clips I imported, but still resorted to iM6 when first learning FCE, but as I got more proficient, I used FCE for more projects, except for one quick demo. I wish I had the talents to make better use of it, I have video ideas, but I'm a little too lazy to do the setup to shoot good looking video, among other things.

JeffDM: Thank you for all of the good advice, I appreciate it!

The GeeThree plugins are great (they have a page on their site saying they are looking forward to creating plugins for '08 whenever that becomes available... hope they can, soon). If that does the trick for you, there is no need to upgrade or spend money on anything else. iMovie '08 raises the bar on apps so I have a feeling that things are going to change soon with FCP and other pro apps; if what you have now does the trick, save your cash. But then, at 900 a pop, you could more than afford FCP and a few lessons!

HI everyone,
I am a Video Productions teacher for high school students and former Videographer. We used to use iMovie for two months as a learning tool before we moved on to Final Cut Pro. Why iMovie? It has (had) the same interface that almost all other non-linear editing programs use including Avid, Panasonic Post Box, Media 100, and Premiere etc. The look and interface is what we would call "industry standard."
iMovie 06 had a lot to offer whereas iMovie 08 is basically a glorified slideshow. The fact that there is not a timeline and tighter audio control is astonishing. Do I mind that there are less video effects and transistions? Not at all. Most effects and transations are juvenile and rarely used for anything worthwhile.
I would suggest Apple create a program that utilizes iMovie 08's skimming video technique combined with an interface similar to iMovie 06 (and 99% of other non-linear editng programs). They could even create a section in the new app like "create simple video here" or something for novice users. But please update iMovie 06, a well made and useful program that just became a tad bloated.
I am very diappointed with iMovie 08 and to be honest I am surprised it's not just called something entirely different.

That's what consumers want. A simple way to assemble clips with titles and audio. If you're training people to eventually use a semi-pro or pro video app with iMovie 06 that speaks to the complexity of the application.