As a streamlined, simple video editor it works extremely well and if you need more sophisticated editing there's iMovie 6, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro.
I do agree that the documentation could be substantially improved.
Without going into even greater detail I have already pointed out how unMaclike QuickTime's GUI is and how indirect and crude the editing process is.
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
I personally am totally excited about Leopard. There's few areas that I don't see improvement in and some areas that have improved yet Apple doesn't seem to be mentioning them (like the dedicated thread to the GPU for UI)
I typically find that OS releases have to coverer a wide range of people and as they say "one man's trash is another man's treasure" not all features will hit us the same way. I know for a fact that I'm going to LOVE the new iCal features and when I get my iPhone I'll love them even more. The ability for external apps to write to iCal now is huge to me. I love the Data Detectors in Mail. Maybe I'll finally get my Addressbook up to par.
My son is almost ready to start using a computer and the Parental Controls to me are a godsend here.
I personally didn't thing Tiger was that big of an update either but I realize that it contained some core technologies that would make future apps better. I find Leopard to have much more spit polish and it also contains many core technologies that will make future apps faster and more intuitive. The Developer tool updates were great as well. This is certainly a home run release to me. Had they added Voice Recognition and some other small things it could have been a grand slam but I'm ok for now. It's an easy $129 purchase for me.
No info about Java 1.6 makes me stuck with Windows. Sadly Leopard looks great, but sum cross-platform compatibility would be great. At least saying "we won't support Java" would help too, as it could initiate others to develop Apple independent JVM. However Apple doesn't communicate with developers well. It's pitty that the best OS is developed by one of the most arrogant company.
I'd wait to see what Java 6 has in store for Apple and WebObjects right after when Sun releases it's redesigned threading model for the December Java 6 update and the fact that Sun is in transition with it's OpenJDK initiative.
It makes more sense for Apple to take a pragmatic approach and coordinate with Sun and the OpenJDK community before it commits a bunch of engineering resources to it.
Without going into even greater detail I have already pointed out how unMaclike QuickTime's GUI is and how indirect and crude the editing process is.
I use it all the time for quick edits and it seems ok to me. For anything complicated, I'd use Shake or Final Cut but for quick editing, I'm ok with quicktime. I agree that it could be better though, just the way the markers work is a bit stupid IMO. It's so hard to move one of the end markers precisely without having to just hold down the arrow keys and go frame by frame. I don't know why they couldn't have hotkeys to set in an out points like most other editing software so you can at least play through a movie to get to an edit point and mark it instead of playing the clip, then having to drag the marker (clicking which makes the playhead jump to that position so you lose your place) and then trying to drag it to where you remember the point was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gastroboy
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
That's because it's converting to an edit format from a delivery format though and edit formats are much bigger (5-10 times usually). When you edit in iMovie or Final Cut, you generally want frame accurate editing, which codecs that use temporal compression don't give you. Still, it is nice to be able to use the original codecs without recompression even if that means losing a couple of frames, which often doesn't really matter and Final Cut lets you do this. You just make the sequence settings the same as the source format.
As for the size Apple reckons you want, this would probably be a DV thing again. It is a standard format and it will usually always come out at either 720x576 in widescreen or 4:3. That's just the way DV is. I think imovie lets you use mpeg-4 as your working format, which would keep the space down but you might lose more quality.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gastroboy
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
Not really, they are set up pretty much like imovie but with all the options they deliberately missed out so that you'll buy Final Cut. I actually find the pro apps easier to use in most cases than the dumbed down apps because I usually find myself wondering where a particular feature is or how I would do a particular task with just the limited controls Apple gives you.
I've actually seen myself giving up doing a simple movie in imovie in favor of Final cut. The conversion to DVD is so slow with the iapps.
Without going into even greater detail I have already pointed out how unMaclike QuickTime's GUI is and how indirect and crude the editing process is.
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
You just have unrealistic expectations. The editing aspect of QuickTime Pro does what it is meant to do very efficiently. The problem is that you are trying to do advanced things in a stripped-down editor.
The main thing that you are paying for with QuickTime Pro is the ability to export to a plethora of different codecs and file formats. Aspects of QuickTime Pro really do need re-writing; it'll be interesting to see these "significant" improvements that Leopard is supposedly bringing to H.264, because at the moment QT is pathetically slow at exporting H.264. It also doesn't support playback or encoding of High-Profile H.264, and doesn't support encoding of Advanced Simple Profile of MPEG-4 part 2 (can be played back with the free Perian plug-in).
I don't know why they couldn't have hotkeys to set in an out points like most other editing software so you can at least play through a movie to get to an edit point and mark it
They do. Get the playhead where you want it, and press shift-right arrow on the keyboard. This will move the out marker to the playhead. Press shift-left arrow and this will move the in marker to the playhead. Alternatively, pressing "i" will move the in marker to the playhead, and pressing "o" will move the out marker to the playhead.
It's usually better to use the "i" and "o" keys, as pressing and holding shift-arrow key causes the playhead an marker to move frame-by frame (so if you just want to move the marker to exactly where the playhead is, you might move the playhead by mistake if you use the shift-arrow method)
Thanks for the tips guys, I'll add it to my notes on QT but you'll understand if I stick by my view that Apple hasn't made it easy on the user, nor maintained their usual standards of usability.
A shame because a few simple and obvious improvements could do so much for the Mac and QT in particular. It just looks like another area of neglect.
They do. Get the playhead where you want it, and press shift-right arrow on the keyboard. This will move the out marker to the playhead. Press shift-left arrow and this will move the in marker to the playhead. Alternatively, pressing "i" will move the in marker to the playhead, and pressing "o" will move the out marker to the playhead.
It's usually better to use the "i" and "o" keys, as pressing and holding shift-arrow key causes the playhead an marker to move frame-by frame (so if you just want to move the marker to exactly where the playhead is, you might move the playhead by mistake if you use the shift-arrow method)
That's weird, I'm sure I tried that before. I had no idea about the shift-arrow thing. Thanks for that, this will make my quick edits so much easier.
Another thing I noticed is that on one quicktime installation at work, it has an option to click the timecode area to get the frame numbers. I don't think that's done by a quicktime component. There's probably an extension somewhere. It's quite handy when dealing with animations.
Another thing I noticed is that on one quicktime installation at work, it has an option to click the timecode area to get the frame numbers. I don't think that's done by a quicktime component. There's probably an extension somewhere. It's quite handy when dealing with animations.
Hey! I read a lot of complains here! STOP WHINNYING BEFORE YOU'VE SEEN THE KID! Today I had a chance to play with it for an hour or so. I've seen all the info on Leopard on Apple's website and John's demo of course. I am following all the reports, screen dumps etc. and I thought I knew a lot about Leopard and there is nothing which could surprise me. But I was wrong!
You see, most Apple products look better in real life than on the site or on a printed page. Same applies to Leopard. I could not try Mail features, Time Machine and screen sharing for example but what I've seen is AWESOME. Make a search in Leopard using the new Spotlight boolean searches and you end up with a search results - some 50 documents. What I do in Tiger in this situation is to look carefully the filename and the path to get additional hint whether this is the doc I want and then, if in doubt, open it. No? - go back to search results and so on. When I finally find the document I searched for I end up with TextEdit, Acrobat, Preview and MS Word opened. In Leopard, press the spacebar and Voila! - Quick Look opens a nice preview instantly! Yes, I knew this should work this way! But it is really fast! You may never need to open the application if you don't need to edit the document. Quick Look played a DivX movie (I guess some of the available QT extensions was installed) ALONG WITH THE SUBTITLES (the subtitles file was in the same folder). And you can go fullscreen with a click. You can select multiple documents and open in Quick Look and show in a slideshow.
Stacks are great. I don't like the Fan view, but the grid one is OK. What I really like - it is fast! In Tiger I have the Applications and Utilities folders in the dock. But I rarely use them to access an application because it is slow: first, there is a delay before they pop up. Then, the list of applications is long and it takes time to scroll. In Leopard I have them instantly!
Spaces is very impressive as well. One small detail I liked - you can keep some applications, like iChat or Skype, in all spaces. Works great with VMWare/Windows in fullscreen mode in a separate space.
Finally, Disk Utility can make a live resize of the partitions, as well as adding/splitting/deleting partitions without formatting the entire drive.
I can write a lot about what I liked but it will not be new for you I guess. The real news for me is that advertised features work really great!
There are some shortcomings of course: I could not find a way to set the Windows workgroup besides editing the smb.conf file (sharing is greatly improved however, better than used to be in System 9 for the first time!), some of the slideshows launched in Front Row did not show images, some others - no sound, the majority were OK (may be rebuilding the iPhoto database would help - did not try it, but the same slideshows were playing OK when launched from iPhoto). I could not find glitches in other apps but I did not have time to test them thoroughly.
I am certain that some controversial appearance tweaks like Dock and Menu transparency will be easily changed with 'defaults write' command.
May be I will wait till 10.5.1 to install on my Mac, but I will order now!
Oh, the Leopard I played with was installed on a 24" aluminum iMac.
While Leopard overall doesn't seem all that exciting to me as an end-user, every developer I know or follow seems to be very excited. This matches most of the stuff that Steve has talked about, so I think the apps will be more exciting even if the user experience isn't all that different.
I still wish they would fix the Finder and start really integrating metadata more...
I still wish they would fix the Finder and start really integrating metadata more...
I know what you mean, but I have to admit that the Finder is better than ever. We now have coverflow, quicklook, and an iTunes-esque interface. I can't wait to use it.
Comments
QuickTime's blah blah blah...
I refer you to the last sentence of my post:
As a streamlined, simple video editor it works extremely well and if you need more sophisticated editing there's iMovie 6, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro.
I do agree that the documentation could be substantially improved.
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
I typically find that OS releases have to coverer a wide range of people and as they say "one man's trash is another man's treasure" not all features will hit us the same way. I know for a fact that I'm going to LOVE the new iCal features and when I get my iPhone I'll love them even more. The ability for external apps to write to iCal now is huge to me. I love the Data Detectors in Mail. Maybe I'll finally get my Addressbook up to par.
My son is almost ready to start using a computer and the Parental Controls to me are a godsend here.
I personally didn't thing Tiger was that big of an update either but I realize that it contained some core technologies that would make future apps better. I find Leopard to have much more spit polish and it also contains many core technologies that will make future apps faster and more intuitive. The Developer tool updates were great as well. This is certainly a home run release to me. Had they added Voice Recognition and some other small things it could have been a grand slam but I'm ok for now. It's an easy $129 purchase for me.
No info about Java 1.6 makes me stuck with Windows. Sadly Leopard looks great, but sum cross-platform compatibility would be great. At least saying "we won't support Java" would help too, as it could initiate others to develop Apple independent JVM. However Apple doesn't communicate with developers well. It's pitty that the best OS is developed by one of the most arrogant company.
I'd wait to see what Java 6 has in store for Apple and WebObjects right after when Sun releases it's redesigned threading model for the December Java 6 update and the fact that Sun is in transition with it's OpenJDK initiative.
It makes more sense for Apple to take a pragmatic approach and coordinate with Sun and the OpenJDK community before it commits a bunch of engineering resources to it.
Without going into even greater detail I have already pointed out how unMaclike QuickTime's GUI is and how indirect and crude the editing process is.
I use it all the time for quick edits and it seems ok to me. For anything complicated, I'd use Shake or Final Cut but for quick editing, I'm ok with quicktime. I agree that it could be better though, just the way the markers work is a bit stupid IMO. It's so hard to move one of the end markers precisely without having to just hold down the arrow keys and go frame by frame. I don't know why they couldn't have hotkeys to set in an out points like most other editing software so you can at least play through a movie to get to an edit point and mark it instead of playing the clip, then having to drag the marker (clicking which makes the playhead jump to that position so you lose your place) and then trying to drag it to where you remember the point was.
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
That's because it's converting to an edit format from a delivery format though and edit formats are much bigger (5-10 times usually). When you edit in iMovie or Final Cut, you generally want frame accurate editing, which codecs that use temporal compression don't give you. Still, it is nice to be able to use the original codecs without recompression even if that means losing a couple of frames, which often doesn't really matter and Final Cut lets you do this. You just make the sequence settings the same as the source format.
As for the size Apple reckons you want, this would probably be a DV thing again. It is a standard format and it will usually always come out at either 720x576 in widescreen or 4:3. That's just the way DV is. I think imovie lets you use mpeg-4 as your working format, which would keep the space down but you might lose more quality.
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
Not really, they are set up pretty much like imovie but with all the options they deliberately missed out so that you'll buy Final Cut. I actually find the pro apps easier to use in most cases than the dumbed down apps because I usually find myself wondering where a particular feature is or how I would do a particular task with just the limited controls Apple gives you.
I've actually seen myself giving up doing a simple movie in imovie in favor of Final cut. The conversion to DVD is so slow with the iapps.
Without going into even greater detail I have already pointed out how unMaclike QuickTime's GUI is and how indirect and crude the editing process is.
As to iMovie it is slooooooow and creates absolutely huge files at only a very few preset screen resolutions. Annoyingly it takes tiny QT movies and turns them into gigabyte size projects that it slowly recompresses back down to their original sizes (if it lets you chose the size you want and not what Apple reckons you want).
Final Cut Express may or may not be better, or have the same problems as iMovie and I'm not paying US$299 to find out. Final Cut Pro costs $1299. Both have steep learning curves.
You just have unrealistic expectations. The editing aspect of QuickTime Pro does what it is meant to do very efficiently. The problem is that you are trying to do advanced things in a stripped-down editor.
The main thing that you are paying for with QuickTime Pro is the ability to export to a plethora of different codecs and file formats. Aspects of QuickTime Pro really do need re-writing; it'll be interesting to see these "significant" improvements that Leopard is supposedly bringing to H.264, because at the moment QT is pathetically slow at exporting H.264. It also doesn't support playback or encoding of High-Profile H.264, and doesn't support encoding of Advanced Simple Profile of MPEG-4 part 2 (can be played back with the free Perian plug-in).
I don't know why they couldn't have hotkeys to set in an out points like most other editing software so you can at least play through a movie to get to an edit point and mark it
They do. Get the playhead where you want it, and press shift-right arrow on the keyboard. This will move the out marker to the playhead. Press shift-left arrow and this will move the in marker to the playhead. Alternatively, pressing "i" will move the in marker to the playhead, and pressing "o" will move the out marker to the playhead.
It's usually better to use the "i" and "o" keys, as pressing and holding shift-arrow key causes the playhead an marker to move frame-by frame (so if you just want to move the marker to exactly where the playhead is, you might move the playhead by mistake if you use the shift-arrow method)
A shame because a few simple and obvious improvements could do so much for the Mac and QT in particular. It just looks like another area of neglect.
Pouting.... I don't wanna wait 10 days. I could die by then and never get to use it!
i really hope the sarcasm in this post got lost during transmission through the interweb
They do. Get the playhead where you want it, and press shift-right arrow on the keyboard. This will move the out marker to the playhead. Press shift-left arrow and this will move the in marker to the playhead. Alternatively, pressing "i" will move the in marker to the playhead, and pressing "o" will move the out marker to the playhead.
It's usually better to use the "i" and "o" keys, as pressing and holding shift-arrow key causes the playhead an marker to move frame-by frame (so if you just want to move the marker to exactly where the playhead is, you might move the playhead by mistake if you use the shift-arrow method)
That's weird, I'm sure I tried that before. I had no idea about the shift-arrow thing. Thanks for that, this will make my quick edits so much easier.
Another thing I noticed is that on one quicktime installation at work, it has an option to click the timecode area to get the frame numbers. I don't think that's done by a quicktime component. There's probably an extension somewhere. It's quite handy when dealing with animations.
Another thing I noticed is that on one quicktime installation at work, it has an option to click the timecode area to get the frame numbers. I don't think that's done by a quicktime component. There's probably an extension somewhere. It's quite handy when dealing with animations.
That was added by Apple in the 7.2 update.
You see, most Apple products look better in real life than on the site or on a printed page. Same applies to Leopard. I could not try Mail features, Time Machine and screen sharing for example but what I've seen is AWESOME. Make a search in Leopard using the new Spotlight boolean searches and you end up with a search results - some 50 documents. What I do in Tiger in this situation is to look carefully the filename and the path to get additional hint whether this is the doc I want and then, if in doubt, open it. No? - go back to search results and so on. When I finally find the document I searched for I end up with TextEdit, Acrobat, Preview and MS Word opened. In Leopard, press the spacebar and Voila! - Quick Look opens a nice preview instantly! Yes, I knew this should work this way! But it is really fast! You may never need to open the application if you don't need to edit the document. Quick Look played a DivX movie (I guess some of the available QT extensions was installed) ALONG WITH THE SUBTITLES (the subtitles file was in the same folder). And you can go fullscreen with a click. You can select multiple documents and open in Quick Look and show in a slideshow.
Stacks are great. I don't like the Fan view, but the grid one is OK. What I really like - it is fast! In Tiger I have the Applications and Utilities folders in the dock. But I rarely use them to access an application because it is slow: first, there is a delay before they pop up. Then, the list of applications is long and it takes time to scroll. In Leopard I have them instantly!
Spaces is very impressive as well. One small detail I liked - you can keep some applications, like iChat or Skype, in all spaces. Works great with VMWare/Windows in fullscreen mode in a separate space.
Finally, Disk Utility can make a live resize of the partitions, as well as adding/splitting/deleting partitions without formatting the entire drive.
I can write a lot about what I liked but it will not be new for you I guess. The real news for me is that advertised features work really great!
There are some shortcomings of course: I could not find a way to set the Windows workgroup besides editing the smb.conf file (sharing is greatly improved however, better than used to be in System 9 for the first time!), some of the slideshows launched in Front Row did not show images, some others - no sound, the majority were OK (may be rebuilding the iPhoto database would help - did not try it, but the same slideshows were playing OK when launched from iPhoto). I could not find glitches in other apps but I did not have time to test them thoroughly.
I am certain that some controversial appearance tweaks like Dock and Menu transparency will be easily changed with 'defaults write' command.
May be I will wait till 10.5.1 to install on my Mac, but I will order now!
Oh, the Leopard I played with was installed on a 24" aluminum iMac.
I still wish they would fix the Finder and start really integrating metadata more...
I still wish they would fix the Finder and start really integrating metadata more...
I know what you mean, but I have to admit that the Finder is better than ever. We now have coverflow, quicklook, and an iTunes-esque interface. I can't wait to use it.