iLife 05's crappy side

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
well i got iLife05 today, and i have quite a few problems (not technical) with it. I posted this in my MUG's forums, so I just copied the text over:



GBAND:

For starters, my own ear is a better tuner than the one in Garageband. To be fair, I'm not plugged straight into my computer, but when it says my guitar is in tune, it's a little off. Also in GBand, the pitch bender can only be applied to a whole track, not just one part of it (like one line of a song). If there's a way to do it other than creating a whole new track just for that one section, it isn't very intuitive. You should be able to apply it only to a selected section down at the bottom of the screen in the edit bar or whatever.



IPHOTO:

I love the search feature because I add comments to all my pics, but why do I still have to hit shift+apple+B to do a batch change? It makes way more sense to keep the comment box active in the bottom left when you select more than one photo so you can easily batch change comments. Now for slideshows... I select an album or folder or anything else, and hit the new slideshow button--easy enough. Oh but I forgot I wanna add that other album to it. So I have that really nice bar at the top of the 'build slideshow' screen showing my pics, but dragging an album into to it wont add the album to the slideshow. Grrr. There should be an option to tell which program to edit mpeg's with. i've come to terms with the batch comment change thing.



IMOVIE:

HD + 5 megapixel pics + ken burn's is awesome. when viewing pics to insert from iphoto, the search bar will only search by title, not comments.



iDVD:

i'm actually really impressed with it. More encoding controls would be nice. also, when movies are put in drop zones, you should be able to change their starting point. the loop point thing in the duration slider is cool, but you should be able to move it. Finally, I was totally under the impression that iDVD could burn 16:9 dvd's. what it actually does is just re-encode your 16:9 imovie's into 4:3 and adds the black bars. When you 'share' a 16:9 movie from iMovie to iDVD, it won't make the themes 16:9 (or at least the fake 16:9). Pretty sketchy I'd say, given all the 16:9 hype.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 24
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    I haven't used iDVD that much, but if I can't burn a widescreen DVD from a widescreen iMovie iDVD is missing a critical feature. While true resolution would be nice, any widecsreen hack is better than a 4x3 conversion with vertical black bars.



    I'm gonna play with this tomorrow because iDVD has gotta be able to burn a widescreen movie.
  • Reply 2 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Xool

    I haven't used iDVD that much, but if I can't burn a widescreen DVD from a widescreen iMovie iDVD is missing a critical feature. While true resolution would be nice, any widecsreen hack is better than a 4x3 conversion with vertical black bars.



    I'm gonna play with this tomorrow because iDVD has gotta be able to burn a widescreen movie.




    ya, i havent spent too much time in it either, so correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure it wont. i dont really wanna waste a dvd trying...
  • Reply 3 of 24
    Can I add a couple more:



    iMovie HD

    Imports (Sony digicam) MPEG movies with no sound, although it does play them with sound in the add photo pane...



    iPhoto 5

    The biggest print for the UK is 20x30cm, whereas the US is 20"x30". I want to make one of those Life Posters. But it's be a bit puny at such a small size.



    I think iPhoto was the best update, even though MacWorld was pretty much all about HD.
  • Reply 4 of 24
    There's a discussion and workaround on the Apple discussion site - looks like a bug in iDVD - send feedback I guess:



    http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]/1



    Cheers,



    Martin.
  • Reply 5 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull

    Can I add a couple more:



    iMovie HD

    Imports (Sony digicam) MPEG movies with no sound, although it does play them with sound in the add photo pane...



    iPhoto 5

    The biggest print for the UK is 20x30cm, whereas the US is 20"x30". I want to make one of those Life Posters. But it's be a bit puny at such a small size.



    I think iPhoto was the best update, even though MacWorld was pretty much all about HD.




    I use an app called 'MPEG streamclip' (find it at versiontracker) to demux my Cybershot movies for use in other apps. using sony digicam mpeg's in other apps is like trying to import straight from a dvd into imovie to edit video. you have to do ther things to it first.



    for the iphoto thing--that's probably a typo. 20x30 cm and 20x30 inches is a ridiculous difference in size for what i guess is supposed to be an equal feature.
  • Reply 6 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    I use an app called 'MPEG streamclip' (find it at versiontracker) to demux my Cybershot movies for use in other apps. using sony digicam mpeg's in other apps is like trying to import straight from a dvd into imovie to edit video. you have to do ther things to it first.



    for the iphoto thing--that's probably a typo. 20x30 cm and 20x30 inches is a ridiculous difference in size for what i guess is supposed to be an equal feature.




    I know about MPEG Streamclip, used it with iMovie 4. My point is that it plays in the little pane in the top left (the import from iPhoto one) fine and with sound. iMovie HD then says it's converting it to dv, but fails on the audio... I just find it strange that it does that...



    With the prints, it clearly has 8" x 12" by it, and it only costs £1.69 about $3, which is definately not enough for 30" x 20".
  • Reply 7 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull

    I know about MPEG Streamclip, used it with iMovie 4. My point is that it plays in the little pane in the top left (the import from iPhoto one) fine and with sound. iMovie HD then says it's converting it to dv, but fails on the audio... I just find it strange that it does that....



    ya i see what you're talking about now. who knows...
  • Reply 8 of 24
    proxyproxy Posts: 232member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull



    The biggest print for the UK is 20x30cm, whereas the US is 20"x30".





    Photobox.co.uk do a 20"x30" print for £20 and they are excellent quality. I use them all the time. Actually.. they've got 25% off Poster prints during Feb. so make that £15.



    On a seperate note.. Apple mentions that iPhoto can import mpeg4 movies, but can it import the more common .AVI files that most cameras use? I really hope so as I've a stack from my canon Ixus that I'd love to drop into iPhoto rather than shoved away in files.
  • Reply 9 of 24
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    I was able to make a 16:9 DVD just fine in iDVD '05, actually....
  • Reply 10 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Proxy

    Photobox.co.uk do a 20"x30" print for £20 and they are excellent quality. I use them all the time. Actually.. they've got 25% off Poster prints during Feb. so make that £15.



    On a seperate note.. Apple mentions that iPhoto can import mpeg4 movies, but can it import the more common .AVI files that most cameras use? I really hope so as I've a stack from my canon Ixus that I'd love to drop into iPhoto rather than shoved away in files.




    Thanks, may look into it



    Your other point - I imported a friends photos from her canon 'something or other - can't remember the name of it' camera, and it does import the avi movies. In fact, I tried importing them into iMovie HD, and it worked perfectly... (See my other point )
  • Reply 11 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Nebagakid

    I was able to make a 16:9 DVD just fine in iDVD '05, actually....



    did you use a theme? if so, did it make the menu 16:9?
  • Reply 12 of 24
    dave k.dave k. Posts: 1,306member
    I am very disappointed over a couple of limitations of iDVD:



    1.) The new OneStep DVD feature doesn't work with Analog/Digital bridges. When I first heard of this feature, I was really looking forward to convert all of my old VHS home movies to DVD. Now I have to import my VHS movies to iMovie, then send to iDVD. This is awkward.



    2.) The OneStep DVD doesn't support disk images. I wish I could specify either a blank DVD or a blank Disk Image. If I could save to a disk image, once completed, I could quickly burn multiple copies without the hassle of creating a disk image from the disk I just made.



    Just my two cents.



    Dave
  • Reply 13 of 24
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull

    ...





    iPhoto 5

    The biggest print for the UK is 20x30cm, whereas the US is 20"x30". I want to make one of those Life Posters. But it's be a bit puny at such a small size.



    I think iPhoto was the best update, even though MacWorld was pretty much all about HD.






    That's a great idea. I'm going to do one in PowerPoint. PowerPoint can "save as" high resolution TIFFs. Plus you can add text and have more control over photo size and placement. Plus I already own PowerPoint and it will do it
  • Reply 14 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    That's a great idea. I'm going to do one in PowerPoint. PowerPoint can "save as" high resolution TIFFs. Plus you can add text and have more control over photo size and placement. Plus I already own PowerPoint and it will do it



    Thanks! I don't have Photoshop, was going to download it to convert the PDF to tiff. I do have PowerPoint which I will use.
  • Reply 15 of 24
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I tested it once with one image and it looked good. Get 96 images into powerlesspoint and it may well die on you?
  • Reply 16 of 24
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Scott

    I tested it once with one image and it looked good. Get 96 images into powerlesspoint and it may well die on you?



    I didn't get too far, it takes ages to get right. I tried again with iPhoto and realised that Preview will save as Tiff also. It seems I get huge margins top and bottom of my pictures, and that guys looks a bit more even. Is there anyway of changing the borders on a contact sheet?
  • Reply 17 of 24
    Can you use iDVD to burn to an external burner yet? I think this really sucks. I rather just have a fast CD burner in my machine, but I can't use iDVD until I buy a Mac with a burner.
  • Reply 18 of 24
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by danielctull

    I didn't get too far, it takes ages to get right. I tried again with iPhoto and realised that Preview will save as Tiff also. It seems I get huge margins top and bottom of my pictures, and that guys looks a bit more even. Is there anyway of changing the borders on a contact sheet?



    I'm not sure the resolution of the images in the TIFF file is high enough. It seems that despite bumping up the resolution of the TIFF output the resolution of the images is fixed.
  • Reply 19 of 24
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    I just had some fun with PowerlessPoint. The TIFF export is buggy and doesn't work at high resolution. What I ended up doing was a PICT export which supports vector graphics. Then using GraphicsConverter I saved it as a TIFF for a high res bitmap that a photo shop can print.
  • Reply 20 of 24
    ishawnishawn Posts: 364member
    \ ... and I was hoping that I could just take video from my camera save it into iPhoto and run it on iDVD or use iMovie to add titles or whatever... guess not yet...
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