iMovie '08 review and other iLife '08 apps integration with video

Hi from Portugal!

This is my first thoughts about the iMovie'08...

...and also iLife'08 other apps.

Apple has made a lot of changes to this suite. Even very subtle they are profound changes.

You must read some thought from professionals first:

From David Pogue "Apple Takes a Step Back With iMovie ’08" NY Times article...
"But honestly. To rephrase (and sanitize) the wailing on the discussion boards: What the [bleep]! What was Apple thinking?!

"I can't remember any software company pulling a stunt like this before: throwing away a fully developed, mature, popular program and substituting a bare-bones, differently focused program under the same name.

I've used the real iMovie to edit my Times videos for three years now. The results are perfectly convincing as professional video blog work. But the new version is totally unusable for that purpose. It's unusable, in fact, for anyone doing professional work that requires any degree of precision."

...from Elliot Cost review from Mac Filmmaking blog
"iMovie has always been a very popular application when it comes to digital filmmaking. iMovie has had a long standing tradition for being the most simple and straight forward digital video editing application. When iMovie ‘08 was released just a few days ago, I had many doubts about the stability of the app and how it would pair up to other versions. Most of these doubts have been cleared up, just by editing a simple movie with iMovie ‘08."

...and from Dennis Sellers "iMovie ‘08 more of a downgrade than an improvement" Macsimum News article.
"That’s my first impression. It seems to be major disappointment, not just for me, but for LOTS of Mac users."

My thought is that Apple finally made an internet video application and has left the DVD world.
It has been hard to Apple to advertise High-Def and then it turns out that we cannot record DVDs in HD. So the way was choose solutions around this. That’s why all these improvements over .Mac and more storage.

Now the “i” of iMovie really means internet, like was the original iMac ten years ago (internet Mac) when it had no floppy because we could send this small content by e-mail.
The idea is now to make more shorter movies and then publish them on a website, .Mac, blog, YouTube and other stuff like this. And there’s also another way when there are no net option: TV, iPhone, iPod and other stuff like those mentioned. So we can maintain our HD little-movies. That’s why there are no features for DVD, like the bookmarks, no instant share the movie to iDVD (it has now to be exported/published first).

Even GaragenBand has lost the ability of Movie Scoring introduced in the ‘06 version. If we cannot do in iMovie’08 audio-dub with mixes, lower the sound on small parts of the movie to more clearly hear the voices, adjust the audio at the beginning and end of the songs and other stuff like this, we could use GarageBand but…
If GarageBand’08 had the Movie Scoring we could jump our project and do it there but even this Apple removed. If we want a simple song with the footage we add on iMovie. If we want even better audio enhancements we go to the Music application. It would be very clear…
iDVD’08 has now an even better encoding setting than the Higgest it had: Professional Encoding. But this new iMovie is far-away of professional…
And no bookmarks is a shame. Imagine one hour of video without this on your room with friends and you want to show some specific moment. You cannot jump now a chapter: you will need to fast-forward until find hat you want. It’s a stupid way Apple!!!

But i think that Apple can make it right and make a big 7.1 update providing in some way what is missing.

No timeline is not a real problem because the newer version has another atrctive way that behaves like clip viewer if we reduce the clip thumbnails to only one. But it would be nice if iMovie had the chance to open maybe a floating menu witha timeline way even if it was not a complete timeline.
Or give to the other iApps more abilities:
-the bookmark/chapter feature to iDVD;
-Movie Scoring to GarageBand;
-and give back video and audio effects to the iMovie update.

Finally, Apple was right to make a newer app. iMovie comes from the time of Mac OS 9, has suffered the OS X transition and has suffered the Intel transition too. Maybe the code has become very old and very bigger and started to be very buggy to enhance even further. So Apple started from the beginning and write new code. Maybe Apple had not time to do everything that earlier versions does.
Please Apple, modify iMovie ‘08 to be an upgrade and not the shame downgrade it is.

However 'i've been reading comments and opinions and one person from the Macsimum article's comments (Tom Hughes) has said:
"iMovie ‘08 is a great program !
Apple has brought fun and spontaneity back to video editing and has made the process accessible to anyone with a vision for a video they want to create.
The new iMovie deserves to be tried on its own merits, on a totally new project or on a re-edit of an existing one. Folks may be surprised at how quickly they discover totally unexpected new sequences and in the process re-discover the fun that making movies was always supposed to be.
Also - Scoring an iMovie’08 in Garage Band is still available!
Just open the iMovie from within Garage Band and start sweetening the soundtrack."

This has made me re-think the situation and express another more elaborated thought...

I want to thank you Tom Hughes because you made me investigate even more and you were right about GarageBand’s movie scoring.

In past, when we started up GarageBand 3, one of the options it presented us was “New Movie Score” in the welcome window. That is gone from Garageband 4. But it remains the ability to add a movie track. That’s right the GrgBd’08 still has movie scoring but it is not advertised by Apple but you were right.

But what has made me jump was another feature in GarageBand’s movie track that i was missing: the ability to create chapters along the movie like we do it in iMovie HD’06.
It really shows on iDVD, produces “Scene Selection” menu also with all the chapters thumbnails. Really great!

I must have to admit that i was never an GarageBand user because i’ve never had the appeal of making music. But it will change right now because of scoring…

With this two features we can start produce our sophisticated movie projects with iMovie ‘08.

However, our projects must be done in a different approach like this:
1- iMovie ‘08: Make the movie with video only. Only focus on the video (add transitions, titles, photos, endings...). The only audio here must come only from footage. Do not add any song or audio effect. When done publish to Media Browser;
2- GarageBand ‘08: Start new project, add a video track, open Media Browser and choose your video. Adjust the background sound adding songs from iTunes, add sound effects or compose right in GrgBnd (if you have so much skills) and mark the movies with all the chapters it needs. When done save and Share to iDVD;
3- iDVD’08: it will open automatically, fine-tune your DVD screen-layout and its done and ready to burn;

Well, this time its much more different with iLife’08 and has i’ve tried to imagine ways earlier, it has become what i’ve thought too.
Now we will really need to use all iLife apps (for some people maybe not iWeb). I agree with this way and iMovie ‘08 now sounds to me much very more useful.
iMovie’08 appeals to me specially from the new skyrocket way of producing video sequences and deal with all footage from a library (it also shows us all our iPhoto videos which is something i’ve never noticed i could use).

Well done Apple… but you should had alerted us first about your new intentions!

Conclusion...

In fact, i'm starting to like very much the new way. Not because of the difference approach to projects but because it gives us other more abilities not available until now.

Apple this year has changed and add more things to do and to accomplish. We must not forget the iTunes, iPod, AppleTv, Front Row and the iPhone. Those new things is making Apple change because it gave to her more users and a different kinf of them. And this new iLife'08 tries to accomplish this.

Until now, if we have finished our movie project we had not the ability to send the movie to iPod, iPhone or AppleTV with easy ways. We had to use other applications outside Apple or paying for an QuickTime Pro upgrade.
With iLife'08 it has changed drastically. We can make or movie and send it right to the new Apple TV or iPhone or iPod immediately. Add to this the easy way to publish right to internet (YouTube, iWeb, .Mac Gallery) and the ability to use any Quicktime movie clip from your video libray instantaneously without any conversion into your project... is amazing.

This is an huge improvement over iLife'06 and that is really great!

If you have other ipinions and iMovie '08 workarounds, please feel free to give your thoughts and comments.