[MacDV] Re: Quips & Quibbles with iMovie 3 (long)

H. Eddie Reed mac_ed at bellsouth.net
Mon Feb 3 15:52:09 PST 2003


Whoa ! That was a mouth full !!

Well this is not the first I have heard in regards to iMovie3's poor 
design. My question is ...
I'm still downloading iM3 and was wondering if there would be a way to 
keep both iMovie2 as well as 3 ? You know in case I feel as Mike and Dan 
do about the latest version I could switch back ?
Am I trying to have my cake and eat it too >?

Not sure if the update is really what I should do..

  <Eddie>
On Monday, February 3, 2003, at 05:36  PM, Dan Crumpler wrote:

> Mike,
>
> You are 100% on target.
>
> This new iMovie 3 is an abomination and an exercise in futility if you 
> want to just get your work done. After finishing this morning's school 
> announcements (a 7:00 am job that I can get done in peace before the 
> kids - middle school, pour in) I tried  iMovie 3 out. Thankfully the 
> finished tape was already in hand as we laboriously tried to grind 
> through some simple editing using a G4 dual 500 with a gig of memory.
>
> I bailed out after wasting 30 minutes, rebooted into 9.2, went back to 
> iMovie 2.11 and was able to finally load up the file, clean up the crud 
> from version 3. As far as I am concerned, that's the way my machine 
> will stay too. Life is too short to throw away time trying to nursemaid 
> Apple's folly into a working product.
>
> While I hope that Apple never quits supporting the old working software 
> that allows simple people like me to finish their work efficiently, I 
> think the writing is already on the wall. I'd rather switch to a decent 
> Windows system that just works than put up up with this foolishness 
> from Apple.
>
> Dan
>
> Michael Winter wrote:
>
>> I really wanted to like iMovie 3, but I'm having enough trouble with 
>> it I think I'm going back to 2.1. I'm hoping that by posting my 
>> experience some of the experts on the list may be able to help me out.
>>
>> The system I'm using is a dual 1 GHz Quicksilver with 1.5 GB RAM 
>> running OS 10.2.3. For video in I'm using a Sony Digital Media 
>> Convertor.
>>
>> Launching iMovie 3 takes much longer, but I think that's related to 
>> the last edited project. So if I open a project that was created in 
>> iMovie 2, it seems to take forever. Opening projects made in iMovie 3 
>> takes less time, but even opening a "blank" project seems to take 
>> longer than iMovie 2.
>>
>> Importing video seems to work fine, except when I switch from 
>> importing to editing, then back to importing, I get the no camera 
>> message. I have to quit iMovie and restart to get it back (this works 
>> every time).
>>
>> I guess the other thing to mention is that during the import I 
>> sometimes get a wide black band either on the left of the view or on 
>> the top and bottom. This had me really worried, but when I go back to 
>> look at the clips after capturing them, the bands are gone. I'm 
>> wondering if the display is messed up because I resized the window and 
>> it has to take a few shortcuts to display in real time.
>>
>> The user interface seems very slow. I click on a clip and it will take 
>> a second (literally) for it to show in the viewer window, then another 
>> second for the "scrubber" triangle to appear. I'm actually over there 
>> with the mouse pointer waiting for it to appear. OTOH, the non-UI 
>> stuff seems to be just as fast if not faster. If I push the right 
>> arrow on the keyboard to view a clip in iMovie 2, I can watch each 
>> frame go by, In iMovie 3, it seems to scroll by faster than real time.
>>
>> Can anyone explain the clip selection logic? Seems like if I move a 
>> clip, or sometimes just click on it once, it does not become the 
>> selected clip. I have to click on it a second time.
>>
>> So I've done a bit of editing and its time to export to QuickTime. 
>> Because of some problems with iMovie 2 coming to a halt if in the 
>> background, I've gotten in the habit of exporting to "Full Quality DV" 
>> then using Quicktime Pro to do the conversions. The good news is that 
>> this is now unnecessary because iMovie 3 will continue at full speed 
>> even when in the background. The bad news is that when I export to 
>> Full Quality DV my audio ends up out of sync. That's never happened 
>> before. I was hoping to use this method to get to VCD until Roxio gets 
>> their plug-in updated.
>>
>> Some other things I've noticed with exporting:
>>
>> If you Export to QuickTime and use "Expert" you get the same dialog 
>> box you get when exporting using QuickTime Player and QuickTime Pro. 
>> You even get the same progress bar, which means you don't get an 
>> estimated time to completion.
>>
>> When I finally hit the "Export" button and get the file dialog to tell 
>> it where to export to, more funny things happen. First, I want to 
>> change the default name of the output file, but I can't select just 
>> the part before the "dot". I either get the whole file name or just 
>> fhe dot and what's after. I can however use the arrow and delete keys 
>> to accomplish the task or just type in the whole name.
>>
>> When I try to navigate to a different drive to save the file, part of 
>> the file listing pops up outside the dialog box. With a few repeated 
>> attempts I can get what I want if I ignore the "ghost".
>>
>> Three times now I've had exports that didn't work. There is no error 
>> message and no file created other than  a 4 kB .mov file in the 
>> project folder. I haven't figure out what happened in these cases, but 
>> I did notice that the export did not take as long as it should have 
>> (twice I was exporting to mp4, once to full quality DV).
>>
>> My plan for now, since I installed iMovie3 using the System Update 
>> method, is to go on a seek and destroy mission to get rid of 
>> everything iMovie related, then do a "clean" iMovie 3 install. If that 
>> doesn't clear some things up its back to iMovie2.
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>>
>> ----------
>> <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/MacDV.html>.
>> Send a message to <MacDV-DIGEST at themacintoshguy.com> to switch to the 
>> digest version.
>>
>> XRouter | Share your DSL or cable modem between multiple computers! 
>> Dr. Bott | Now $139.99      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/xrouter.html>
>>
>>   Cyberian   | Support this list when you buy at Outpost.com!
>>   Outpost    |         http://www.themacintoshguy.com/outpost.shtml
>>
>> MacResQ Specials: LaCie SCSI CDR From $99! PowerBook 3400/200 Only 
>> $879! Norton AntiVirus 6 Only $19! We Stock PARTS! 
>> <http://www.macresq.com>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ----------
> <http://www.themacintoshguy.com/lists/MacDV.html>.
> Send a message to <MacDV-DIGEST at themacintoshguy.com> to switch to the 
> digest version.
>
> XRouter | Share your DSL or cable modem between multiple computers! Dr. 
> Bott | Now $139.99      <http://www.drbott.com/prod/xrouter.html>
>
>   Cyberian   | Support this list when you buy at Outpost.com!
>   Outpost    |         http://www.themacintoshguy.com/outpost.shtml
>
> MacResQ Specials: LaCie SCSI CDR From $99! PowerBook 3400/200 Only 
> $879! Norton AntiVirus 6 Only $19! We Stock PARTS! 
> <http://www.macresq.com>
>



More information about the MacDV mailing list