[MacDV] iMovie HD bugs

[Matti Haveri]

iMovie 1.0.2, 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 were OK but the quality control in 
later versions has been bad.

I have sent feedback to Apple about this, but I'm not holding my 
breath because there was only one lousy bugfix for iMovie 4 and many 
old, well-known irritating bugs remained. Some of them were even 
described in Apple's knowledgebase articles but they were never 
fixed. Some iMovie 4 bugs were finally fixed in iMovie HD, some not, 
and some new bugs were introduced.

The worst iMovie HD 5.0.1 bugs are:

- In iMovie HD 5.0.1 added titles distort interlacing lines in the 
underlying video

- iMovie HD 5.0.1's Slow-motion and Reversed Effects don't 
deinterlace or don't change field dominance like they correctly did 
in iMovie 4

- Some analog to DV converters don't work in iMovie HD 5.0.1 like 
they do in iMovie 4.0.1

- There may be white flashes with iMovie HD 5.0.1 projects burned in iDVD 5

Other bugs:

- iMovie HD 5.0.1 STILL renders jaggy still images

- In iMovie HD 5.0.1 exporting via the expert settings as a DV stream 
deinterlaces video and loses timecode

- Some iMovie HD 5.0.1 QuickTime export presets export different 
resolutions than they claim to

- iMovie HD 5.0.1 copies or drags the whole media clip instead of its 
trimmed part

- Sometimes iMovie HD 5.0.1 projects with only still images fail to 
burn in iDVD

- The quality of imported still images which are saved back as frames 
is bad in iMovie HD 5.0.1

- iMovie HD 5.0.1 distorts interlacing when importing and rendering 
4:3 MOV or DV files to a 16:9 DV Widescreen project

- iMovie HD 5.0.1 doesn't properly mix imported 16:9 and 4:3 material

- iMovie projects corrupt if they are saved to PC/UNIX-formatted volumes

- Audio sync issues?

More info and examples at:

<http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovie_HD_bugs.html>

There is a similar list of iMovie 4.0.1 bugs at:

<http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovie_4_bugs.html>

-- 
Matti Haveri <matti.haveri at sjoki.uta.fi> <http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/>