iMovie review

[Jack Rodgers]

The new iMovie is now a window and doesn't take over the entire screen. 
On my 15" tiBook it takes about 3/4 of the screen and of course I can 
see what is behind the iMovie window.

Now that iMovie has a moveable window,  you can drag and drop clips 
into the iMovie window! When you drag and drop a clip from another 
project, it 'imports' the file by creating a new copy of the file in 
your project folder. Final Cut uses aliases in its browser and you can 
'open' files on any drive or a folder full of files. Maybe in the 
future iMovie will add a similar feature but for now it is designed to 
protect the interests of the amateur by having all files project in one 
media folder.

The iMovie project window has been visually updated.

A new section has been added for photos and is tied to your iPhoto 
database. You have instant access to those photos and you can either 
import or drag and drop a photo from your hard drive. If you do import 
or drag and drop, iMovie will immediately begin apply a 'Ken Burns 
Effect' which is a zooming into the photo and looks really bad on a LCD 
monitor but not so bad on a CRT monitor.

iPhoto 2 has a new button layout but still retains the confusion of the 
word 'import' using it for both downloading from a camera via the 
import button and from files on your hard drive via the File/Import... 
menu item. A somewhat confusing situation. Both options should be 
presented together so the user can choose the appropriate one.

I found that iMovie did not notice my import into iPhoto while the 
iMovie window was open. After I closed  and reopened iMovie my new 
iPhotos appeared in the iMovie 'Photos' option.

You can preview the Ken Burns Effect on any of your photos by clicking 
on one and then adjusting the sliders. When you drag the photo to the 
time line, your settings are immediately applied to the imported photo 
and it is resized to the standard size for dv movies. The image doesn't 
appear to be as sharp as FCE or FCP produces. The KBE causes the images 
to glitter on my LCD and the amount of glitter varies with the 
settings. You won't notice this on a crt monitor.

The KBE seems required if you import a photo and I can't find a what to 
get rid of it. This seems rather arbitrary as the effect is annoying if 
you are forced to use it rather that a wonderful tool if it is optional.

Another important fact is that when iMovie imports the photo it does 
not reduce the size of the photo but creates a new copy in the project 
folder that is the same size as the original. When I exported it as a 
DV file, it reduced the size of the image to the DV format but the 
quality was poor. Final Cut Express does a better job. I also 
encountered a few bugs.

Enough for now. I am sure you will enjoy using the iApps. They do make 
it easy...

---
Lobate Black Scale -- A Photo Essay By Jack Rodgers
http://www.jackrodgers.com