iMovie to FCE

[William Hofius]

I use both iMovie and FCE and I now find myself increasly frustrated because I want to use some aspects of one in the other.

One of the best editing feeatures of FCP/FCE is that each clip you bring into your timeline is adjustable. Grab the "handle" on the end of the clip, drag it, and you can lengthen or shorten a clip without having to cut it or crop it or "delete" it. When going back to iMovie, I sorely miss this easy editing capability. 

If you think the Ken Burns effect in iMovie is cool, the animations you can create in FCP/FCE will knock your socks off. I must admit that I still have some trouble setting key frames for these, but the results are well worth it. 

Then there is the ability to manipulate layers of imported Photoshop documents as if they are seperate video tracks. I used this to animate a weather map and created storms movign across Georgia.

It took me a lot of hours to learn how to do these things, but it has been well worth it.

The big advantage of iMovie for me at least is that it works with a vareity of sound formats—including MP3s—straight away. No need to convert the sound files and no need to render the sounds first (and re-render if you edit the sound). I also like the fact that effects and transitions "auto render" in iMovie and are previewable and reviewable.