by Noah Kravitz, Reviews Editor

24 August 2007

Dude, What Happened to Video Editing? Two Weeks with iMovie '08

iMovie '08 is so different from iMovie HD ('06) that Apple's still offering the older version as a download from their site. No matter how they spin it, Apple had to have known that some people would simply hate the new version of the video software that ranks amongst the best software the company's ever made. I've long cited iMovie - and the entire iLife suite - as one of "the best reasons to use a Mac," particularly when I worked in school technology departments. For whatever reason, nobody could ever make a great entry-level video editing application for Windows but (suprise, surprise!) Apple had nailed the forumla starting with the original iMovie. I taught kids and teachers alike to use iMovie faster and with greater success than almost any other software I used during my years in schools, and used it with students form elementary to high school and across a variety of subject matter.

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Even though I'm a year or so removed from working in a school now, I still use iMovie all the time. Over the past six months or so I've been doing a number of video reviews of cell phones for PhoneDog.com and rediscovering how much fun video editing is. As such, I was pretty excited for the long-awaited upgrade to iMovie for three main reasons:

• Speed
• UI and Feature Improvements
• One-Click YouTube Uploads

That last reason's a wee bit lame, I know, but seeing as I post all of my work videos to YouTube, any integration is a time-saver. And a good excuse to upgrade.

Faster? Good ... Storyboards? Good ... But Who Took the Effects Away???

In a nutshell, iMovie '08 is totally different. Gone is the timeline metaphor that non-linear video editors are used to. In its place is a storyboard-based UI that has definitely grown on me in the two weeks I've been using it. Apple says they wanted to make a program that would let folks take video from different sources turn it into an edited movie in under 30 minutes. I think they've succeeded in that regard - transitions and titles now render in real time on my MacBook (2 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM), and between the simplicity of the storyboarding motif and the utility of audio and video scrubbing, it's very quick to trim and sequence footage. It took me two projects to start to get the knack of when to single-click, when not to double-click, and how to deal with clips in general, but once I began to understand it all I started to see where Apple was coming from with this crazy new interface.

Honestly, it doesn't make sense to try to explain how the new interface works. Check out the demos on Apple.com or get your hands on an iLife '08 system at an Apple Store or friend's house to see it for yourself. It takes some time to get used to, and I honestly don't know if the timeline method of video editing really needed replacing - it'll be interesting to see if Apple tries to carry storyboarding over in some fashion to Final Cut Express (or even Pro), or if iMovie updates bring back the timeline as an optional workspace of some sort. In any case, the new way of working has its strong points.

The problem is that as easy as storyboards make it for novices to throw together a decent-looking movie culled from handycam footage, iPhoto pictures, and a favorite iTunes track, the lack of a timeline (and a few other key features) have stripped more advanced users of our favorite iMovie tricks. iMovie '08 makes it pretty easy to throw background music behind your footage and have it automatically duck out of the way of dialogue - but the "new," more limited audio controls make it much harder to mix multiple tracks with any sort of precision. Also, everything audio is now done in floating pallets which, while they look nice, are kind of cumbersome to use. More notably, video effects seem to be gone entirely from this new version of the app - I wanted to speed some footage up to gloss over a bunch of phone UI features in a short amount of time like I did in this video made with iMovie HD. No dice. Video "effects" in '08 are limited to transitions and titles. And third-party iMovie plug-ins don't work at all. What's up with that?

Also, no matter what I try, I can't get iMovie '08 to recognize my external USB webcam. I can use the built-in iSIght to capture footage inside of iMovie, and I can use QuickTime Pro to capture footage with my external cam, but iMovie and the USB webcam simply refuse to cooperate.

It may be that improved effects based on Leopard's Core Animation schema are waiting in the wings -- Steve did say that iMovie '08 is an entirely new application written more or less by one engineer, and that it's a baby that will grow with time. That makes sense for a bunch of reasons from marketing to engineering, and I can only hope that some of the seemingly missing features of this new iMovie will be released both along with Leopard and in software updates over the coming months -- you can read more speculation on the subject over on ArsTechnia. Again, Apple clearly had their reasons for making iMovie HD a free download for folks not quite smitten with '08.

That being said, there are a bunch of nifty new features to be found in iMovie '08. Clip skimming is great - mousing over a bit of footage plays the footage in real-time (forward or reverse), which makes for handy precision trimming, and it works with both video (with sound) and audio-only clips.

I'm really digging the voiceover function, as I tend to shoot footage of phones' features and then add in voiceover and graphical explanations later. While I'm not totally sold on the whole "Events" method of organizing media that flows from iPhoto to iMovie in '08, iMovie integrates it in a way that makes for easier re-use of media across multiple projects, which is nice. And everything just moves a lot faster, which is likely a combination of new code and compression schemes and the fact that my MacBook is a whole lot faster than my old iBook G4 was.

And then there's the YouTube one-click upload business which, I'm happy to report, works very well. If YT isn't your thing, iMovie '08 also offers .Mac-based Web sharing, and a host of export options that create videos suitable for everything from Emails to iPhones.

All in all iMovie '08 is an interesting new twist on video editing that feels not quite ready for prime time. Apple innovates - it's what they do. So it's not at all surprising that they're looking for a simpler way to make video editing accessible to the masses. With this new version of their entry-level editing app, they've introduced a new metaphor for movie making that - based on initial reports from novice users - may just have succeeded in that quest. Unfortunately, in doing so they took away some of the features that gave iMovie the power and flexibility that made it a favorite of "prosumer" movie-makers who didn't routinely need the complexity of a Final Cut Express or Pro. Hopefully this is just the beginning for the new iMovie and Apple will soon "re-introduce" some of the more advanced features that made iMovie such a wide-reaching success over the past several years.

iMovie '08 is part of the iLife '08 software suite, which sells for $79 direct from Apple. A multi-license family pack is also available for $99.

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