Mac video - iMovie and more

[Philip Roberts]

At the "Great MacBook Giveaway" I spoke briefly about video and played a short home movie that I'd thrown together pretty quickly using iMovie '08.
That, and some other examples, can be found here:

http://gallery.mac.com/pj_roberts#gallery


Macs have been the tool of choice for video professionals for decades, and with good reason. The consumer - to - professional learning curve has been supported by Apple in this area by iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro / Studio.

iMovie has been consistently well-regarded over the years and has always been a pretty impressive tool considering it comes "free" with every Mac. Award-winning feature films have been edited on iMovie (although not as many as have been made using FCP, of course).

Apple made a somewhat controversial change when they unveiled iMovie '08 last year. In fact they have abandoned iMovie as it was and created a completely new application. The mixed response to this (from people who had been long-time users of the previous versions of iMovie) prompted Apple to make the previous version available as a free download:

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovieHD6.html

The new version ('08) is faster and is easy to use but, unlike the older version, does not have the timeline view typical of movie editing software. If you've used any other video editing app, the look of the iMovie '08 interface will be unfamiliar (unlike the older version). Personally, I'm using both versions: the new one for quick "throw some clips together" home movies where I need little 'manual control' and the older version for anything more involved where I need to get a bit more creative.

Mike B told me about his difficulties getting his MB to accept a particular video format. Here's what sent to him:

"The problem with video is the enormous proliferation of formats (I think I mentioned this during my 'show and tell' at the MacBook giveaway). Actually the issue is not iMovie, but the underlying Quicktime architecture. Anything that QT can handle will be accepted by iMovie.
Unfortunately, these days there are so many different video formats being used by hardware manufacturers that Apple are constantly chasing the latest formats to upgrade QT. That's the kind of thing that's included with the regular QT updates (and a good reason to run software update regularly). 3rd parties also produce QT plug-ins which is basically the accepted standard now: so many new formats coming out all the time that updates and plug-ins are the accepted norm. It's worth checking the video section of the Apple 'downloads' page to find these plug-ins if it turns out you need them:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/

iMovie '08 got a lot of attention when it was released for being the only full video editing package which could handle the new AVCHD format without a plug-in but there are newer formats / codecs that inevitably do require a plug-in.
With my HD camcorder I found that the manufacturer was using a custom codec for the highest resolution setting (its version of 1080i) which no software supported until about a week ago when I was able to download some new plug-ins. Frustratingly, that's pretty common. It wouldn't be the case if video hardware producers could agree on a standard (like jpeg or raw for stills).

When uploading clips from a still camera, the easiest route I've found is to go via iPhoto. That maybe sounds unusual (and isn't required) but makes sense if you also have a bunch of still photos on the camera. The added benefit is that you can double click your movie clips in iPhoto to play them in Quicktime. Any which aren't worth keeping can be deleted at this point to save time loading them into iMovie.
When you next open iMove it will alert you that you have some clips in iPhoto which have not yet been added to iMovie and ask if you want to.
Alternatively, you should be able to go straight into iMovie assuming QT can handle whatever codec / format your files are in."

Let me know your experiences with video and maybe we can share some good practice!