No need to apologize, these Apple apps are made for noobs, right?
Well I sure am, certainly for iMovie use. I've cut my teeth on iMovie 9.0.4 on my (aka, iMovie '11), and gotten a handle on most of the functions. I was (still am) unhappy with the gratuitous changes to the user interface of the new iMovie 10, especially as a video file manager (maddening!) but... under the hood, there is no doubt that there are some improvements. (FWIW, I'm working with a 2011 2.7 GHz i5 iMac 27" with a stock 1TB HD and 12 GB RAM.)
The first change I saw was in importing. For example, I was working on a project where I had to process (add time stamp and speed up) dozens of 4 hour security camera videos. Importing these MPEG-4 files into iMovie 9 was an excruciating exercise in patience, that is, when the system didn't just completely lock up. I can't comment on codecs or whatever, as I said I'm just an Apple consumer level user, but I was quite frustrated looking at the task I had to complete with iMovie 9. Each of these videos was estimated 3-4 hours to import. Each.
I reluctantly shifted this project to the new iMovie (my home video library remains with the old iMovie, mainly for the logical organizational approach) and there is no comparison. Actually, there is a crazy comparison. The same MPEG4 file imports into the new iMovie in maybe 2 minutes. I can do my basic editing and export the file for viewing in short order, and get back to life away from the keyboard.
All the editing I did as well as exporting ran much much much more quickly on iMovie 10 also. I can't tell you the first thing about transcoding, codecs, rendering, and what-the-hell-ever, but from a consumer level perspective, the new iMovie works boatloads better than the last one.
I for one, however, am waiting for some UI improvements in 10.x.x until I fully migrate all my video stuff over.
