New Imovie Sucks

Disagree. It's incredibly easy, just not as versatile as previous versions. Also, you are using iMovie '08 it sounds like. With iMovie '09 beginning to ship, we have all moved beyond the limitations of '08.

Do you guys think it's worth it to switch an iMovie '06 project to an iMovie '09 project (for the added features, etc.)? Are the any limitations with iMovie '09 compared to '06 that I should be aware of first?

As I understand it, Apple rectified their error in making removing too many key features from '08 in the new '09 iMovie, but are there any still-missing features one should know before switching from one to the other?

Gamoe said:

Do you guys think it's worth it to switch an iMovie '06 project to an iMovie '09 project (for the added features, etc.)? Are the any limitations with iMovie '09 compared to '06 that I should be aware of first?

As I understand it, Apple rectified their error in making removing too many key features from '08 in the new '09 iMovie, but are there any still-missing features one should know before switching from one to the other?

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I would just say that it holds promise but nobody will be able to decide about the question you have asked yet since the software has not been released. When we get a chance to actually try it and find out what differences there actually are that will be a different thing.

ZOMG said:

k sorry I didn't meen imovie 09 I meant the older one. I havn't tried imovie 09 and I like the imovie two generations ago

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If you are referencing what I said, I was actually responding to the user that posted just above me (Gamoe).

I think we understood that you meant 08 since you mentioned the star- and think many people would agree that it does indeed engage in some major suckage.

I haven't tried my 09 yet, but some of the threads seem to indicate that it is an improvement over 08!

sickmacdoc said:

If you are referencing what I said, I was actually responding to the user that posted just above me (Gamoe).

I think we understood that you meant 08 since you mentioned the star- and think many people would agree that it does indeed engage in some major suckage.

I haven't tried my 09 yet, but some of the threads seem to indicate that it is an improvement over 08!

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'09 is the poor mans '06, but it is an improvement over '08, I view '08 as Vista, and '09 as Windows 7

I don't use iMovie anymore apart from very quick projects I can't warrant myself to use Final Cut with, but, '09 is a big improvement over '08, I can say that much!

Oh YES! It Sucks Big Time!

I hate going on and on about what's wrong with iMovie and how it could be improved. I don't know about the older version. I just recently switched to Apple from Windows. I thought Movie Maker was lame, but in comparison, I wish I could somehow still use it on my Mac. Don't get me wrong, I believe the Mac experience is by far superior to Windows, period. But iMovie, and even iPhoto I find extremely unintuitive and requiring one to run around in circles to figure out how to the most simple of tasks. And the Help menu, they might as well not have wasted there time and created one in the first place. Useless! I'll just give a small example. I wanted to add some text to certain frames in a movie project. After clicking the Text icon and selecting the type of text I wanted to add, I clicked and dragged the text to the particular point I wanted the text to appear. Instead, the text keep getting pasted from the beginning of the movie project. Fine! I thought I move it to where I wanted to be, but then again, every time I hover over the film strip, the movie marker (cursor) moves along with the damn mouse. so moving the text and accurately placing the text where I wanted to be seems like a daunting task all of the sudden. Not to mention the text box is of a particular length that I don't want to use. I guess I can figure how to change that, but with the movie playing every time I hover over the area with the mouse, it becomes a major pain in the ass. Now imagine I have to past many tens, if not hundreds of text boxes in the movie project, which will take me years to do at this pace. Not happening! I will shop around for another app that will do that more simply and intuitively. I know some of you hardcore iMovie users will chew my head off about this, but I'm not one of those that likes to spend hours reading manuals and help menus to figure out how to do a simple thing like mentioned above. I'm not a techy and there are so many hours in the day that I prefer spending doing something worse while. I concur with the originator of this thread. iMovie suck BIG TIME. I think I'm going to uninstall it from my Mac and look for 3rd party app in the visual universe. My 2 cents!

If you take the time to learn it, iMovie is a very capable application. I suggest that you open iMovie Help and work through the various lessons. Also in the Help Menu, click on Service and Support and that will take you to the Apple support page where there are various videos on how to use iMovie.

To get you started if you want your text to appear on top of a video clip, just drag from the Titles window and drop on top of the clip where you want the text to appear. Edit the text in the Project Viewer window as required. The Title will appear as a blue bar above the video clip in the Project.

To adjust the length of time it shows, double click on that blue bar to open the Inspector, and adjust the time accordingly.

If you don't want the text to appear over the video, drag and drop between two clips(you should get a vertical green bar when you are between clips). Edit the text and time as above.

I agree with the able post. Once you learn it iMovie is a great application. It's has it's limitations, but as a basic video editing app it's pretty damn good.

I have both imovie11 and Final Cut Pro X.
I still find myself using iMovie when editing though due to its speed and simplicity. The only thing I don't like about iMovie is that I find with some HD MP4 or MOV video once imported and uncompressed to the AIC codec, the quality seems to drop.
Also I can export from motion and play a clip in excellent quality, but once I import to iMovie I get banding with the shading and lighting etc.

I haven't tried FCPX much yet, but think it may handle this better. It's a lot more flexible to use, but also has a steeper learning curve. Both work in a similar fashion though, so once you know how to use iMovie you can probably get going in FCPX to a basic level already.