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iMovie makes no sense

H

hwalker84

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 23, 2010
40
0
Why the hell do I have to have location services on to access pictures and movies that I took on the iPhone but not in the iMovie app???
 
So far it's been dreadful for me. I spent two hours making a 3 min 30 second edited video and the stupid thing crashes every time I try to export. It's also one of the most unintuitive pieces of crap I've ever seen from Apple. I expect better from them and I didn't get it.
 
bahooki said:
So far it's been dreadful for me. I spent two hours making a 3 min 30 second edited video and the stupid thing crashes every time I try to export. It's also one of the most unintuitive pieces of crap I've ever seen from Apple. I expect better from them and I didn't get it.
Click to expand...

Yeah the interface leaves something to be desired.
 
hwalker84 said:
Why the hell do I have to have location services on to access pictures and movies that I took on the iPhone but not in the iMovie app???
Click to expand...

Location services are setup to allow geolocation information to be imported into the program. If the image states you took this photo in sanfrancisco, it might automatically tag the picture and notate that it is infact San Francisco.

Why is it so hard to just turn off the location based services? I mean, if you don't like it, don't use it.
 
I wanted to cut 3 minutes out of the middle of a 7 minute video. I ended up trimming one end, exporting. Then I trimmed the other end, exported. Then created a new project and combined the two trims. What a pain in the ass.

iMovie is NOT for video editing. All iMovie can do is multimedia presentations by combining video clips. It's basically PowerPoint for video.
 
hwalker84 said:
Why the hell do I have to have location services on to access pictures and movies that I took on the iPhone but not in the iMovie app???
Click to expand...

You don't, when you start iMovie it asks, because it is accessing photos and video that already have this data included in them, if you had it turned on for taking photos and video outside of iMovie.
 
To clip video I would just drop the same video in then trim again. Don't have to export it. The trimming is a pain. Hope they update this app soon. It's a disappointment now.
Also, I exported my 1 minute movie that took forever to make, selected the highest setting (720)
and my final video was a small square. I expected it to fill the screen. Did I do something wrong? I don't like the tiny movie.
 
I did a quick movie yesterday just to see how it was. I found it pretty easy. Some of the button icons are kind of confusing. Only thing I couldn't figure out is how to use a song to REPLACE the video sound? When i added a song it still playing the video sound over it.
 
Sweetbike40 said:
To clip video I would just drop the same video in then trim again. Don't have to export it. The trimming is a pain. Hope they update this app soon. It's a disappointment now.
Also, I exported my 1 minute movie that took forever to make, selected the highest setting (720)
and my final video was a small square. I expected it to fill the screen. Did I do something wrong? I don't like the tiny movie.
Click to expand...


Fromn the FAQ at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4174

"From the Camera Roll you can share your movie in the following ways:

* Email
* MMS (multimedia message)
* YouTube
* MobileMe Gallery

iPhone 4 scales the file before sharing to a maximum resolution of 568 x 320. If you want to upload a higher resolution version, you need to sync your movie back to your computer and then upload it from there."


I had the same issue and found it there.
 
To replace clip sound with audio double tap the video clip and turn off the audio, the soundtrack will automatically play over it. If you leave the clip audio on then the soundtrack volume will be lowered.
 
iMovie

Since there are no instructions I just did what Apple always shows us to do with the iPhone. Tap, drag and double tap. Those are all the inputs the App needs to function.

I made this movie in about 5 minutes. It demonstrates the features of iMovie quite well. The only problem I see is that it's quite limited. You can only choose from 5 themes and the background music can be turned on and off only. You cannot select a custom song.

Hoping they add more functionality in the future.

Here is a link to the video I made in iMovie. It's in 720P. Three clips merged into one, beginning, middle, and ending theme added with text.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkwXOiTeRnE&feature=youtube_gdata
 
Glad I didn't purchase, I'm seeing way more negative feedback than good. Mainly trimming related.
 
Sweetbike40 said:
To clip video I would just drop the same video in then trim again. Don't have to export it. The trimming is a pain. Hope they update this app soon. It's a disappointment now.
Also, I exported my 1 minute movie that took forever to make, selected the highest setting (720)
and my final video was a small square. I expected it to fill the screen. Did I do something wrong? I don't like the tiny movie.
Click to expand...

Good thought, I was just going to post that this was one of the annoyances as I just shot and edited a video. Another workaround:

Cannot add titles to Pictures - Create a new iMovie Project, add the photo and adjust Ken Burns to your liking, then export just this clip as a Movie in HD to your Camera Roll, then start a new Project and add this clip and you can now add a Title to a Photo.
 
dana0550 said:
Since there are no instructions I just did what Apple always shows us to do with the iPhone. Tap, drag and double tap. Those are all the inputs the App needs to function.

I made this movie in about 5 minutes. It demonstrates the features of iMovie quite well. The only problem I see is that it's quite limited. You can only choose from 5 themes and the background music can be turned on and off only. You cannot select a custom song.

Hoping they add more functionality in the future.

Here is a link to the video I made in iMovie. It's in 720P. Three clips merged into one, beginning, middle, and ending theme added with text.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkwXOiTeRnE&feature=youtube_gdata
Click to expand...

You can choose a customer song, just click the icon to add collateral to your project and at the bottom choose Audio and you can use any of your music.
 
I'm actually pretty impressed with iMovie for the iPhone. I guess my expectations aren't as high as everyone else's, but keeping in mind this is a PHONE with a 3.5 inch screen, the app seems to do a decent job for the average joe. I had no problem making two movies last night with videos and photos of a recent trip.
 
The location services are used in case you take a video or picture inside of iMovie so that it can be geotagged. If you say no it should still be able to access the location of where you took the pictures and video if you enabled it in camera.

Of the many other things it needs, I wish it had a slice function to slice a long clip into shorter clips without having to drag the same long clip into the timeline multiple times, and trimming it each time...
 
jalpert said:
I wanted to cut 3 minutes out of the middle of a 7 minute video. I ended up trimming one end, exporting. Then I trimmed the other end, exported. Then created a new project and combined the two trims. What a pain in the ass.

iMovie is NOT for video editing. All iMovie can do is multimedia presentations by combining video clips. It's basically PowerPoint for video.
Click to expand...

Agreed, this is stupid. Why can't they put a simple "splice" action so you can splice out a piece of a clip you don't want?
 
bahooki said:
So far it's been dreadful for me. I spent two hours making a 3 min 30 second edited video and the stupid thing crashes every time I try to export. It's also one of the most unintuitive pieces of crap I've ever seen from Apple. I expect better from them and I didn't get it.
Click to expand...

i had the EXACT same problem last night and I was very frusterated and made a thread complaining about it.


Also, I hate how you have to start at the beginning of the camera roll every time you want to add a new photo or video to the timeline. I would prefer if it would load the camera roll in the same place you left from, but even if it started from the bottom it would make more sense. You are more likely to be making a movie with your most RECENT pictures and video than you are to be making one with photos and video you may have taken a year or more ago.

You can't do a simple "fade" either, the movie I made just abruptly ends and I tried forever to figure out how to make it fade out.

This app needs help to be really usefull... they made it look amazing at the WWDC..
 
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