Dissapointed by iMovie 5

[killuminati]

When i first started iMovie I was excited to see what new effects transitions and titles there would be. To my dismay there were hardly any ! There were two new transitions but no new effects or titles! I am very dissapointed

 

[Apple]

I was a little disappointed, but once I saw all the movies you could create and its new support for .mpg movies, I was sold.

 

[Yvan256]

I was a little disappointed, but once I saw all the movies you could create and its new support for .mpg movies, I was sold.

Can you create VCD or SVCD with iMovie/iDVD?

Since all Macs ship with combodrives, it'd be a nice option. SVCD is, after all, MPEG-2 video just like a DVD. And it's not like everyone makes 2-hours home movies anyway.

 

[killuminati]

Can you create VCD or SVCD with iMovie/iDVD?

Unfortunately not. There is an option to 'Burn to Disc' but when you click it a dialogue box comes up saying that it is only for backing up your project. Not for making a video file that can be played in a DVD player.

 

[freiheit]

Toast 6

No, but Toast 6 Titanium (by Roxio) can make VCD/SVCD. It's also a great general purpose CD and DVD burner -- for data, music and video. iDVD will only do DVD video, no data or audio CD modes.

 

[iriejedi]

pay $30 for 100s of effects

You can get hundreds of effects for nearly free, check out Geethree.com's Slick packages

But some of the new editing features - like audio drag for length etc.. are worth their weight in gold - not to mention speed.

Apple gives you a nearly super powered program for next to nothing and you complain that you were shorted a few effects. Take the $1000 you'd spend on final cut and pay a little for some really cheap third party packages.



I love iMovie and iDVD - not to be criticle - but you need to respect that not everything in live must be free and included. Of course I pay for shareware - so I'm a little biased....

When i first started iMovie I was excited to see what new effects transitions and titles there would be. To my dismay there were hardly any ! There were two new transitions but no new effects or titles! I am very dissapointed

 

[killuminati]

I didn't mean it like that at all. If I needed pro effects I would get fcp. I was just commenting because in the other iMovie updates there were new transitions and effects added. I wasn't saying that iMovie or apple is bad because they dont have proffesional effects.

 

[Rod Rod]

Once you use Magic iMovie your disappointment will disappear.

I got iLife '05 for its HDV support. The Apple Intermediate Codec is sort of blocky (it adds artifacts that weren't there on the source tape) but it's much better than nothing, and probably ideal for low-action projects (which wouldn't expose AIC's weaknesses as much).

 

[killuminati]

]
I got iLife '05 for its HDV support. The Apple Intermediate Codec is sort of blocky (it adds artifacts that weren't there on the source tape) but it's much better than nothing, and probably ideal for low-action projects (which wouldn't expose AIC's weaknesses as much).

I know very little about HD and I was wondering, don't you need an HD camera for iMovie HD to be of any use. Because if the input video is of low quality it doesnt really make a difference in the end, does it?

 

[BornAgainMac]

I know very little about HD and I was wondering, don't you need an HD camera for iMovie HD to be of any use. Because if the input video is of low quality it doesnt really make a difference in the end, does it?

Correct. And HD cameras are out of reach for most people. Hopefully Sony will come out with <$1,000 HD cameras in a few years. Also a Tivo HD firewire 800/400 device to bring video over to iMovie would be nice too.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

iMovie HD is a welcome improvement. The performance increase is actually noticeable on my machine. But I agree, they could have tossed a few more features in there. The titles have always been poor in iMovie in my opinion - there are many effects but they look unprofessional and they instantly say "this was made in iMovie" when you use them.

I think that next year would have been a better year to introduce HD. Anyone with £2000-3000 to spend on a home camcorder is not going to be using iMovie. They'll at least be on Final Cut Express (which is nice that it now supports HD too). Mind you, no need to complain for it to be there early though I guess. It's better than not having it.

But I feel that HD video is not going to be mainstream for another year or too yet. Not to mention current DVDs and most TVs are not good enough for HD yet, and then there's the storage issue. DV is big enough at 13GB/hour! I just feel the home market is not quite ready for this yet...

But iMovie in general is still a great program. I just wish they'd have included a few extras in there... But I do agree you can get many great third party add-ons for it.

 

[Rod Rod]

I know very little about HD and I was wondering, don't you need an HD camera for iMovie HD to be of any use. Because if the input video is of low quality it doesnt really make a difference in the end, does it?

You don't need an HDV camcorder to take advantage of iMovie HD's high-definition features.

You can create high definition slideshows out of your digital still pictures. Midrange digital still cameras shoot twice the resolution of HD, so putting them on an iMovie timeline of 1080i or 720p gives great results. Once QuickTime 7 with its H.264 codec is available you'll have a great distribution medium.

This is a still from an HDV test movie I made (the source image looks nicer because this file has been extra compressed for the web):

This is a 40x compressed version (blocky and artifact-ridden because of the compression, but at a full 1280x720) of the 720p test sequence I put together using just digital still pictures:
2005 Detroit Auto Show

Just bear in mind the full resolution (original) version of the above-linked 34-second clip is sharper and clearer than that still picture in this post.

 

[killuminati]

You can create high definition slideshows out of your digital still pictures. Midrange digital still cameras shoot twice the resolution of HD, so putting them on an iMovie timeline of 1080i or 720p gives great results. Once QuickTime 7 with its H.264 codec is available you'll have a great distribution medium.

But if you wanted to burn it to a DVD it still has to be compressed with mpeg 2. So wouldnt that bring the quality back down again and also have a huge file?

 

[Rod Rod]

But if you wanted to burn it to a DVD it still has to be compressed with mpeg 2. So wouldnt that bring the quality back down again and also have a huge file?

Hollywood movies that are shot on film are compressed with MPEG2 for DVD as well. The idea is that a higher acquisition format than distribution format is always a good thing.

Although, I read a Sony FX1 or Z1 owner reporting in the Apple iMovie HD support forums that he didn't see a difference between starting with DV or HDV footage (editing with iMovie, making a DVD with iDVD). The difference could be how the Apple Intermediate Codec works (perhaps introducing DV-style blocky artifacts). I'll do some testing on my own. I'm working on a 6-hour HDV project at the moment. Four and a half hours are lectures, and 90 minutes are a travelogue of Turkey. It's a huge project, which would have been easier if I shot in DV . . . but I'm sort of adventurous and take risks sometimes.

 

[mongoose78]

are there any bugs in the latest iDVD? i have not upgraded mine because people were saying that the latest version of iDVDs had bugs. i'm not a techy so i'm not too familiar with technical terms. but, is the latest iDVD worth buying? thanks

 

[ct77]

are there any bugs in the latest iDVD? i have not upgraded mine because people were saying that the latest version of iDVDs had bugs. i'm not a techy so i'm not too familiar with technical terms. but, is the latest iDVD worth buying? thanks

I've had no problems with iDVD. Burned a copy of this little "trailer" that my friend and I put together:

http://homepage.mac.com/russellwgordon/iMovieTheater37.html

On a related note, I too can notice a big difference -- improved performance -- in iMovie 5 on my 800MHz flat-panel iMac.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

are there any bugs in the latest iDVD? i have not upgraded mine because people were saying that the latest version of iDVDs had bugs. i'm not a techy so i'm not too familiar with technical terms. but, is the latest iDVD worth buying? thanks

If I were you, I'd update. I've heard of no problems with iDVD 5. In fact, I had nothing but problems with iDVD 4. Many of the discs I burnt there either hung during the multiplexing process or burnt with major errors in them (artifacts and glitches when viewed in a DVD player). I've currently burnt 4 DVD projects without hitch with iDVD 5.

 

[big_scot_nanny]

I have also found iDVD5 to be more stable than it's predecessor, and with some stunning new menu templates that are nicely customisable. Burnt some big projects (2 and 3 different 30min long projects from iMovieHD, all with scene selections, on one DVD project) with no probs at all. Well, except the time it takes to encode and produce! The longest was about 5 hrs from clicking burn to the disk popping out.

iMovie HD seems a hell of a lot faster and more stable as well.

Yours,
Kev

 

[johnnyjibbs]

Well, except the time it takes to encode and produce! The longest was about 5 hrs from clicking burn to the disk popping out.

Well, no problems there. I just dim the screen and let mine encode overnight. I wake up in the morning and my disc is ready to use

 

[BornAgainMac]

I like that iDVD 5 won't eject the disk at the end. With iDVD 4, I would encode and go. The disk would eject after it's done and then after a few minutes it would go back. iDVD 4 would say I need to put in a disk or something. I thought perhaps the disk was bad so I put a fresh one in. It turned out that the DVD was fine. iDVD 5 will finish the DVD and keep the CD from ejecting. I also like the status screen on iDVD 5 compared to iDVD 4.

I hope iLife '06 can offload the encoding to Core Video. I don't know if this is even possible or faster. I bet it will cost $99 bucks to upgrade but they will include a new App and some more pro features in iMovie / iDVD.

 

[Rod Rod]

are there any bugs in the latest iDVD? i have not upgraded mine because people were saying that the latest version of iDVDs had bugs. i'm not a techy so i'm not too familiar with technical terms. but, is the latest iDVD worth buying? thanks

The only problem I've had is the chapter markers I set in Final Cut Pro are not getting recognized in iDVD 5.

I am certain that iDVD 4 recognized chapter markers from FCP projects. I made an awesome video last year in FCP and iDVD 4.

So I reinstalled iDVD 4 on another machine, brought in my FCP project, and chapter markers were again ignored. I'm guessing this is a QuickTime issue. I suppose I'll do another reinstall, but this time with a previous QT6.

To answer your last question, yes iLife '05 is worth buying.

 

[killuminati]

Another thing I just noticed,

How do you view the audio waveforms? You could do it in imovie 4 but I can't find it in 5.

 

[killuminati]

Ignore my previous post.

 

[rendezvouscp]

I too am disappointed with iMovie HD. I decided to use it for a pretty important project for the first time, and ran into the strangest bugs, including not being able to extract audio, apply transitions, unable to export, etc. It was so buggy I had to reinstall iLife '04. Yes, I'm a case of that one in a hundred users, but I can't say I'm happy with it.
-Chase

 

[redAPPLE]

Correct. And HD cameras are out of reach for most people. Hopefully Sony will come out with <$1,000 HD cameras in a few years. Also a Tivo HD firewire 800/400 device to bring video over to iMovie would be nice too.

this defeats the purpose of iMovie HD. iMovie IS a consumer program, right?