iMovie 11 - Does it have a timeline?

[kriista1234]

I've been using iMovie 08 since, well, 08 I guess. I do a lot of music performance type stuff so a timeline is crucial for lining things up to audio and all that.

In seeing the iPad2 video I saw that iMovie (for iPad) has what appears to be a timeline (at times) so I checked the iLife page and it kind of looks like iMovie11 has it too, but it's unclear.

The main window appears to be the iMovie09+ type "just clips" or whatever it's actually called, but some views show what appears to be an in time "timeline".

So, is there one now?

 

[kriista1234]

Nobody?

 

[iDisk]

Yes it does

 

[Dave Braine]

At the top of the iMovie window, next to the Project viewer, should be an icon/button with three little squares. Click on this and it will change to the timeline view.

However, iMovie doesn't call it a time line. If you type "single row" in the iMovie Help search field, it will tell you.

 

[michael.lauden]

After 5 years in school for editing, using FCP & Vegas - I honestly downgraded to iMovie HD for quick edits - FCP is great but a little heavy on my UMB.

In my opinion - '11 is beyond horrible. I would rather use Windows Movie Maker than it.

Proof is in the fact that the average user can't even find the timeline.

 

[talmy]

Perhaps it is my lack of experience with high end tools, but I'm an average user who finds iMovie '11 just fine and doesn't use a time line. In fact I found the old iMovie HD cumbersome to use. I also tossed Adobe Premiere Elements after attempting to use it once. At least for what I do (mostly editing 3 hours of lectures per week with iShowU screen videos, camera videos, and some still images) iMovie is fast and easy. Only disadvantage I've found is it doesn't really do HD resolutions but seems to be limited to 540P.

 

[DustinT]

Perhaps it is my lack of experience with high end tools, but I'm an average user who finds iMovie '11 just fine and doesn't use a time line. In fact I found the old iMovie HD cumbersome to use. I also tossed Adobe Premiere Elements after attempting to use it once. At least for what I do (mostly editing 3 hours of lectures per week with iShowU screen videos, camera videos, and some still images) iMovie is fast and easy. Only disadvantage I've found is it doesn't really do HD resolutions but seems to be limited to 540P.

You can definitely run HD res on iMovie 11. I use the 'Export to QuickTime' option and you can adjust the size there.

 

[talmy]

You can do that, but if you select native resolution, it's 540P. So anything greater seems to be upres'ed during export. That's why I looked at Adobe Premiere Elements which gives better export quality (because it appears to actually edit in HD) but was otherwise terribly cumbersome and slow. I guess iMovie gets its speed by being 540P internally.

 

[Dave Braine]

but seems to be limited to 540P.

I think that maybe a limitation of the original source video. 720p and 1080p is available on export, but only if the source video was 960x540 or 1280x720 respectively, and the project is wide screen.

My DV camcorder shoots 720x540, so I can only export upto Large.

 

[talmy]

I capture the screen at 720P (verified by looking at file info) with iShowU. Import into iMovie. When I export using Quicktime I can set 720P but AFAIK it converts it from 540P because if I select native resolution on export it is 540P. I do see quality loss (capture uses the Apple Intermediate Codec, which is supposed to be the best) and the image doesn't look as good as if I transcode directly using, for instance, QuickTime Pro, so I really suspect it is 540P internal.

I've never found anyone who could confirm or deny this based on any facts, and Apple's documentation doesn't address this issue. All conjecture based on experience.