is iMovie 10 a piece of crap or is it just me!!!

[Flynnstone]

Imovie is frustrating the hell out of me!!
I'm importing video from a Sony miniDV camcorder.
There are several clips. The time on the first one is correct. Later ones have the date as 2015. Wrong!
I select the clip and use menu -> Modify -> Adjust Clip Date & Time.
All I get is the stupid "thunk" sound.

Any ideas?

Thats not the end of my problems ...
Should I use something other than (the piece of crap) iMovie?

 

[fabulousrice]

Forget about iMovie and learn a pro software like Premiere Pro. Not much harder to use and much more rewarding and full of features! Adobe suite CC isn't that expensive monthly...

 

[Flynnstone]

Does Premiere Pro do a good job importing MiniDV?
Does it do a good job managing a video library?

 

[fabulousrice]

Does Premiere Pro do a good job importing MiniDV?
Does it do a good job managing a video library?

It seems that you can capture DV sources in Premiere. But I'm not sure what the DV format offers for you today that SD cards wouldn't? From what I remember of my - short - DV days, Final Cut (maybe iMovie too?) were doing a bad job synching the sound with the audio in the files produced.
Also, I think you should use Premiere to edit. That means you could capture with anything you're comfortable with, and then go to Premiere pro to edit the captures files.

Also, what do you mean with "video library"? Can't you organise your video files in folders?

 

[Flynnstone]

I have family video in 8mm film format, VHS, Hi8, MiniDV tape formats and files via SD cards from other cameras.
I want digital back ups of all these. I want to take these sources and create some movies for viewing on my TV. Likely via AppleTV.
I'm struggling with getting the video consistently converted. Usually iMovie will convert the miniDV correctly. (As far as I can tell at the moment). But sometimes it uses the conversion date instead of the date of the timecode in the data (I suspect). Then it won't let me change the date. It makes organizing the video very difficult.

 

[fabulousrice]

I think you're doing it wrong. An easy way to do this would be to create folders for each year or month for which you have footage, then capture this footage (with either FCP or Premiere) and place it in the corresponding folder. Once you are done, you could open the folder called, say "1997", and place all captured footage into Premiere Pro to edit it and make something decent out of it...

 

[Flynnstone]

iMovie captures to a iMovie Library. This really is a folder. I don't get to control this.
But What I'd like is a tool that will capture to a folder.

 

[fabulousrice]

So, I'm pretty sure you can right-click or control-click on the imovie library and click "open package contents" and move the files wherever you desire.
If you are not satisfied with the way imovie handles things, use FCP or QuickTime 7 or Premiere to import... these will let you access the folder easily. Whatever you're comfortable with. Try to import the same tape with each one of the programs I mentioned, see which one you like best?

 

[Flynnstone]

I have an older copy of FC , but I don't think it'll work on Yosemite. I'll track down QT 7. I don't Have Premier. I'm not too thrilled with the subscription model. I need to look at FCPX. But suspect I may need to get video on computer first.
I tried my old FootTrack last night. It sort of worked. But I'll need to rename & set creation date on each file.
But thanks for you help & insight.

 

[kingtj]

I know a lot of software is real subjective ... but I've never been able to get a single useful thing done in iMovie since Apple upgraded it past version 6.

I get what they were trying to achieve; a faster way to get editing done, vs. thinking of everything as going onto a linear timeline. And perhaps if your main use-case for it is pulling a few minutes of video off digital devices to upload to sites like YouTube, it's fine? But I was able to do what I thought was really nice work editing such things as DV footage from people's vacation trips in iMovie 6 with a few plug-ins handling special f/x and transitions. Then they removed the ability to use 3rd. party plug-ins, and made it too difficult to precisely trim things out of "raw footage" that was imported and stitch it together into one product.

The only big advantage I saw to the newer iMovie releases was the direct support of the digital formats widely in use after people quit using the old tape based camcorders. But the whole UI just doesn't work for me. I always felt like Final Cut Pro was "overkill" for my needs, but I'm probably going to sit down and try to seriously learn/use Final Cut Pro X the next time I need to work on a movie editing project.

 

[martinX]

Does all the footage you have actually have embedded dates?

As for SW, if you don't like iMovie, try Premier Elements. You can buy it outright. I think there's a demo for it too.

 

[fabulousrice]

Whatever you do, make sure you deinterlace all interlaced footage to avoid this kind of s**t:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Interlaced_video_frame_(car_wheel).jpg

(and, additionnally, I would SERIOUSLY recommend using some "auto contrast" or "auto levels" on old footage to restore the nice, vibrant colors of the past into a modern fashion! Auto Contrast and color come with Premiere pro)

 

[ProjectManager101]

iMovie captures to a iMovie Library. This really is a folder. I don't get to control this.
But What I'd like is a tool that will capture to a folder.

Any software will capture to a folder but then you need to organize that media, that is why there is a position called "media manager" in every post production house. Then you need to organize everything with a key code.

Still, capture by year, then create sub folders by event: party, trip, wedding.
If you have different trips the same year name each clip after the trip: 1997_Hawai.mov, 1997_beach.com

In final cut pro 7 you can have one entire sequence with the entire video. What we do is we navigate along the video and we select the scene we like, then we create an In and Out point and press Command-U and FCP creates and entire new sequence with only that scene. We later give a name to that scene. But we do it about 30 times and create a folder with different scenes.

I mean, I got paid about $6K a week to do that for a documentary. I was getting all the go pros and al the interviews and organizing them in the hard drives while creating an spread sheet with all the info.

There are softwares with good media management capabilities but buah... I haven't been involved in a project that big.

 

[ColdCase]

Sounds like a struggle with media management. iMovie is not a great media manager. I tried using it but was quickly frustrated. I tried some Adobe products but they were less than useless. I bit the bullet and moved on to FCPX and couldn't be happier. Perhaps overkill for most editing I do but it manages my collection of media that I've gathered over 35 years nicely. Including capturing and organizing miniDV, or any DV converted from analog sources when necessary..... but one does have to take the time to tag the clips with keywords for best results. FCP contains powerful and easy to use tagging/key-wording features. In FCP X, media is organized by using 'Keywords' and 'Keyword Collections'. This is meta data added to a clip and much more useful and powerful than the old file-name-date-folder organization.

 

[martinX]

(and, additionnally, I would SERIOUSLY recommend using some "auto contrast" or "auto levels" on old footage to restore the nice, vibrant colors of the past into a modern fashion! Auto Contrast and color come with Premiere pro)

But then he'll have to apply a filter so the footage looks old and vintage-y

 

[Flynnstone]

Thanks for all the help. I'll try FCPX.
But first, I need to figure out why iMovie will not capture past the 60 minute mark of a miniDV tape. I have a couple tapes with good footage to the 1:02 point. iMovie will not capture it. I suspect the same problem may exist in FCPX.
Anyone else had an issue like this?

 

[ColdCase]

I have not had that issue with FCPX or FCP or iMovie and I used 90 minute tapes often. I've seen time code breaks that can cause capture to stop if the software is set to stop on a break. I've seen cameras malfunction and provide bad time codes or false end of tape indications. Otherwise the capture just keeps going, starting a new clip at the break, until the camera indicated the end of tape. Worst case I had to click on capture now again to get things started, if there was a long break in taped footage. I believe there is a capture setting that ignores time codes all together, and perhaps that has a limit... don't think so but perhaps.

 

[McScooby]

Could go old school & use iMovie HD, the precursor to 10, designed with DV in mind, https://support.apple.com/downloads/iMovie_HD_6 (although I suspect this is updates only)

 

[Mavimao]

Whatever you do, make sure you deinterlace all interlaced footage to avoid this kind of s**t:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Interlaced_video_frame_(car_wheel).jpg

De-interlacing is cutting the resolution in half and then repeating the odd or even field that is left. Not a great idea if you want to preserve your memories forever.

Now there is some smart deinterlacing that will only do this resolution cutting when it senses motion like in your car example.

To the OP: the new iMovie is terrible for DV because of the way it compresses and deinterlaces it. You're better off finding a version of iMovie 6 or getting FCP

 

[pat500000]

Imovie is frustrating the hell out of me!!
I'm importing video from a Sony miniDV camcorder.
There are several clips. The time on the first one is correct. Later ones have the date as 2015. Wrong!
I select the clip and use menu -> Modify -> Adjust Clip Date & Time.
All I get is the stupid "thunk" sound.

Any ideas?

Thats not the end of my problems ...
Should I use something other than (the piece of crap) iMovie?

FCP x is good as well.

 

[kohlson]

FCP x is good as well.

I think FC will work for you, at least from a media management perspective. Smart Collections feature is a folder view by tag. So as you import clips, tag them as appropriate (year, subject, calendar event, so on). The define a smart collection by what tags should be included. iMovie has tagging, but I don't know if there is a feature similar to smart collections. The cost and learning curve of FCP is steeper than iMovie, so if this is a one-time thing there may be other ways (like outsource).

 

[USAntigoon]

Imovie is frustrating the hell out of me!!
I'm importing video from a Sony miniDV camcorder.
There are several clips. The time on the first one is correct. Later ones have the date as 2015. Wrong!
I select the clip and use menu -> Modify -> Adjust Clip Date & Time.
All I get is the stupid "thunk" sound.

Any ideas?

Thats not the end of my problems ...
Should I use something other than (the piece of crap) iMovie?

I downloaded a lot of Sony miniDV into iMovies (earlier versions) without any problem.. Very important are the menu settings at the camcorder once you hook up to the iMac .. I don't recall the details but do recall that the sequence of hookup is very important ...just read the camera manual very carefully ..

 

[pat500000]

I think FC will work for you, at least from a media management perspective. Smart Collections feature is a folder view by tag. So as you import clips, tag them as appropriate (year, subject, calendar event, so on). The define a smart collection by what tags should be included. iMovie has tagging, but I don't know if there is a feature similar to smart collections. The cost and learning curve of FCP is steeper than iMovie, so if this is a one-time thing there may be other ways (like outsource).

I have no problem with any programs...as long as it works.

 

[Rick Montoro]

Imovie is frustrating the hell out of me!!
I'm importing video from a Sony miniDV camcorder.
There are several clips. The time on the first one is correct. Later ones have the date as 2015. Wrong!
I select the clip and use menu -> Modify -> Adjust Clip Date & Time.
All I get is the stupid "thunk" sound.

Any ideas?

Thats not the end of my problems ...
Should I use something other than (the piece of crap) iMovie?

It’s not just you. I got to go with you on this one l. iMovie is the biggest piece of **** I’ve ever worked with. Nothing in it seems to work the way it supposed to work and it’s probably easier learning to fly a ****ing 747 than it is to learn this piece of crap software. You’ll have to pardon my language but I am seriously frustrated with this garbage. I’m moving on to something else.

 

[megghegg]

It’s not just you. I got to go with you on this one l. iMovie is the biggest piece of **** I’ve ever worked with. Nothing in it seems to work the way it supposed to work and it’s probably easier learning to fly a ****ing 747 than it is to learn this piece of crap software. You’ll have to pardon my language but I am seriously frustrated with this garbage. I’m moving on to something else.

I Double, Triple and Quadruple that - iMovie is an ungodly piece of ----! I'm not even going to go into the features, but will stick to the basic functionality, such as managing projects. Apple must have hired monkeys and paid them with bananas to engineer this application, then a human must have played spin the bottle with the monkeys to spin basic software application concepts such as 'Save' into 'Share,' and made other gymnastic contortions to make it next to impossible for even software engineers to efficiently use. Don't get me started on the fact that it auto saves changes that the user does not want saved, taking over so the user can not control the project version history of their project. I suppose if it erased everything on the hard drive, including the OS, the Apple monkey engineers would call it a feature! I am Oh-So-Past-Ready to DUMP this piece of garbage! (posted using my friends facebook login - DLE)