iLife '05: iMovie HD Review
Edit your life in High-Def
28 January 2005 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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It's the year of HD according to Steve Jobs. Justin Williams shows you what's changed in iMovie since his review of iMovie '04 last year. It is worth the money?
At this year's Macworld Keynote earlier this month, Steve Jobs proclaimed that this is the year for High Definition. Announcing support for High Definition Video in Final Cut Express and iMovie, now all three video production applications support high definition video. Final Cut Express and iMovie support a new format called HDV. HDV allows you to record HDV on any standard DV tape using one of the new HD camcorders—like the $3500 Sony camera Steve touted during the Keynote.
This isn't the same as the HD support built into Final Cut Pro HD currently. Final Cut presently supports Panasonic's DVCPRO and fully uncompressed HD. Apple has said they will support HDV in Final Cut Pro in the future. Will you notice a different between HDV and uncompressed? Most likely not unless you have a trained eye. While HDV is compressed MPEG-2 (a type of video).
What Else?
Aside from the new high definition features, Apple hasn't added much to iMovie feature wise. The new Magic iMovie allows you to quickly import your video from the camcorder and create a movie. When creating a new project, select Magic iMovie, save it to a location, and then you can choose your music, transition, and whether or not to send the video straight to iDVD. For those that don't want to fuss with transitions, music, and Ken Burns effects, this is a great new feature.
As for other new features, there aren't many to show. Apple touts its new twelve new sound effects from Skywalker Sound, ten new transitions and effects, as well as performance gains. The new sound effects include a champagne cork, heartbeat, growling Tiger (how appropriate), and ocean waves. As for effects, iMovie HD includes sepia, ripple, edges, and several other distortions. The trusty Ken Burns effect is still available allowing you to pan and zoom in on still images in your projects.
The performance on iMovie HD is touted as one of the major features as well. With iMovie 4, Apple rewrote the entire application to take advantage of its Cocoa programming framework. Previously, iMovie was a port of the OS9 application to make it work in OS X. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it limited the iMovie team's ability to integrate fully into the OS. By rewriting the entire application from scratch, they had in essence started from square one in the performance and stability categories.
With iMovie 5, Apple has made improvements in the application's ability to edit video, load projects, and even resize the application. All around the performance on the application seems less sticky.
How It Rates
The problem with reviewing iMovie HD is that compared to iMovie 4, there isn't much to tout: especially compared to GarageBand 2 and iPhoto 5. If you are in the market for one of new HD camcorders from Sony, JVC, or Panasonic, you will as well. If you found iMovie 4 to be incredibly slow almost to the point of unusable, you will probably want to give iMovie HD a try. If, however, you are fine with iMovie 4 and its feature set, upgrading might not be worth the $79.
If you want a more in-depth overview of some of the features in iMovie, check out my iMovie 4 review from around this time last year.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (5)
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#1) On January 31, 2005 2:03 AM
You totally missed out on what I think is the new iMovie’s best feature. Non-destructive editing. The old way, you crop a slice of video and you can never go back. Now iMovie 5 has graduated to the ranks of its older siblings and saves the original clip. This way if you need to add 2 seconds back to a timelime, you can just get back what you originally cropped out. This is a HUGE feature and should not be overlooked.
#2) On February 14, 2005 10:03 PM
:HAn,
Non-destructive editing is nice, but it isn’t new to iMovie 5. It was around in ‘4.
#3) On July 8, 2005 5:00 PM
The non-destructive editing really bugs me because a few in-progress imovie projects means you hard drive is full — the NDE makes the imovie projects huge as editing does not equal downsizing… Is there any way to turn NDE off?
#4) On July 21, 2005 3:16 AM
Hello,
I have recently installed Tiger and iLife. I have a
G5.
Every time I open iMovie HD over a hundred windows
open consecutively reading “there is a problem with
plug in…” Once I have clicked ok on them all I can
use iMovie HD.
I have spent hours and hours looking for answers.
There was a help note somewhere that reported the same
problem but with iMovie 3 - I tired the advice anyway
and still no avail. I have also tried re-installing
iLife.
Please help I’m desperate!
Thanks so much,
Jeff
#5) On September 18, 2005 8:59 PM
well i can’t ask that but I think you would have a better chance on it being answered on apple discussions
http://discussions.info.apple.com/