Apple recently released a completely rewritten iMovie as part of their updated iLife suite. Since then, there have been some critics of the new iPhoto-esque iMovie. I recently completed a video project for a client using iMovie ’08, so I’d like to share some of the joys and frustrations of working on a real project in the new iMovie.
The Parameters of the Project
Before I get into the particulars of iMovie, it’s probably helpful to set out the requirements of the project.
- The project is a mix of still photos and video clips.
- The final product should be around eight minutes. Video clips have to be cut. Times for cuts provided by client.
- Musical soundtrack for stills only.
So, keeping those requirements in mind, let’s talk about how iMovie performed.
Mixing Video and Stills
Getting the media all in order in the timeline is simply the easiest and most enjoyable aspect of working in the new iMovie. Importing photos is as simple as dragging and dropping onto the project. Video clips have to be imported through iMovie’s File > Import Movies… menu. This is slightly problematic since the project window says “Drag media here to create a new project.” Perhaps this is a bug that will be fixed in an update.
Adding transitions is very easy. Simply click the Transitions browser and drag your transition between elements in the project. Done. You can edit the duration and such, but just dragging the transition is sufficient to get the transition into your project. iMovie can even add your transitions automatically, but if you go this route, it’s one transition for all, which gets boring pretty fast. I prefer putting them in manually.
Timing of the Final Project
Changing the timing of a still in iMovie is pretty easy. Just control click on the still and select Set Duration. Simple. You can also set the default still duration in the project properties. For video clips, setting duration involves trimming the video. Control click on the clip and select Trim… Here it’s easy to trim your clip. Just scrub the beginning of the clip forward to the beginning of the cut and the end of the clip backward to the end of the cut. Easy. The problem is that if you know the times of the cuts, there’s no way to see the time of the video where your cursor is located. So, I used QuickTime to find the time for the cut and then located the corresponding content in iMovie’s trimmer. Needless to say this could easily have been avoided if Apple would just add a simple time display to the trimmer. The only other gripe about the trimmer itself is that it doesn’t let you see a very detailed view of the clip for precise trimming. This can make delicate cuts quite frustrating. There is also no way to trim out portions of a clip in the trimmer. This can be accomplished in the main project view, though.
It’s worth noting that if you add a transition, it will shorten the length of the clip or still that follows the transition. I recommend adding transitions and then setting durations so that you are getting what you expect.
Adding a Music Soundtrack
This is quite possibly the most frustrating aspect of creating a video project in the new iMovie.
There is no way that I was able to discern to control where a soundtrack starts in the project. When you drag an audio clip from the Music and Sound Effects browser to the project, it applies to the last time in the project with no soundtrack. No options for moving it around. This was problematic as I needed to not have my music soundtrack play only on the stills and not on video clips that had their own audio. I simply popped the music track in again, trimmed it, and set its volume to 0%. Sort of kludgy. [UPDATE: In playing with iMovie again for this article, I found out this is possible. It's still not obvious that this is available, however.]
By control+clicking on the audio file in the project, you can select Trim Music… This is a nice way of trimming your soundtrack. You can trim down to a certain length and then move that span of time around the audio clip to find a suitable cut. It’s much more elegant in practice than describing it in prose.
Finishing Touches
Adding titles to your project is drag and drop dead simple. Bring up the Titles browser and drag your selected title style onto the clip you want to display the title. Edit the text, set the duration and drag the title around on the timeline to place it in the chronology of your project. There is a wide variety of styles to choose from, and you’re sure to find one to fit the tone of your project. If nothing else, the Transparent titles will be generic enough for any project.
Closing Thoughts and Caveats
When adding music from your iTunes library to the project, if you delete that song from your iTunes library, it also makes it unavailable for your project. So, if you move your project to another machine that doesn’t have that song in the iTunes library, your project won’t have a soundtrack. Not very cool. iMovie should copy the sound file into the project.
It’s not possible to open an iMovie project that is not in the iMovie Projects directory of ~/Movies. Also, if you delete an Event Library item, it will show a yellow exclamation point triangle over clips in the project that use that item. The clips still work, but the Trim option is no longer available.
Some have lamented the lack of integration with iDVD, but I was able to simply drag my project file from Finder into iDVD to create a DVD of the project.
So, those are my thoughts on the new iMovie after completing a real-life project with it. It wasn’t the smoothest experience, but I don’t think it’s as tragic a situation as others have declared. Admittedly, iMovie ’06 did have more powerful options for some things, but the new iMovie is pretty powerful in its own right. And I think that this latest version will serve the consumer market very well for quickly cobbling together a video that doesn’t suck.
