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If you have already started a movie in IMovie 08 can you continue this movie with IMovie 09?
Farryl

As good as it may be... and iMovie 06 (so called "HD") before it.... i have all this HD footage with no way to burn an HD disc to was on my blu-ray player on my big screen. what gives? iDVD down rez's? who wants that? If everything is going HD, then this how can this be acceptable?
And this is why some of his still have to hold out for the "back to tape" functionality. So we can edit the whole movie, dump it back to HD tape, hook it up to our plasmas, and watch it in full HD... what a hassle... and that assumes the audio/video stay in sync which it rarely does (and i'm on Mac Pro, quad, 4gb ram, etc).... I'm hoping the Toast blu-ray plug-in fixes this issue for me.... but it should all be native in OS X and iLife by now... lame Apple, totally lame... they should kick them off the blu-ray disc association... shameful...

Christ, audio editing with the "rubber bands" is something I use in nearly every single video I've EVER done in iMovie.
This is an absolute deal-breaker. I have Final Cut Express but it's often too much, iMovie HD 6 was a perfect balance.
I certainly don't mind change but the removal of basic fundamental tools seems stupid to me.

fraudelm: Yes, iMovie '09 will open iMovie '08 projects directly without conversion, so you don't have to finish a project in 08 before upgrading to 09. (In fact, a default install of iLife '09 overwrites iMovie '08.) However, Apple says that once you've edited a project in iMovie '09, it won't be recognized by '08. But there's no issues like, for example, opening iMovie HD projects, during which lots of edits and audio files don't get transferred.

Jeff

RobK said:

I certainly made the case to Apple that rubber-band audio editing isn't too advanced; and even if it is, that's what having an "advanced tools" mode is all about. I can see it being activated when other advanced tools appear.

However, I won't pretend that my arguments have any sway with Apple. I can understand that they're trying to make things as easy as possible, especially for people new to iMovie and video editing. But this is also why everyone should use the Provide iMovie Feedback item under the iMovie menu to let Apple hear what you think.

Jeff

iDVD not being touched is not necessarily a bad thing. There's really not too much that you can do to the program as it does what it's supposed to do. That said I do have a request, one that Apple may not ever do and that's the ability to add Mpeg 2 files directly to my dvd project. This would be helpful when exporting file from EyeTV that are already in Mpeg 2 format. Currently when I do, I get Silent movies so there's something wrong with the way both QuickTime and iDVD handle the audio in Mpeg 2 files. I don't care if it's not "traditional", if there's an audio file in an Mpeg 2 file, QuickTime and iDVD should recognize it! I'm guessing Apple doesn't do too much with it because they want to discourage pirating.. Oh well.

One thing I love about iMovie 09 compared to iMovie 6 is that my MPEG-4 HD video isn't converted to an intermediate format when I import it; instead, it's left in MPEG-4 and edited directly. My 12GB editing projects are now 500MB editing projects.

When David Pogue did a seminar on iMovie at Macworld Expo 2009, he was predictably harsh in his criticism (at that time only iMovie '08 was available). In his discussion, he quoted from some conversations/arguments he's had with Mr. Jobs. One of their arguments related specifically to iDVD.



Pogue explained that Jobs was adamant that DVD's are a thing of the past and he is forward thinking in his embrace of wireless technology. Thus the MacBook Air sans optical drive and MacBooks sans Firewire. Pogue said that if Jobs had his way, iDVD would have been removed entirely from the iLife '09 suite.



If you notice the advertisements for iLife, they mention only four programs, not iDVD. For example, see this page FROM Apple's website announcing the new iLife. The headline doesn't include iDVD.







I'm not sure Jobs cares much about piracy, except as it relates to the media companies willingness to cooperate with Apple's business model. Jobs sees iTunes and AppleTV as the future of content delivery and the media companies believe it's not just a bitter pill to swallow, they think it will mark the beginning of the end of their means for raking in the dough and monopolizing music and movie distribution. The truth is the Jobs isn't responsible for this condition. The internet itself is. !http://www.flickr.com/photos/raimist/3258300715/|thumbnail=true!

Does the new iMovie at least have a live "Hours:Minutes:Seconds:Frames" counter that updates as the movie is playing?

I would agree that wireless/Internet is indeed the way of things to come, and we'll dump our DVDs the way VHS is all but dumped now.

But we're not there yet. Apple is being a bit too aggressively forward-thinking when it comes to optical media. I don't think they're wrong, I think they're just early. The reality is that I can send a DVD to any number of friends and relatives and know that they could pop the disc into a player and view my movie. Not all of them could see the same movie on the Web (or, more specifically, have the bandwidth to download and watch).

Unless Apple decides that a push to Blu-ray is worthwhile at some point, I don't expect iDVD to be in the next iLife revision. I think it's more likely that you'll be able to burn a movie to DVD directly from iMovie, without any menus or anything besides just the movie.

montgomery_burns said:

It does not.

Apple doesn't like DVD because DVD competes with their Apple TV hardware that they want to sell you. That's what it's all about. Why enable DVD creation when you can buy an expensive piece of hardware from them and stream it?

This whole HD solution Apple is selling totally sucks. It's a giant hassle. You have to transcode to import then transcode to export!

There are at least 3 consumer video editing applications for Windows that let you import and edit native AVCHD footage. You don't have to wait while it transcodes, it just imports the native files. Use Bootcamp to do it in a fraction of the time iMovie does it.

And you can burn those movies, natively, to DVD or BD to play on your DVD or Blu-ray player on your TV, or you can stream them to your Xbox 360 or PS3 since they support AVCHD. Apple TV does not.

And as mentioned, the Apple TV doesn't even do 1080 while consumer camcorders are doing 1080. So there's really no way to watch your HD footage the way you want using Apple's solution. The Xbox 360 and PS3 do support 1080.

If you do have an Xbox 360 or a PS3, you can get inexpensive OS X software that lets you stream your movies to them. If you have a PS3, you can also burn your movies to Blu-ray (assuming you buy a 3rd party Blu-ray drive and Toast for your Mac since Apple doesn't offer it).

Apple is really behind the times in this consumer video area.

If you get a camera that records proper MPEG-4 rather than the AVCHD mess, then you don't need to transcode to import your video.