[webraider]

Yes.. it does.. this is really better than '06 on all fronts and so much faster.

[erictbar]

I never hated iMovie '08, just thought it was missing a bunch of features.
I use Final Cut Pro for most things, but iMovie '08 was fantastic for making photo slideshows (though adding the sound seemed hard, especially on a long slideshow where whenever I moved a photo, the music would get screwed up, so I ended up doing that in Soundtrack)

It seems like everything that was missing from iMovie '06 has been added back. Themes, chapter markers, iDVD integration, more transitions and titles, video effects, reverse, changing speed. The only thing you could miss about iMovie '06 now is if you loved the interface. And personally, I love the idea of selecting videos like text.

[Schneb]

webraider said:

Sorry, but I disagree with you. I think iMovie '08 was so much better than iMovie '06

I have also met people who thought Phantom Menace was a good movie too. Hence my usage of the quip. You may indeed think it a better version, and for this I say, "All the power to ya." However, you will notice that at the beginning of the article it mentions how so many people "justifiably criticized for lacking many features". This would not have been written had only a few people had problems with it. MANY people had issues with it.
The biggest sin of iMovie '08 was dropping plug-in support. Now imagine being one of the users that dropped wads of cash into plugins, or being a developer that just saw his business go under thanks to iMovie '08. Not a good way to inject confidence in developing products for Apple.

I agree with erictbar that it is good to see many of the goodies originally with iMovie 06 placed back in iMovie 08 (now 09), but that just illustrates how thin '08 was in features. Unfortunately, you will not see third plugin party support. And even if they brought it back, who would develop for it? The trust is gone.

[webraider]

erictbar said:

Quote

It seems like everything that was missing from iMovie '06 has been added back. Themes, chapter markers, iDVD integration, more transitions and titles, video effects, reverse, changing speed. The only thing you could miss about iMovie '06 now is if you loved the interface. And personally, I love the idea of selecting videos like text.

Yeah but as far as I know, you can do that in iMovie '08...if you mean as far as drag select, or select all.. that works. You mentioned selecting all your clips, so you can do that quickly by just quickly selecting from the top left to the bottom right corner of the clips window. I think the click once twice and three times thing works too. I can't remember because I've always been a big drag selecting person.

[webraider]

NO.. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant as far as the way the UI is set-up. I think iMovie '08 was a step in the right direction and it was faster at it's rendering than iMovie '06. I completely agree with that it did not have the features of '06. I guess when I used '08 I saw '09 and the future so I knew this would be the result (what we get with '09). As far as plug in support, when you completely change a program from the ground up, you can't always make it back wards compatible. it's not fair, but that's the way it is. It looks like iMovie '08 can have themes written for it.. I didn't not check on plug-ins.

[Orytek]

I was hoping there would be more support for avchd. Not just archiving raw footage but the ability to edit avchd files with out needing to convert first using the Apple intermediate codec. With no mention of this I assume it wasn't addressed.

[sigma8]

{quote}This they did only partly with its timeline editing, which was a disaster from those who work in prosumer editing.{quote}
I thought that iMovie was "consumer" editing, with Final Cut Express aimed at prosumers and Final Cut Pro aimed at pro's. No?

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Apple was right to offer a product with a fraction of the functionality it was replacing, but I thought it was a bold move to re-conceptualize the editing process. Unlike Phantom Menace, it's not that iMovie '08 was bad, it just wasn't what a lot of people expected, and it was also missing specific features that some had grown accustomed to.

It's possible that specific features may never make it back into iMovie, simply because they might be tethered to the old paradigm, but as long as Apple resupplies its users the ability to craft a desired final result, then it's fine by me.

[Schneb]

webraider said:

NO.. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I meant as far as the way the UI is set-up.

Ahh, I meant the package. I was not thrilled with the interface as well because the timeline is how a movie is presented--that is linear. And iMovie 06 provided two ways to edit (timeline and scene) and iMovie 08 just one way--and not a good way for how I edit. And extremely limiting. Now the color corrector was awesome, gotta give em' that. And now, with stabilization, speed control, markers, audio control, and others, its time to give iMovie 09 a decent try. I wasn't going to buy iLife 09 really because of being burned by iMoive. That is until I saw the amp modeling they put in to GarageBand... OK, Apple Store, ya got me. ;)

[Schneb]

sigma8 said:

{quote}Unlike Phantom Menace-- it just wasn't what a lot of people expected, and it was also missing specific features that some had grown accustomed to.

LOL, that WAS Phantom Menace. :)

[sigma8]

{quote}LOL, that WAS Phantom Menace. {quote}
Hrm, well, I'd argue Phantom Menace was a poor execution, as opposed to a "different" execution. I mean, Jar Jar Binks? How can anyone justify that?? And while hard to believe, I think the quality of acting in Phantom Menace was actually quite a bit worse than the original Star Wars.

And it wasn't very good in Star Wars.

To me, iMovie's paradigm switch reminds me more of the time I was at a BBQ and I poured myself some milk into a styrofoam cup, and didn't drink it right away. About 10 minutes later, I somehow had convinced myself that I had actually poured myself some lemonade, and I drank from the cup expecting a nice sweet lemonade...instead I got warm milk, which I instantly spit out in disgust. It's not that I dislike milk or that the milk was bad, it just wasn't what I expected.

[Howmanoid]

Yes. Multiple audio tracks are supported and things like audio "ducking" can be done with a simple menu drop down. This version really does look like they've listen to criticism leveled at the '08 release and gone a very long way to bringing it to where it needs to be. The Precision editor gives you full independent control over audio and video tracks down the the frame level. The UI for it is really nice!

[parlour]

That?s already possible with iMovie ?08. It even looks as though you could stack an unlimited number of audio tracks on top of each other. I stopped when I had ten or so.

The precision editor looks like it works for audio, too. I don?t know if they added any keyboard shortcuts to move audio one frame (you could already move the time slider in iMovie ?08 to the left and place audio pretty precisely, but shortcuts so that you can move frame by frame would be great).

The way I see it there was no problem with the number of audio tracks. The big problem with iMovie ?08 was rather that you couldn?t adjust the volume precisely (i.e. deciding when for example background music is loud or quiet). I know there is ducking, but in that respect I would like quite a bit more power and not just an automatic function. It doesn?t look like they added that in iMovie ?09, but I?m still hoping. You can always split clips (but not audio!) and then adjust their volume separately, but that?s a very crude workaround that doesn?t lead to nice transitions in the audio.

[Hobeaux]

"can you select all the clips and add them to your timeline?"

Yes. Click on the first clip, shift-click on the end clip and then hit the E key to send them to your project.

"?I don't want to edit?"

then don't. Nothing in iMovie forces you to edit your clips.

[natelong]

Finally, some long-overdue features! I'm buying iLife 09 when it comes out!