[MW Forums]

iMovie ’08 is a definite hit for consumers who want quick and easy editing for a variety of video formats and the ability to three-click publish to YouTube or a .Mac Gallery. While great for its intended audience, I would not recommend this version for any kind of prosumer or professional use because of the quality issues and editing limitations. more

[Macdev8]

Great review. Right on. Now if only everyone took your advice, i.e.,
Macworlds buying advice
iMovie 08 is ideal for consumers who want quick and easy editing for a variety of video formats and the ability to three-click publish to YouTube or a .Mac Gallery. For speed and convenience of browsing, simple editing, and sharing, nothing in its class can touch it. While great for its intended audience, the video-quality issues and editing limitations make this a poor option for users with heavier editing demands. If you want better quality video processing for DV or HDV footage or third-party plug-ins, or if you need any of the other now-missing features, stick with iMovie HD 6.
and move on, even better.

[Machound]

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The new version also features additional video format support, including AVCHD cameras, as well as MPEG-2 (standard definition only) and MPEG-4 (standard and high definition video formats).

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That makes iMovie '08 totally unusable for all HDV camcorder owners such as myself. Already I've made the decision to bail out of Apple video offerings based on stalled FCE support, poor backward compatibility with earlier projects, and horrendous transcoding / scaling video quality of 1080i --> 480i. Sony Vegas (Windows OS) seems the way forward for many HDV camcorder owners, and with Vegas v.8 due out soon it's becoming an easy decision to bail on Apple video editing altogether. The downside of Sony Vegas for a Mac guy, of course, is running Boot Camp versus buying WinPC hardware. FCS might be a better option for some HDV home video enthusiasts, but with its stiff hardware requirements, FCS remains beyond many of our budgets. On the other hand, Sony has a pretty good long track record for backward compatibility in its video products... a lesson Apple definitely needs to learn.
iMovie may be OK for some home video users with DV or AVCHD cams, especially if people don't expect backward compatibility now or in future versions. It's a non-starter for anyone with an HDV cam. FCE appears dead-in-the-water, as far as I can tell. That leaves only the high end video market well covered by Apple. They'yre losing almost the entire mid-level user base. Is that really such a good idea?
Thankfully I don't have too much precious time wrapped up in iMovie '06 projects. I never really trusted Apple to maintain support for iMovie projects. Hindsight confirms that my previous fears about iMovie were correct. Almost-free software gets almost-free support.
"The year of HD video" turned out mostly reality distortion, anyway. This year's decisions come as little surprise to those of us who have been around for a while.

[tony_d]

The more reviews I read about this new version of iMovie the more I agree with Apple's decision (I have yet to purchase iLife '08). Its about simplicity, which iMovie 6, regardless on how good a program it is, wasn't. For those who want more robust editing there's Final Cut Express (which Apple really needs to lower the price on) or Adobe's Premiere. Either way for a simple way (read the Apple way) the new version of iMovie makes sense. Thanks for the review.

[Jason Snell]

I think one of the keys here is to separate iMovie '08 -- which is really quite good at what it's intended to do (despite a few typical 1.0 bugs) -- from Apple's decision to kill iMovie HD and replace it with a simple editing tool. Lots of people are up in arms about the latter, and I understand that completely. But I hope they don't take their frustration out on iMovie '08, which is really a smart piece of software.

[NFK]

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clicking and dragging doesnt drag a clip to a new location, and other differences that make the first five minutes frustrating.

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That's wrong, you can drag a clip to a new location - just drag slowly to the bottom, then to the new location.
But you can't drag more than one clip. And you can't select (and then copy/paste) more than one clip.
That's a serious flaw for editing, even for beginners.
If you want to drag the first three clips from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie, then you have to drag them one by one.
Simplicity doesn't always rule, sometimes it sucks, even for beginners.

[ydnar600]

According to the posted requirements, iMovie 08 shouldn't run on my Power Mac G5 Dual 1.8 but it does and without any hitches. Of course, I have 4.5gig of ram so that may help.

[bastion]

I really fail to understand how a single 1.9GHz G5 and a 1.5GHz Core Solo have sufficient muscle to handle iMovie '08 while a 2x1.8GHz G5 doesn't. And apparently Apple isn't too fussy about it, because iMovie installed on my unsupported machine without any complaint or extra effort.
I tried using it and ran into a show-stopper right away. With the previous version of iMovie, my wife's 2x1GHz G4 could import from our MiniDV camera without a hitch. With the current version, my 2x1.8GHz G5 drops frames on the import.
iMovie HD isn't really that hard to use, has drastically lower system requirements and offers more options. Even with absolutely no investment in plugins, I really don't see the point of this new product.

[AppleHead]

When I read about it, I hated it. When I tried it, I loved it. I have half a dozen vacations still waiting to be edited in iMHD. I have done and posted three quickie projects in iM'08 in the last week alone. Suddenly I am sharing my work with family in a 24-hour turnaround. Granted, these are two-minute shorts, not the half-hour epics I used to burn to DVD, but they are getting done! No more vapor-projects.
I wish Apple had named it iHomeMovie to make a clearer distinction. That way they could continue to develop or maintain the iMovie name as a standalone product. Hell, I'd even pay extra for it to use on my more ambitious projects.

[dixeyk]

After the initial freak out by quite a few people I decided to give iMovie 08 a look and see for myself what all the fuss was about. First off, I am a FCP and FCE user so I never had much invested in iMovie. In fact, I always thought it was a bit cumbersome.
I work in technical support at a small university and one of the things we do is support students, faculty and staff in their projects and video happens to be a part of that. We have PCs running Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements and Macs with FCP and iMovie. Based on what I have seen in iMovie 08 I think it will actually be a better tool for the kinds of video work that students typically use iMovie for at our school. Our students typically fall into 2 groups, those doing fairly involved editing that go with FCP or Premiere Pro and those that need to create a short video for a class that gets uploaded to their personal web space or sometimes written to DVD. FWIW, most of the DVDs we do for iMovie we write with Toast as they don't want any sort of interface or chaptering...they just want to insert it in a DVD player or computer and have it play. I think that the new iMovie will give allow the students that use it to do exactly the kind of things they are being asked to do, make a video with a minimum of hassle.
I can certainly understand why people were upset at the changes because it really is completely different that iMovie. In fact, if it had been given a name other than iMovie people would probably be going on and on about how cool it was...because if you can step back and look at it for what it is as opposed to what it is not, iMovie 08 is a pretty slick piece of work.

[Uncommon]

The main thing I like about the new iMovie is the centralized clip library. But overall I find it falls short even without comparing it to iMovie HD.
I wanted iMovie 08 mainly for its AVCHD support, but that's frustratingly limited to importing directly from the camcorder. I want to keep backups of my camcorder's data files, since they're smaller than iMovie's imports and they preserve the 5.1 surround sound. For that kind of workflow I'll have to turn to Voltaic to use those backups, and at that rate I may as well not use iMovie 08 at all.

[Nobody]

iMovie 08 is - homevideo 1.0 for dummies.
iMovie HD was so much better. This is such a lame move by apple.
Anyone who screams, I love the new imovie for my grandma, is obviously a shill.
Your grandma is never going to be able to make a video, ever.
They should have just kept this new version as a new program, and not replace iMovie HD, but
upgrade iMovie HD with what we were all expecting. Another video layer, another audio layer, more themes, more effects, transitions, titles and more. What the bleep happened to iMovie?
"I love the new iMovie" Shut the Flipping up, it's not flipping iMovie at all, it's youtubefordummies.

[Peter Cohen]

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Anyone who screams, I love the new imovie for my grandma, is obviously a shill.

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Yep. Heaven forfend anyone have a different opinion from you, and be able to substantiate it.

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Another video layer, another audio layer, more themes, more effects, transitions, titles and more.

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And another attempt at making iMovie even more inaccessible to entry-level users...

[Peacedoc]

You have a link to the iMovie tutorials, which you recommend, but they bring you to the old iMovie version, not the '08 version.