Daniel Hollister wrote:

I’ve always hated iMovie.

Yeah, it works (quite well, actually). Got a tape filled with footage from a family vacation? Hook up your camera, hit one button and you’ve got it all on your computer, ready to be chopped up and burned onto a DVD. But what if you want to move into more advanced filmmaking? As an educator and professional editor, I’ve found that iMovie isn’t really a proper stepping stone—that is, concepts you use in iMovie don’t carry over to Final Cut Pro. Most students I’ve worked with did a lot skipping right past iMovie and learning Final Cut Pro from the get-go.

I always thought this was iMovie’s biggest weakness, but with the release of iMovie ’08, that may be its strength—and the student may become the teacher.

The Geezer Effect 

There are a ton of professional products that suffer from what I like to call [offensively, perhaps] the Geezer Effect: software that’s built to facilitate the existing knowledge of working professionals at the expense of intuition and innovation.
 

Aperture is a great example. It makes a lot of veteran photographers happy because they provide a workflow similar to how they’ve always done their photography (Lightbox mode, anyone?). While this makes experienced photographers feel more at home, the truth is that this is probably not the most efficient way to go about it. Unfortunately for newbies, learning the curve is a slow and unintuitive process.

Case in point: it took me quite a while to realize (or maybe I just never wanted to admit it) that Final Cut Pro is basically the same. Non-linear editing is based on the same basic concepts that have existed since its invention. Perhaps the grandmaster of desktop editing software suffers from the Geezer Effect, too—or at least that’s what the new iMovie suggests.

iMovie ’08 is the opposite. It is the wake-up call to all of us who thought that by using Final Cut Pro, we were on the cutting edge of editing. The new iMovie is the editing tool for the new generation.

The Advantages 

Let’s face it, there’s too many video formats for the consumer to deal with. There are several flavors of SD and HD, several popular frame rates, and a plethora of storage options (tapes, flash memory, hard drives, etc). Lately, one of the biggest issues plaguing new editors is figuring out what the heck kind of footage they’re even dealing with.

Fortunately, l, iMovie ’08 comes with a feature borrowed from the new Final Cut Pro 6: the ability kick back and let the software to manage all this for you (recliner not included). Shoot part of your movie in 24p and another part in 60i? No problem. Need to mix news footage on HD with some guerilla coverage shot on a little birthday party camera? Piece of cake (birthday cake?). With iMovie ’08, you don’t have to worry about what type of footage you’re capturing or what kind of device it’s coming from. It just works.

It’s all about speed. 

Aside from that, the best part of iMovie ’08 is undoubtedly its speed. I mean, it’s blazing. I have never in my life seen a piece of editing software capable of editing so quickly.

Final Cut Pro doesn’t stand a chance.

That was very painful for me to type. Moving on…

In iMovie ’08, you now have the ability to “skim”—simply rolling your mouse over a video clip lets you preview the entire thing as fast or slow as you want. When I first saw the demonstrations of this, I figured it was nothing but eye candy, but the truth is that this feature makes the entire application work. If you’re just doing basic cuts, you don’t need frame-by-frame precision. Just skim a clip to find the part you want to use, select it, and add it to your film—in just a few seconds.

Another awesome feature (borrowed from GarageBand) is automatic ducking. When you record your voice or insert sound over a clip, iMovie instantly lowers the volume of the audio below. While this feature is certainly not a dealbreaker for any editing program, it’s a great feature that will save you the hassle of manually tweaking audio levels so you can hear yourself over any ambient noise.

There’s always a downside 

The sad truth is that all the above features still don’t add up to a great piece of software for narrative filmmaking. In fact, iMovie ’08 is most definitely not the tool I’d recommend for that purpose. Some very basic features for this type of editing are mysteriously absent, including correct timecodes and precise sound-editing features. While there are many things you can do easier in iMovie ’08 than previous versions, you’ll find it cumbersome for feature-length editing or professional-caliber projects.

We look towards the future 

So then, what is iMovie ’08 good for? I can safely say without a doubt that it is our choice now for event coverage. For anyone needing to edit video extremely quickly, this is a godsend.

And hey, let us not forget that this is effectively version 1.0 of a new product. I expect that in future versions of iMovie, we’ll see additions that tailor to the needs of filmmakers, with updates to effects, sound, and the overall editing workflow. Until then, I’ll still be using Final Cut Pro for everything I edit.

But at least I don’t hate iMovie anymore.