Reactions to iMovie 6 HD

Having recently upgraded to iLife ’06, I thought I’d jump on TextEdit tonight and write a few initial thoughts on iMovie 06 HD since I just completed two projects on it so far.

Many good reviews have been published about this upgrade already, so this article is not another review or an how-to article, but just my initial reactions to the latest version with a few tips added for good measure.

First off, I have to be honest, I’m not sure I want Apple to upgrade iMovie beyond this point. If users need more bells and whistles beyond what ’06 has to offer, then it’s time move on to a version Final Cut.  Though the additional features in iMovie 06 are nice, they are beginning to weigh down the program. Features like the motion themes, Audio FX effects, and integration with GarageBand are beginning to make iMovie ’06 sluggish. I would rather get better performance upgrades than more features–many of which require intermediate and advance skills for non-linear digital editing to use anyhow. I’ve enjoyed the ease of use of iMovie up until this upgrade. Now it’s feeling more like using Final Cut Express.

That said, if you’re an iMovie fan and you don’t mind how some pros knock the application as a digital toy for the consumer market, ’06 can help you create a great looking, nearly professional production, especially if you have the skills to make it work at its best.

Performance: When I first started working in ’06 today, it stuttered, crashed, and produced the bouncing beach ball a number of times. So I quit out many of my other applications, repaired permissions, restarted iMovie a couple of different times, and it finally kicked in. I also discovered that when playing back edited video, iMovie seems to run more smoothly the less zoomed-in you are in the audio and video timeline viewer./

Navigation: One the reasons I stay with iMovie is because of the connivance of navigation; that is, up until this ’06 update. With more features, ’06 is beginning to feel like Final Cut where you have to do several clicks to get at features you regularly use.

The Ken Burns effect is now buried three clicks away from access: you have to click the Media pane, and then the Photo button at the top of the pane, and then back down to “Show Photo Settings” below. Audio–that is, the iTunes browser–is also now buried under the Media browser. In previous versions it would only take one click to get there, now it takes two, plus the clicks to find what you’re looking for. And as far as I can tell there’s no short cuts for getting at these buried features.

Under the Editing pain, you now have Titles, Transitions, Video FX and Audio FX which means a click to that button and another one for one of the four choices at the top, and of course there’s a long list of other choices which mean more clicks to find what you’re looking for. There’s no search button to get you at a particular editing or titling effect. Scrolling to to my Savoy font took much too long, especially when it’s only a few key strokes away in applications like Photoshop. In prior versions of iMovie I liked the convenience of having editing controls with their own individual panes up front for easy one-click access.

Also now when you select a clip and then click an editing control, the selected editing effect starts in Preview automatically. Typically, when you’re looking for an editing effect you’re clicking through several options, so the instant Preview can get annoying at times. You have to do ANOTHER click to stop the damn thing. There’s also no short cut for stopping it. So it means click and dragging the mouse while you’re trying to find what you’re looking for.

Okay, enough about navigation problems. I have to say I like a couple of the new editing features. First off,  Audio FX is a welcome add-on to ’06. No, it’s not like Soundtrack or other similar audio editing programs, but the Noise Reducer, the Graphic EQ, and the Reverb make for some much needed clarity and boost to my current production. If you’re new to this type of audio editing, you have to experiment with the controls some and apply several different ones to the same clip to get the sound quality you desire. It also seems that if you extract the audio from its video clip, the Audio effect renders faster.

There’s a lot of fun to be had with Audio Fx, especially with the Pitch Changer where you can change the pitch of someone’s voice to sound like a little girl, a chipmunk, a monster, or just better sounding male or female voice.

The Noise Reducer kicked in nicely for me. I did audio capture with my Canon GL2 and the Noise Reducer was able to knock the soft humming noise in the room where the audio capture took place. I also exported the audio to Garageband to see what could be done there. It too enhanced the audio, but I still need to experiment with that feature more. This is truly an advance feature for most iMovie users. 

iLife Integration: iMovie ’06 seems to work okay with other programs. I did discover though that it’s better to drop your completed movie into iDVD rather than sending it directly from iMovie, especially if you have slow motion and other effects in your movie. iMovie wants to render your slow-mo effects before sending your movie to iDVD and that’s where the problem starts. By simply dragging the movie file at the the top of the iMovie window pain and dropping it into the appropriate place in the iDVD project, it works out better. I verified this on Apple’s iMovie Discussion board and others concur.

Ken Burns Effect: The Ken Burns Effect has been a persistent problem every since it was added to iMovie. I don’t know why Apple hasn’t made an option to permanently turn it off. Instead, each time you import still photos into iMovie, you have to make sure the KB Effect is turned off, otherwise you’ll have problems changing the timing and the effect. You’ll have to open the KB panel to change timing for each imported clip.

A Few Tips: Here are few more little added features/tips that seem to be new to ’06.

1. You can control click on the scrubber bar and get options to delete, copy, crop, or zoom to a selected clip. The Crop selection is very useful in this case, but it’s different than deleting. You scrub the part of the clip you want to keep (it’s highlighted in yellow) and then control click on the bar and select Crop. When done this way, the part of the clip that you cropped out is still there but hidden. You can either choose Edit>Undo or you can access the clip in the timeline viewer and drag its edges back to your desired length. Just make sure the Show Clip Volume Levels is not selected when you’re trying to drag the edges of a clip this way.

2. Be sure to check out the Theme feature of ’06. While there are only a handful of themes to choose from, they can make a nice addition to your project. You can’t, though, make changes to a theme after you’ve rendered it. You’ll have to start from scratch if you want make changes other than changing the timing of the clip. What’s nice too is that the iMovie Themes are matched with iDVD Themes.

3. If you experience problems with the performance of iMovie ’06, the problem may reside in the third-party plug-ins you have installed. Turning these plug-ins off or deleting them seems to help a lot. I’m still checking with GeeThree to see if they have found a solution to this problem for their iMovie plug-ins. A list of iMovie HD 6 bugs are on the web that might helpful for any problems you’re experiencing.

4. Titling is also improved. Font sizes are bigger and you can include various typefaces–italic, bold, etc. This feature is still no where near as robust as in Final Cut, however. Without third-party titling plug-ins, I’d probably never use iMovie.

5. Finally, check out iMovie’s integration with Garageband for scoring movies. While it takes some time to use this feature, it could very useful for a serious, professional project.

With all this said, I have to admit that I might begin using iMovie less and Final Cut Express more. I’m not happy about the changes to the navigation and I simply think the workflow is faster in Final Cut though, though it has its own problems to contend with. I understand that Apple is trying its best to keep advancing it programs, but sometimes better performance is much better than feature upgrades, especially when you’re using programs on a professional level.

I would be interested in feedback from other iMovie 6 HD users. I’m sure there’s other tips and problems that I didn’t cover in this post that might useful to share.