I published my initial iMovie review yesterday. It was an article I had been working on for a while, and finally got posted. I had based the article off of iMovie 7.0, the version that shipped with the iLife ‘08 retail box. I had held off installing iMovie 7.1 because my home internet connection, well, blows. However, after reading a comment about a couple things I missed/overlooked in my initial review, I realized that I needed to revisit iMovie, this time using version 7.1.

In this article, I look at what has changed between version 7.0 and version 7.1. I listed some of my complaints with iMovie 7.0 and then discuss how iMovie 7.1 rectifies the situation.

iMovie’s limited audio editing tools

In my previous article I complained how iMovie did away with all advanced audio editing, and some not-so-advanced editing. My biggest complaint was that editing the volume of an audio or video track was not nearly flexible enough. I’m glad to say that iMovie 7.1 makes some improvements in this area. iMovie 7.1 now allows you to fade the audio of a clip in and out to whatever extend you please. Also, iMovie 7.1 now includes a much-needed ducking feature. Thank you very much, Apple.

I would still like to see the same level of volume editing capability as iMovie 6 where you can manually tweak the volume at any point, but the new additions are very much welcome.

You can’t select multiple clips

Another issue I had with iMovie 7.0 was the fact that it was impossible to select multiple video clips and drag them into a project. iMovie 7.1 now allows you to select multiple clips by holding down the shift key (for contiguous selections) or command key (for non-contiguous selections). Thank you! Additionally, you can shift-click or command-click any individual video clip to select the whole thing. Bonus!

You can’t change the duration of transitions on a per-transition basis

iMovie 7.0 had no obvious way to set the duration of a transition on a case-by-case basis. iMovie 7.1 rectifies this, though it still isn’t the most obvious solution. You can now right-click the transition and select “Set Duration…” (it’s also in the Edit menu) and set the duration for all transitions, or if you choose, the selected transition only. Again, its placement could be more obvious, but I am happy to see that this feature now exists.

iMovie makes fine-tuning difficult

iMovie 7.1 now has an option to make fine tuning somewhat easier. Clicking a small button on either end of any clip in your project now allows you to extend or shorten a clip as you please. You could do this in iMovie 7.0, but its behavior was more awkward. Additionally, I noticed that iMovie 7.1 also now has an option to show you the time at which the playhead is (Edit menu > Playhead Info). If you want to see granularity down to hundredths of a second go to iMovie Preferences and select “Display timecodes.” Awesome.

Other notes

iMovie 7.1 also now allows you to create a still frame out of any point in any clip. However, one feature still missing is the ability to split the clip at the playhead. Also, there is still no integration with iDVD.

Revised conclusions

So where does iMovie stand now? In my prior review, I gave it a 3.0 out of 5. What does this mean? Our scoring rubric is as follows:

• 5.0 - Brilliant Product. Excellent feature set at a good price.
• 4.0 - Great all-around product but may be missing that extra bit that makes it a must-have.
• 3.0 - Solid product but occasionally buggy, missing some features, or is expensive.
• 2.0 - Poor product. Missing major features, very buggy, expensive.
• 1.0 - Very poor product. Poorly designed and badly implemented.
• Scores 4.5, 3.5, 2.5, and 1.5 mean the product falls somewhere in between. We don’t score any more precisely than .5 increments, so don’t expect a product to receive a score of pi.

I originally gave iMovie a 3 out of 5 versus say a 2 out of 5 (because some of the shortcoming were arguably major feature omissions) because I felt that the concept behind it is very solid, and that by and large, iMovie has a lot going for it.

Where does that leave iMovie 7.1? There are a few things I’d like to see added back, such as more audio volume control. However, I feel that iMovie 7.1 fixes the most serious flaws in iMovie, I will give iMovie 7.1 a solid 4.0.

Previously in this series

Part 1: iPhoto
Part 2: iMovie