Let’s get this out of the way. iMovie 6 was a classic. It was a mature, full-featured application that allowed typical users to put together polished, well-produced home movies easily. iMovie 6 had its faults, no doubt. For example, it isn’t the fastest application out there. iMovie 6 takes time to render visual effects, titles, and transitions. But by and large, it is a very solid and capable video editing application.

Then along came iLife ‘08.

With iLife ‘08, Apple decided that it was time to put the old iMovie out to pasture. The move caught many people off guard--why would Apple throw away eight years of development and go in a completely different direction? iMovie ‘08 is a completely different beast than iMovie ‘06. The question is, however, does iMovie ‘08 live up to iMovie’s legacy of allowing any consumer to create a slick home movie quickly and easily? Let’s find out.

I finally decided to work on a video project I’ve wanted to do for about a month now: take the video my brother and nephew shot from a trip to New Mexico and make a short iMovie out of it. My experiences with this project are what I am basing this review on.

And yes, I know this review is not the most timely. My apologies.

UPDATE: A quick note: I originally based this review off of iMovie 7.0 and not version 7.1. I held off with the upgrade since my internet connection, well, sucks. It turns out that a number of things changed with the iMovie 7.1 update. Read all about it!

Plastic Smooth metal surgery

The basic components of iMovie ‘08’s window. click image for larger.

iMovie has received a massive facelift in its reincarnation. Gone is the familiar UI that has served iMovie from its inception; iMovie ‘08 now uses a library paradigm, much like iPhoto and iTunes. By default, the bottom half of the main window serves as a video library browser. From there, you can peruse any video from your iPhoto library or digital camcorder. For whatever reason, content in your ~/Movies folder does not appear in iMovie. My guess is that it has something to do with copyright issues. Also in the lower half of the window is the collapsable gallery pane, which allows you to view your iLife media, titles, and transitions.

The top half of the window is dedicated to your iMovie projects. On the left-hand side of the window is a source list containing all of your iMovie ‘08 projects (iMovie 6 and earlier projects will not show up in iMovie ‘08), allowing you to quickly access all your iMovie projects without having to deal with the Finder or Open dialog boxes. iMovie only allows one “open” project at a time, but considering how easy it is to access the other projects, this point is moot. The middle pane is the timeline, where you drag in video clips in any order you want and assemble your movie. You can also drag in audio files from your iTunes library or the built-in sound effects (I’ll discuss sound editing in a bit). The third pane contains the video playback.

The iMovie ‘08 UI approach has its advantages; for example, accessing any video you shot is extremely easy, and it’s nice to be able to switch from one iMovie project to another on the fly by simply selecting it in the projects source list. On the other hand, though, the user interface does not work well on small screens (like a 13” MacBook, for example). In its default configuration, photo pane is extremely squished. Observe:

What’s that? You don’t need to look at the video library pane all the time? Too bad, because it is impossible to hide. Also, for users who are used to the old iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, the iMovie ‘08 user interface may seem very unfamiliar and can result in a bit of a learning curve. Also, many of the buttons in iMovie ‘08’s main window lack any text labels, making them somewhat cryptic initially. You will rely on tooltips until you become familiar with iMovie.

Something missing?

I have one more UI note: the save function. iMovie ‘08 has no proper “Save” command; instead, iMovie ‘08 automatically saves the changes, which is well and good, but I find it galling that iMovie doesn’t allow the user to save the state of a project when they want to.

Skimming made its way into iMovie as well. Like in iPhoto, you can simply run the mouse pointer over a video clip to play back at any speed. You can, of course, play it back at real time as well by placing the playhead at the beginning of the clip. Skimming is an absurdly easy way to quickly scan through video clips, and is without a doubt one of the best things iMovie ‘08 has going for it.

Editing

Let’s edit a movie! The first thing you’ll notice is that selecting video clips is simultaneously very easy and more difficult than is should be.

Selecting a clip.

Let me explain. Selecting a segment of a video clip is as easy as selecting text--just click and hold, drag the mouse, and release when you have the section you want. From there, drag the selected segment into the timeline pane. It’s an easy process, until you want to select an entire clip. If you were expecting to be able to simply drag an entire clip into the project timeline, you can’t. You need to select the whole thing and then drag it, and to do so, you must drag from one end of the clip to the other. For short clips, this isn’t a problem, but for longer clips, it can be cumbersome. UPDATE: A reader rightly points out that a “Select Entire Clip” menu command (Edit menu and contextual menu). Somehow I missed that.

Also, iMovie ‘08 does not allow you to split a video clip at the playhead, which can become very annoying if you’re splicing multiple clips together. In fact, it is impossible to park the playhead at all.

I’d like to make a quick note about the timeline pane. The timeline pane displays clips, transitions, and such in sequential order as you would expect, but it does not display the current time of the playhead. In other words, there’s no way place the playhead at 3 minutes, 24 seconds in because no times are displayed. For quick editing, this isn’t a huge issue, but it may be frustrating for those who want to make precision edits.

Applying transitions and titles is much faster in iMovie ‘08. Simply drag in a transition or title (and edit the title text). That’s it. No rendering. There aren’t as many titles or transitions as there were in iMovie ‘06, but the ease of adding them makes it an even tradeoff. Additionally, you can edit titles even after they have been added to your project. Very cool.

Audio editing in iMovie ‘08 has been severely neutered. How, you ask?

• Equalizer, reverb, pitch, noise reducer, etc… settings have been removed from iMovie.
• You cannot manually control the volume of the audio in the timeline. You can control the volume for the entire audio or video clip, but you can’t, for example, raise the volume in one part of a clip and lower it in another. It’s all or nothing now.
• If you want to, say, mute the volume for the video track, you have to select each and every clip and reduce the volume manually, since it is impossible to select multiple clips. Part of this has to do with the fact that there are no true tracks anymore.

In other words, if iMovie 6’s audio editing features were a big draw for you, you will be disappointed with iMovie ‘08. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to not be able to manually fade out an audio track.

Sharing

iMovie ‘08 gains some new sharing features. It is now possible to post a video directly on YouTube from the iMovie application itself! Awesome! And of course, iMovie ‘08 includes support for .mac Web Galleries. Additionally, you can export your project to a number of formats, including QuickTime, MPEG-4, AVI, and Windows Media. The new sharing features are great. Personally, I think this dialog says it all:

Missing, however, is any and all integration with iDVD. Contrary to what Jobs says, the DVD isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Would it have killed Apple to include a “Send to iDVD” menu command somewhere?

Anti-introduction

iMovie ‘08 has already proven itself to be a controversial piece of software, and for good reason; in many respects it is a brain transplant. There have been points where I have wanted to kiss iMovie ‘08, and points where I have wanted to kill it. There’s a lot to like, and there’s a lot to dislike. iMovie’s great for people who want to cut video clips together, add some music and transitions, upload it to YouTube, and call it a day. For those out there who want or need little bit more (but don’t need something like Final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro—I fall into this group), iMovie no longer does the job. iMovie ‘08 is an application with a lot of promise, but also with some glaring—some might say obvious—holes. I give it a 3 out of 5; iMovie ‘08 a nice start, but there’s a long way to go.

Previously in this series

iLife ‘08 Review Part 1: iPhoto