Jeff Carlson of the venerable Mac news and info site TidBITS on the immense improvements to iMovie 09, including10 coole features you may not know about. Among them: you can now apply a set of filters and effects to a clip, and then copy and paste those onto other clips in your video project. That’s a feature I use in Final Cut Pro all the time. Nice.
Andy Ihnatko in Chicago Sun-Times says Apple’s iMovie09 is a true ‘wow’ update for video software. It’s not an in-depth review (you can find several via the Google), but I appreciate what he says about the image stabilization. That’s a major improvement that likely has developers of other edit apps trying to catch up. He also loves the new interface over the older one. I’ll have to give this latest version a new look after reading this.
I had fun compositing the image with XtraLean Software’s Imagewell using Andy’s headshot from his blog, the icon from iMovie 09, and the heart icon from DryIcons. Making the image took almost no time; I spent far too long searching for the heart. Thanks to all, but especially DryIcons.
Macworld magazine reviews the changes added (some added back) to iMovie 09. More information at Apple’s iMovie page as well.
This introduction is “gentle” only in technical terms; Mark Pilgrim’s language can get quite salty, so if your school’s filters block four-letter words, you’ll need to read this at home. Nonetheless, the four part A Gentle Introduction to Video Encoding (part one, part two, part three, part four) is an excellent introduction to concepts, terminology, patent status, and limitations of the formats. It does not provide any instruction or tutorials, but those are widely available through the Google.
The knowledgable folks at TidBITS like the changes in the new iMovie ‘09”:http://db.tidbits.com/article/9984 announced yesterday at Macworld.
A quick link to a thorough piece on compressing for YouTube: How To Make YouTube Videos Look Great. The author covers several methods, platforms, and compressors, including Divx, Flash, and QuickTime, and provides links to samples. Very well done – if you want to learn about video compression for the web, whether for YouTube or some other site, you’ll do well to bookmark this.
Via Creative Cow’s newsletter, I learned of Shane Ross’s Ultimate FCP FAQ, Part 3. After scanning it, I realized this was a good list of tips that can really save time and aggravation.
“Part 3?” I said to myself… so I checked out Part 1 and Part 2. Well worth bookmarking if you use FCP. Among some pointers, Shane tells you how to save your project so it can be opened in an earlier version of Final Cut, why capturing with iMovie doesn’t work well with Final Cut, tips for backing up your project once you’re done, and much more. That’s worth a bookmark right there.
Thanks, Shane.
Ken Stone comes to the rescue again, posting a brief but invaluable set of tips by Mark Spencer.
The bottom line? Video looks different on your computer monitor than it does on a television. They reproduce their images in very different ways – pixels vs. lines of resolution, etc. Some of the same issues apply with iMovie as well. This is a good introduction if you’re having issues like this, and can lead you to a better understanding of how digital video works.
Here’s a series of iMovie HD 6 video tutorials and Apple’s Getting Started PDF that you’ll find helpful.
Here’s a nicely done screencast tutorial about the time-lapse capabilities of iMovie 06 HD. You can use a DV camera or the built-in iSight camera in later iMacs and Apple laptops. You can adjust the frame rate to whatever you want: make a 24-hour day collapse into 1 hour, 1 minute, or even 24 seconds. A class could do an interesting video of their ant farm, of some plants germinating under a grow light, or even record students in the classroom to see what their patterns of movement look like.