I have started to re evaluate iMovie 8 (part of iLife 09) as a tool for digital storytelling. I was beginning to warm to it until I began some tests to nail down it’s behaviour with still images.
Now it’s driving me to distraction – it’s so inconsistent. So my write up will take a bit longer than I’d hoped. On the whole, at this stage, I’m disappointed with iMovie 8. Transitions make a mess of timings, fine editing is tedious and too many numbers have to be typed into boxes when dragging a clip edge should do the job. More later – hopefully with fewer grumbles …… or perhaps I just need to lock myself away in a darkened room to calm down and wish for a bug fix in Snow Leopard for iMovie HD.
I’ve been evaluating Photo to Moviefrom LQ Graphics as a tool for digital storytelling. My favourite application is iMovie HD. It’s not perfect but better the devil you know – and I know iMovie pretty well now and still discover tricks that make me think “how clever”.
When Apple rewrote iMovie for iLife 08 it presented a host of problems for digital storytellers. The most obvious one is the total lack of a timeline in the conventional video editing style. It can be pressed into use for digital storytelling but for a new user there is a serious lack mouse functions for stills. Almost all of the digital stories told in my workshops are told by beginners using still images. Things improved in iLife 09 but not enough for me to start using it over the HD version.
Building Affected for Life? in Photo to Movie
Last month someone alerted me to Photo to Movie. A package written specifically for still images. It has a timeline and is capable of creating something more sophisticated than a simple slideshow by the use of highly configurable zoom and pan functions. It integrates quite well with iTunes and iPhoto, and so things looked hopeful as I read the help files and absorbed the basic functions. There are also Mac and Windows versions. But would it live up to my hopes? (more…)
I have just compiled a section of my tutorial story “Affected for Life” using iMovie ‘09. I’m warming to it.
I began this exercise because the free download of iMovie HD is no longer available from the Apple site and attempts to install it on a new MacBook brings up an error message because iMovie ‘08 has to be installed before the older HD version can be loaded. It doesn’t work if the computer is supplied with iLife ‘09. I can only assume this is because Apple think that the much improved ‘09 version should be enough for new Mac users.
[After some experimentation I found that by opening the iMovie HD installer package the app can extracted and dragged into the Applications folder as long as it's in a folder called iMovie (Older Version). But as the app is no longer officially available it will soon be time to move on to another editing application. Sadly I have to concede that version 6 HD of iMovie is in sharp decline.]
Hence my experiment with ‘09. It was easier because I had all the images to hand and it was simple to build the story in order from start to finish, but my head’s buzzing with possible solutions for those storytellers who hunt out their images as they go along. I think iMovie ‘09 will be made to work and ultimately may even be simpler – despite the lack of a timeline in the form that most digital storytellers have been used to using.
The next Engenious Stories workshop is in Southampton. If you are interested you have only a short time to register, but it’s free and you will find the experience very rewarding. More about the project here. Click on the flyer below to download it.
To register contact Dr Steve Dorney today if possible.
This a rather techy article from Macworld but it is very useful. The quality of exported video from iMovie is often disappointing for a number of reasons. This article tackles only one format, 720 line HD, but the principles can be applied to others too. It’s well worth a read. If you understand it, fine. If not you may need a more elementary lesson in video formats.
You also have better control over the audio track, the title animation, and the sound effects–you can change them or move them around, for example. But we still would prefer a more precise manipulation. For example, we wanted to match up an exact part of a song to a specific point in a video clip. We could only do this after a lot of dragging and dropping and trial and error. If we had a timeline, lining them up would be a lot easier. For better transitions and edits, the precision editor works great, but we still miss the timeline.
While it seems that the new iMovie is better than the previous version the lack of a timeline still concerns me. I will update my views after I have installed iLife ‘09 for myself – still waiting for the postman to delever.
The new iMovie ‘09 appears to have the same serious limitation on using stills as the previous version. Drag a still into the project and it’s duration is set by default to 4 seconds. In any other video editing software changing the duration is just a matter of dragging the end of the clip to the right place on the timeline. In the new iMovie you have to click on a tiny icon and enter the duration from the keyboard in seconds (no frames as in iMovie 6 HD). A matter of trial and error in equal quantities.
I found out about this from the Apple iMovie ‘09 tutorial so I have posted a question on the iMovie ‘09 discussion on the Apple Site to see if anyone had discovered a workaround. In the meantime I’ll be using version 6 HD, which I am assured does work after iLife ‘09 has been installed.
The new iMovie ‘09 appears to have the same serious limitation on using stills as the previous version. Drag a still into the project and it’s duration is set by default to 4 seconds. In any other video editing software changing the duration is just a matter of dragging the end of the clip to the right place on the timeline. In the new iMovie you have to click on a tiny icon and enter the duration from the keyboard in seconds (no frames as in iMovie 6 HD). A matter of trial and error in equal quantities.
