[miketaylor]

Has anyone out there had a chance to play with imovie2 yet? If so can you tell the rest of us what its like - thanks
Mike

[The Scalz]

I have used iMovie2 on my new 500Mhz iMac DV SE. It's great software. I have dabbled in making home made, fun music videos in the past, using two VCRs and a camcorder to do the edits, along with a small mixing board from Radio Shack for dubbing over the sound track. iMovie makes this process a breeze. All I'm doing is taking a Beatles song and overlaying shots of my 2 year old son. It's just a simple, fun video montage which has edits that go in time to the music.

My Sony Digital 8 camera connected like a charm to the iMac with the supplied (by Apple) FireWire cable. It was cool controlling the camera from the on-screen interface in iMovie. And I didn't read the supplied help files once. Just started clicking and draggging, making mistakes, fixing them and cutting together my little clips. What fun! A totally amazing experience.

I will say this... for a 3 minute video, with 10 - 15 cuts, it took me about 4 - 5 hours to complete the project. But the satisfaction was worth it. Will I make tons of more videos? Probably not. But was this the BEST reason to get a new iMac? Yes, definitely. It has got to be the single best "value-added" feature of this computer.

Hope this helps.

------------------
Richard Scalzo
Graphic Designer & Art Director
Mac user for 15 years

[bradr]

I got a chance to play with it briefly at CompUSA. A few things spring to mind...

1. They fixed the titles so they don't go to the edge if you're going back out to tape. Many times, my titles were lost at the edges of the screen. If you're going out to QT, you can check QT Margins to use the entire screen. They didn't have the add-in pack installed, but I did see one new title type called "Drift" that floats your text lines past each other. Unfortunately, centered titles still have large text over smaller text. Can't we get that fixed??

2. The effects options are cool. They use the QT Pro effects. Be prepared to sit, as it takes a few minutes to re-render a clip with your chosen effect.

Overall, you've got much more control over your movies in version 2. Now the only question is "When do I get my own copy??"

This is what made me jump PC ship and by a cube..

Originally posted by The Scalz:
snipped...

I will say this... for a 3 minute video, with 10 - 15 cuts, it took me about 4 - 5 hours to complete the project. But the satisfaction was worth it. Will I make tons of more videos? Probably not. But was this the BEST reason to get a new iMac? Yes, definitely. It has got to be the single best "value-added" feature of this computer.

Hope this helps.

Oh yes you will!

A colleaque brough in a g4 (I think) with Imovie, (as I had just purchased a Sony TRV320 Corder), and wanted to show me how easy it was to capture and create using Imovie.

What fun! So much fun in fact that I ended up churning out 12 silly movies in about 7 hours..(It was a slow day in Tech Support)..

Love it, can't wait for my cube now..

Andrew.

(If you're interested in what I put together using Imovie go here: http://live.whimwham.com

[This message has been edited by mobean (edited 08-17-2000).]

Originally posted by mobean:
This is what made me jump PC ship and by a cube..

Oh yes you will!

A colleaque brough in a g4 (I think) with Imovie, (as I had just purchased a Sony TRV320 Corder), and wanted to show me how easy it was to capture and create using Imovie.

What fun! So much fun in fact that I ended up churning out 12 silly movies in about 7 hours..(It was a slow day in Tech Support)..

Love it, can't wait for my cube now..

Andrew.

(If you're interested in what I put together using Imovie go here: http://live.whimwham.com

[This message has been edited by mobean (edited 08-17-2000).]

Originally posted by mobean:
This is what made me jump PC ship and by a cube..

Oh yes you will!

A colleaque brough in a g4 (I think) with Imovie, (as I had just purchased a Sony TRV320 Corder), and wanted to show me how easy it was to capture and create using Imovie.

What fun! So much fun in fact that I ended up churning out 12 silly movies in about 7 hours..(It was a slow day in Tech Support)..

Love it, can't wait for my cube now..

Andrew.

(If you're interested in what I put together using Imovie go here: http://live.whimwham.com

[This message has been edited by mobean (edited 08-17-2000).]

[The Scalz]

Okay, I may get sucked into endless video editing... I do have the cutest kid to make videos of. We'll see how long the 30GB hard drive holds out. My first 3 minute video took up almost 1GB on it's own. That means there's only so much you can keep, for further editing vs. starting over from scratch. In my line of work I'm used to keeping all of the support files. I may have to re-think that with iMovie. Time to look into an external back-up strategy.

------------------
Richard Scalzo
Graphic Designer & Art Director
Mac user for 15 years

[This message has been edited by The Scalz (edited 08-18-2000).]

[This message has been edited by The Scalz (edited 08-18-2000).]

I literally just got home from taking my daughter to college. (boo hoo) Anyway, in the absolutely packed bookstore there was a new DV with iMovie2. I was able to spend about ten minutes fiddling with it and it seemed very cool. My biggest gripe has always been the audio. They've made a huge leap on that. You can "unlock" the audio and make inserts on top of the video. You can control each audio clip.. making it fade in or out and the level. There are MANY more spaces on the shelf for clips (didn't count 'em) There is a way to slow down a clip. All in all it seemed very sweet!!! I'm ready to drop $49 (or more) to get it.

PS: optical mouse -- NIIIICCCEEEEE