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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Applications > iMovie 10: what the h3ll, Apple??

iMovie 10: what the h3ll, Apple??
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FireWire
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Nov 21, 2013, 10:03 PM
 


What is Apple smoking? They had a simple and friendly video editing app and now they decided to ruin it for no reason... Why??? Before, if you wanted to delete a 2 seconds segments in the middle of your clip, you just selected that part and pressed backspace. Voilà.. now it seems you have to split your clip then use Trim to selection.. If you wanted to mute a certain part, you just selected the soundtrack part you wanted to dim and lowered the volume bar. Now I don't even know how to do this without once again split the clip and edit the sound of just that part.. Are we expected to split our movie in 63344 parts? Same thing if you wanted to speed up or slow down a part, you selected it and iMovie did the splitting for you.. And don't get me started about the volume control, which up the volume 200% if you move just a fraction of a millimeter, and makes it hard to snap back at 100%.. Am I missing something or did Apple just threw a middle finger at us?
     
andi*pandi
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Nov 22, 2013, 01:10 PM
 
They've been making it more complicated and final-cut like for a while now, which is not what made it amazing.

Ironically, i've heard the final cut users complain that final cut is getting dumbed down too much like iMovie... maybe apple is trying to end up with one product?
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 22, 2013, 02:03 PM
 
Final Cut didn't get dumbed down, any more than Logic did in v8, despite all the whining to the contrary.
They just rethought the interface.
Dumbing down would mean significant omission of functionality and simplification of the results (not the workflow). This was never the plan for Final Cut, and most of the relevant functionality has been restored over time, as planned.

With the changes in Mavericks, I'm beginning to suspect that the simplification is now being concentrated on iOS, with Macs going down the road of complexity and potency.
     
vintagegeek
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Nov 22, 2013, 03:39 PM
 
I quit using iMovie a couple versions ago because it stop allowing straight forward editing and export. And you were forced to put a Title Slide etc on everything. I use quicktime pro for all the simple editing. Then if I want to make it a movie I'll import to Toast to burn a DVD etc. iMovie is a last resort. For a firm that stresses audio and video efforts they sure make it complicated to do the easy things.
     
cashxx
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Nov 22, 2013, 03:53 PM
 
Originally Posted by vintagegeek View Post
I quit using iMovie a couple versions ago because it stop allowing straight forward editing and export. And you were forced to put a Title Slide etc on everything. I use quicktime pro for all the simple editing. Then if I want to make it a movie I'll import to Toast to burn a DVD etc. iMovie is a last resort. For a firm that stresses audio and video efforts they sure make it complicated to do the easy things.
Ditto, I use Quicktime 7 Pro for the same. Its so easy for quick edits of video. I have been trying to get Apple to get QT X to work the same way, but no luck. I would love to see the tick marks come back so you can cut/paste video as easy as QT 7. Select pieces and cut/paste and use the arrow keys to go frame by frame, etc. QT X you can only trim the video and it sucks.

Luckily QT 7 still works in Mavericks!! Best quick edit software I know of.
     
panjandrum
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Nov 22, 2013, 04:12 PM
 
Unfortunately for all us Apple fans it's becoming increasingly clear that something has gone deeply and fundamentally rotten at Apple. Yes, I know that's not a new thought (or even a new way of expressing that thought), but it is appropriate. Apple has for several years been making UI changes which create unnecessary confusion with no net-bennefit whatsoever (disastrous removal of Save As command, anyone? anyone?). Not only that, but they have simultaneously dumbed-down many products while somehow simultaneously making those products harder to use. I guess we can't talk about aesthetics (but look at the latest reviews of the new iBooks!) because that is truly a matter of personal taste, but we can certainly look at changes objectively and tell whether or not a change is beneficial or detrimental regardless of how pretty (or not) we find those changes. This has been an annoyance to the "power users for quite some time," but is now becoming blatant enough that even mainstream Mac and IOS users are starting to see the problem. And this isn't just about "people not liking change". That's sometimes a valid argument, but it just doesn't seem to apply to the majority of Apple's recent moves. This is about people being intelligent and savvy enough to understand the difference between change-for-the-better and change-for-the-worse. When a product gains new features and/or becomes easier to use then that's change for the better. When a product loses features and/or becomes more difficult to use then that's change for the worse. It's not just the end-user and/or individual user that is experiencing this degradation of Apple software either, they are consistently making decisions which are causing problems for school and business network users and admins as well. (The most clear example I can think of off the top of my head is that they designed a system to replace the "save as" functionality, and then made that system incompatible with their OWN networked home-folder environment (Open Directory), which is used by countless schools and businesses. The end result? A LOT of lost work.)

So it's not just you Firewire. I fundamentally agree with with you point that Apple is (and I would add "has for several years now") been making mostly changes-for-the-worse, and probably smoking something nasty to boot!
     
Geoduck
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Nov 22, 2013, 04:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by panjandrum View Post
Unfortunately for all us Apple fans it's becoming increasingly clear that something has gone deeply and fundamentally rotten at Apple. Y
Certainly in the software division. iPhoto has just gotten stupid. Why can I click on a photo to edit it but cannot just hit escape to go back to the library. Why is iTunes still taking two minutes to load on a 2012 MacBook Pro?when I just want to play a song? No it has to check with the store and update Genius lists and see what movies I may have for download. Pretty much every Apple software product has gone out of it's way to become more difficult to use with less function.

Thanks for the tip about Quicktime Pro. I think I'll give that a try. My video output has ground to a halt a couple of iMovie revisions ago. It just won't let me do what I want. It's OK but kludgy if I want to edit a video or add music to a series of slides but in my case I have an audio track of a play and I want to put pictures of random length of the actors over it. Never found a simple way to do that.
Though I did not know the place, I set out for the land of my dreams
When I arrived at the land of my dreams, I found I did not know the place
     
Sebastien
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Nov 23, 2013, 08:16 PM
 
Apple isn't about giving you what you want - Apple's all about telling you what you want.
     
Geoduck
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Nov 23, 2013, 11:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by Sebastien View Post
Apple isn't about giving you what you want - Apple's all about telling you what you want.
A couple of years ago I would have strongly disagreed.
But any more....
Though I did not know the place, I set out for the land of my dreams
When I arrived at the land of my dreams, I found I did not know the place
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 23, 2013, 11:33 PM
 
Really? iMovie HD was all about flexibility?

At the same time, they've dropped the price of Final Cut Pro down WELL into enthusiast territory.

I now have video options I couldn't have imagined budgeting not two years ago.
And iMovie was all about limiting options. From the day it was announced, back in 1999.

Although I haven't tried the new iMovie yet; it would indeed be a shame if they messed it up. The previous version was awesome, if tremendously buggy.
     
drbroom
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Nov 24, 2013, 08:22 PM
 
I started with Apple back in 77' when my best friend at the time and I got an Apple 1 kit and assembled it; I became a developer in 84' soon after I got my 128k Mac... staying threw the "bad" old days of Scully and the rest. Apple was just my 'home' in technology and the alternatives, well... 'friends don't let friends do DOS'

When Steve came back to Apple it was like a rebirth. It was was pure exceptionalism; we saw the Mac become the most popular UNIX based machine in the world with a modern OS and the creation of the iPod, the iPhone and iPad. All devices that gave us much of what we wanted with the promise of so much more. Then we lost Steve again, first to sickness then...

Since our collective loss, all Apple has had to offer are small tweaks that usually consist of loss of functionality or worse, changes to the standards! (Does anyone remember the "Human Interface Guidelines" - Tog... Where the hell are you?!? Norman, are these the "Design of Everyday Things"?)

When Forstall was fired and Ive was given the rains I thought there was hope, I mean Ive worked so closely with Steve (as I understood it) that we would see some really great stuff. Then iOS 7 came out and... well need I say more? Ok. Maverick... it better the Lion and Mt. Lion but only in the background.

At this point I am seriously looking at my next mobile device being one that is running the Android OS and my next laptop running OpenBSD.

My sadness at this is overwhelming in many ways but functionality is my master in this world and Apple is slowly losing theirs.

db ( I USED to bleed in 6 colors! )
     
panjandrum
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Nov 24, 2013, 11:25 PM
 
I think we are in the same boat drbroom. I've been a Apple supporter, small-scale IT worker, and fan since way back with the Apple II. Didn't really get into it until the Mac era with the 512k and the Plus (plus the Specter 128 & GCR in there for a while). Regardless, I was there through the dark years, and then through the return and revival with Steve. I guess we aren't back to the (nearly unusable due to stability issues) 7.5 days yet, but the absolute raft of poor software design resulting for the simultaneous degrading of both features and usability has me extremely worried for the future of both the Mac OS and iOS. I work with professionals (and Mac enthusiasts) every day, and with 200+ Mac and iPad users (educational environment) every day as well. The reactions to the current trend in Apple software is "downright awful". People who have used Apple systems for decades are suddenly looking for alternatives. Apple has a lot of momentum right now, and they can afford a few mistakes, but they can't afford too many, and as far as I can tell they currently aren't even aware that they have a problem... People will someday wake-up and realize "hey, this stuff used to be great, but now it's complete crap," and take their money elsewhere.
     
FireWire  (op)
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Nov 25, 2013, 12:44 AM
 
I managed to finish my first video with the new version.. I got used to spit clip endlessly but there are several deal-breakers... the most annoying being that even if you clip somewhere, iMovie somehow cuts the clip a bit before or after, requiring manual editing even if I selected the exact spot where I wanted to cut.. plus the cursor always snaps to the "needle" and start/end of the clip, making it difficult to position the cursor exactly where wanted.. if you want to cut the first few seconds, it's next to impossible because it will always snap to the start.. I wasn't able to lower the sound to remove sound clipping because that would have required to do a lot of splitting just to adjust the sound everywhere.. We can't create control point for background music anymore so we can't lower the volume at arbitrary places, and we can't split the soundtrack at all.. and all that useless splitting complicates things for transition, as it creates very short clips, and transitions are too short because we can't make a 0,5 sec transition for a 2 sec clips.. I tried joining clips after making adjustement, but then it doesn't retain individual sound adjustements.. Also, iMovie doesn't indicate duration of selected clips, making it impossible to know exactly how long a segment is (for quick intro montage). Also, before it would organize your events by year and you could easily decide on what HD to store them. Now they are all in a large library, without any organization and with no obvious way to tell iMovie to save that project or event on a specific HD.. Also, before you could put a subtitle or a transition and decide to change it to another one later (from lower to upper, from mosaic to slide from left, for example) but now once it's there, you have to delete it and put a new one...

The experience wasn't enjoyable at all...

[Edit] Oh, and when checking the remaining time when exporting in the "activity monitor", don't click the little "X" to make the notification pop-up disappear.. that's gonna stop the encoding...
( Last edited by FireWire; Nov 25, 2013 at 01:30 AM. )
     
FireWire  (op)
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Nov 25, 2013, 05:54 AM
 
At this point I might as well upgrade to Final Cut Pro.. it's not harder, and on the contrary, I achieved much more after toying with the demo for a few hours only...

[Edit] And as a bonus, it exports the final movie much faster than iMovie...
( Last edited by FireWire; Nov 25, 2013 at 06:31 AM. )
     
Eug
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Nov 25, 2013, 10:03 PM
 
It's always a bad sign when they install a new version of the program and leave the old version intact. They did that with iMovie 10, leaving the iMovie 9.0.9 install intact. They did the same thing with iMovie '06 when they introduced iMovie '08. The latter was basically unusable. It's an acknowledgement that their new version sucks balls.

However, it's kinda moot for me these days, since I've basically given up on iMovie entirely. It may as well no longer exist... on the Mac at least. I use it for quick edits on my iPhone 5s, when I take video on the iPhone.

And that's really it now. iMovie is no longer about Macs. It's about iOS.

And yeah, I also use QuickTime Pro 7 too. How long has QuickTime X been out now?

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Final Cut didn't get dumbed down, any more than Logic did in v8, despite all the whining to the contrary.
They just rethought the interface.
Dumbing down would mean significant omission of functionality and simplification of the results (not the workflow). This was never the plan for Final Cut, and most of the relevant functionality has been restored over time, as planned.
No, they dumbed it down severely, and everyone freaked. People complained that work they did in Final Cut Studio could not be done in Final Cut X. Not that it was more complex or confusing, but that was completely impossible. As in no way at all of doing some work in Final Cut X, even if you had 3 times as long to do it.

Then Apple went into panic mode because people freaked in unison and threatened to leave the platform. Apple even went as far as to bring back Final Cut Studio from the dead. They even went a step further and started refunding the purchase cost for Final Cut X to appease people. But it was too little, too late, cuz a bunch of people did leave the platform. Entire companies switched to Avid and Premiere.

Perhaps they did plan on restoring a lot, but their rollout was completely unprofessional. With such a botched launch, it's no surprise everyone started thinking Apple no longer cared about them, cuz, well, they didn't.

Ironically, if I had some more free time, I'd buy Final Cut X to edit my videos. However, I'm not a video editing professional. I'm just a hobbyist who finds iMovie totally lame nowadays and need something better to play around with.
( Last edited by Eug; Nov 25, 2013 at 10:24 PM. )
     
FireWire  (op)
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Nov 25, 2013, 10:11 PM
 
Why are they doing this? going from the best company in the world, with wonderful products, to a company I curse more and more... they're pulling a facebook.. "hum, what can we change today to piss our users off..." I mean, the new iMovie is blantantly made to infuriate users.. Before you could teach anyone to do breathtaking movies with no efforts, now even experienced users can't output a non-sh!tty video.. It's too complicated for everyday people yet it lackes precision control for pro... It should not be easier to use Final Cut pro (after messing with it for a few minutes) than iMovie... And small gripe regarding FCP: why no student discount? Adobe shaves off thousands of dollars on Creative Suite, from 2000+ to 200$, yet Apple doesn't remove a dime from a 199$ software...
     
FireWire  (op)
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Nov 25, 2013, 10:13 PM
 
I simply don't get why they feel the need to destroy everything that was working great.. It's like a drunken programmer throws some mockup together and no one tests it before shipping it.. I dare anyone at Apple to do a decent video without spending 2 hours and saying at least 30 swears words...
     
Eug
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Nov 25, 2013, 10:28 PM
 
Originally Posted by FireWire View Post
Why are they doing this? going from the best company in the world, with wonderful products, to a company I curse more and more... they're pulling a facebook.. "hum, what can we change today to piss our users off..." I mean, the new iMovie is blantantly made to infuriate users.
Basically iMovie is getting harmonized between the Mac and iOS... which makes no sense to me whatsoever. Why the hell would I buy an iMac to run iMovie then, when I may as well just run it on a $499 iPad Air?

Certainly, I no longer consider iLife to be a viable reason to get a Mac.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 26, 2013, 03:20 AM
 
No matter what Apple does, there won't be a viable reason for casual users to get a Mac, not too many years from now.

I agree with you that they botched the FCPX introduction completely, but it was neither intent nor end-result that they dumbed down the application, and their reinstatement of vital functionality was not a reaction to user panic -- merely the prioritization of features was.
Or do you seriously believe Apple were planning to ship the app without ever adding multi-cam support?
     
ghporter
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Nov 26, 2013, 07:28 AM
 
I can't see a need to make an iOS version of an OS X app "full featured" the way it looks like iMovie is headed. How many people buy even the maxed-out version of an iPad to capture AND edit video? Compare that to how many more buy an iPad and casually capture video, select a clip and upload it (or other lower-demand task)?

It doesn't make sense to me to have the "light weight" hardware of the iOS device to be expected to do everything you can do with a much more fully equipped MBP, which can also be easily connected to an external storage device to save everything to (relatively quickly).

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 26, 2013, 12:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
I can't see a need to make an iOS version of an OS X app "full featured" the way it looks like iMovie is headed. How many people buy even the maxed-out version of an iPad to capture AND edit video? Compare that to how many more buy an iPad and casually capture video, select a clip and upload it (or other lower-demand task)?
Don't make the mistake of looking at where the puck is today.

Like I said, the way things are developing, a couple years down the line, most casual users won't have any reason to buy an iMac over an iPad.
     
elroth
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Nov 26, 2013, 12:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by drbroom View Post
When Steve came back to Apple it was like a rebirth. It was was pure exceptionalism; we saw the Mac become the most popular UNIX based machine in the world with a modern OS and the creation of the iPod, the iPhone and iPad. All devices that gave us much of what we wanted with the promise of so much more. Then we lost Steve again, first to sickness then...

Since our collective loss, all Apple has had to offer are small tweaks that usually consist of loss of functionality or worse, changes to the standards!
It was Steve himself who touted the new iMovie, which was a terribly amateurish product compared to iMovie HD (at the time it had no frame-by-frame editing, no chapter markers, no audio editing, no DVD burning). Steve made it sound really good in his presentation, as usual - I miss that, even if sometimes it was BS.

I think Steve lost his way with software his last few years - maybe he was just too busy to focus on it. I got the impression he never used the software he was selling.
     
Eug
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Nov 26, 2013, 02:39 PM
 
Originally Posted by elroth View Post
I think Steve lost his way with software his last few years - maybe he was just too busy to focus on it. I got the impression he never used the software he was selling.
Except Keynote. He used that quite a bit.

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that Keynote is the only one of the iApps besides iTunes that I still regularly use. For a spreadsheet and word processor I use Excel and Word. (I also use PowerPoint, but prefer Keynote.)
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 26, 2013, 02:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by elroth View Post
It was Steve himself who touted the new iMovie, which was a terribly amateurish product compared to iMovie HD (at the time it had no frame-by-frame editing, no chapter markers, no audio editing, no DVD burning). Steve made it sound really good in his presentation, as usual - I miss that, even if sometimes it was BS.
The basic concept of that new iMovie, however, was WAY superior to the old paradigm of iMovie HD. It's MUCH nicer to work with.

And — notice a pattern? — the old iMovie HD was not deleted from hard drives, and kept available as a free download until the NEXT version of the new iMovie had been released, restoring missed functionality for those who had used it in iMovie HD.
     
ghporter
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Nov 27, 2013, 06:59 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Don't make the mistake of looking at where the puck is today.

Like I said, the way things are developing, a couple years down the line, most casual users won't have any reason to buy an iMac over an iPad.
This is a very valid point, but I think the line between MBPs and iPads will blur before the desktop becomes redundant. Not so long ago people were discussing whether or not the MBP was a valid platform for doing photo editing and video production, basically for the same reason we're discussing this today, and we see what came of that - with sufficient external storage you can do almost any processing-intensive task with a well-equipped MBP that you used to need a desktop for.

What I was really commenting on wasn't "3 years from now," but "today." I want light-weight apps for my iPad because that makes it more useful, even if it isn't the powerhouse it may become next year or the year after. I've downloaded, and later deleted, a lot of apps that looked like great ideas but turned out to be clunky or just plain too intensive for my iPad 2. So what it looks like is happening with apps like Final Cut is that they're pushing an artificial need for the next generation of iPad, rather than supporting the current generation. I don't like that model of software development when it's done by the hardware maker...

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
Spheric Harlot
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Nov 27, 2013, 07:22 PM
 
I think that the Mac will retreat more and more into the "advanced user" niche as the iPad encroaches upon its low end.

There will be some overlap, but Apple won't let them blur too much.
     
   
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