iMovie '08: It's not that bad

iMovie '08 has gotten a bad rap lately so I decided to put it through its paces and see what all the fuss was about. Now, I'm not a professional video editor -- just your average Josephine -- but, frankly, I think the new iMovie kinda rocks.

Most of the arguments against '08 center around the idea that iMovie has been dumbed down, and I agree with that. The new version is a more a quick and dirty editor for crafting YouTube videos than a tool for making high-quailty advertising spots (hello?) or putting together your sister's wedding video. Then again, maybe this is Apple's way of pushing serious video editors toward Final Cut.

Truth be told, I was never impressed with iMovie '06. Apple products tend to be intuitive to the nth degree so I was surprised when my first few go-arounds with '06 left me frustrated and wondering if I shouldn't go back to Windows Movie Maker. I mainly make personal-use movies with and for my kids, so I hardly need a full-fledged production studio at my disposal. Instead, I just need something that lets me easily import video from our cameras, slice and dice it into some sort of edited watchability, and maybe add a fun transition or two.

Splicing film together with '06 was a huge hassle and seemed to require precision mousing. With '08, frames are laid out in a such a way that you can easily grab just the clips you need and string them together quickly. Adding transitions like fade-to-black or screen wipes is simply a matter of dragging-and-dropping the effects right where you want them.

Adding a title card or scrolling credits is also a piece of cake. Just drag the effect you want to the beginning or end of the clip, click the text field, and type in what you like.

Since I'm an average consumer my litmus test was whether I could put together a quick film using '08 without reading the directions or using the help features. I recorded a four-and-a-half minute movie with my children, then imported it into iMovie '08 on my MacBook Pro. I boiled it down into a two-and-a-half minute clip with three transitions, a title card, and credits -- all in less than 20 minutes. And I never once used the help feature.

Contrast that to my first experience with iMovie '06 when I imported two four-minute video clips onto my iMac, and it took me over an hour to put them together using one of the native themes. Using '06 to make a video for our sister site, DIY Life, nearly sent me into fits when I tried "complex" touches like snipping off the beginning and end of a clip, then applying the site's title card to the front end.

Since I'm all about efficiency, I love that you can upload a movie to YouTube from right within the app. YouTube is hardly the only place to host video however, so I was surprised at the lack of integration with other services like Blip.tv and Google Video (in fact, the Google video issue is even more puzzling since Google owns YouTube). I suspect as those and other services grow, we'll see better integration in the future.

I do have one quibble with iMovie '08, though, and it's a biggie. The ability to effectively manipulate audio sucks sweatsocks. When I made the test video to accompany this review, I knew I was wading into unhappy sound territory. I put a disc in my MacBook Pro, then taped it playing the video. I wasn't expecting good results but I was expecting to be able to tinker with the audio output at least enough to make it upload-worthy. No dice. Having done the same thing with '06 and gotten good results, I'm surprised the audio editing seems to have taken a step backwards, but since everything else works well enough, I'm willing to come up with a workaround for future projects.

I'm well aware of the gripes people have about iMovie '08 and I'm sure they're perfectly valid, especially for people who have used the app far longer -- and more intensively -- than I ever did. My best advice is that if you're a novice movie maker, or new to movie editing in general, don't discount '08 right away. Give it a try and you might find that it's perfectly suitable for what you need.