iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide

iMovie '09 8.0.1 Update Brings More than Just Bug Fixes

[I published this article simultaneously at TidBITS.com.]

Apple released updates to iLife '09 and iWork '09 this week, as usual providing no useful information about what's changed other than, in the case of iMovie 8.0.1 for example, "improves overall application stability as well as addressing minor issues related to usability."

But the changes are seldom that uninteresting, and I wish Apple would get off its terse horse and provide at least a little more information. I'm biased here, I fully acknowledge, because the following changes mean more immediate, unexpected work. I'm currently updating my book iMovie '09 & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide, and I also updated the iMovie section of Jim Heid's upcoming title The Macintosh iLife '09.

The undocumented changes below require that I go back and edit material and take new screenshots. That's fine, it's my job. But what irks me is that I need to spend a lot of time poking through the program looking for changes and looking online for information from people who are doing the same.

I understand that Apple isn't creating its products for writers, and it can (and does) change features whenever it wants. The updates here are great for iMovie users. But since the development teams must keep internal lists of what's changed anyway, is it really so hard to spend an hour and turn those into useful release notes?

With that off my chest, here are four things I've discovered that are different in iMovie '09 8.0.1.

Split Clip Keyboard Shortcut -- This is a minor but welcome change. You can now split a clip by pressing Command-Shift-S instead of accessing the command from the Edit menu. What makes it more helpful is that you can split a clip without making a selection: just position the playhead over the frame you want to slice, and press the keys. Previously, you could do that only by accessing Split Clip from the contextual menu.

Interlacing Bug Fixed -- Here's something I think Apple would want to trumpet loudly. It fixed a bug where 1080i (interlaced) footage would appear combed when exported to QuickTime or iDVD. Prior to the fix, getting a clean HD picture required that you process the footage in other applications after exporting. Now, apparently the bug is fixed.

Enter Coordinates for New Map Locations -- The world is a big place, and it's likely you may want to make an interactive map with a city or other location that's not included in iMovie's built-in database. In my article "10 Secrets of iMovie '09" (2009-02-06), I described a way to add a custom map destination by editing the WorldLocations.txt file in iMovie's application package.

Now, you don't need to go to so much trouble. If you know the latitude and longitude coordinates, you can plug them into the Choose Location dialog when creating a map and iMovie sets the destination. (iTouchmap.com and Get Lat Lon are good sources for that information.)

Be sure that when you paste the coordinates into the field, you're adding just the numbers. I ended up in the Pacific Ocean once because I had copied a carriage return or some other invisible character.

HD Export Options -- With YouTube and other sites now accepting HD video, it was only a matter of time before iMovie gained the capability to output it. When sharing to YouTube or choosing Share > Export, a new [HD option is available][*] that creates a 720p (1280 by 720) movie with a bitrate of 10 Mbps. The option appears grayed-out for sharing to the Media Browser, and [corrected] doesn't appear at all in the iTunes or MobileMe Gallery options.

That's it so far. Have you noticed anything different about iMovie '09 8.0.1 that I haven't covered here? Email me at jeffc@tidbits.com.

iMovie ’09 Updated to 8.0.1

Apple has released an update to iMovie ’09 via Software Update or as a 24.5 MB download. As is typical with recent Apple updates, there's no good information about what's included in the update, other than, "This update improves overall application stability as well as addressing minor issues related to usability." Usually this means there are bug fixes and other little changes.

However, I did notice that the engineers snuck at least one change in: there's now a keyboard shortcut for Split Clip (Command-Shift-S).

The big question is whether some of the interlaced "combing" problems that have cropped up for some people have been fixed. (That's not something I ran into in my testing, but Apple acknowledged to me during a phone conference that there was a problem they were looking into.)

Along with iMovie 8.0.1, Apple also released iLife Support 9.0.2, iPhoto 8.0.2 Update, iWeb 3.0.1 Update, and iWork ’09 9.0.1.

Update: According to one Apple discussion thread tracking the interlacing issue, the problem seems to be fixed.

iMovie '09 Tip: The Four-Second Title

When adding a title to an iMovie project, you typically drag a title style from the Titles browser and drop it onto the beginning, end, or middle of a clip (the middle gives the title the same duration as the clip). If you have a very long clip, your title could end up being much longer than you wanted.

Instead, hold the Shift key as you drag. A four-second blue highlight indicates where the title will end up when you let go of the mouse button. You can skim across your footage and select the precise spot where you want the title to begin. And because it's four seconds, you probably won't need to edit it (unless you create a lengthy title that takes longer to read).

Take a look:

iMovie '09 Tip: Speed Clips 2,000%

iMovie '09 brings back the capability to speed up or slow down clips, which went missing in iMovie '08. Select a clip and bring up the Clip Inspector by double-clicking the clip, clicking the Inspector button on the toolbar, or pressing the I key.

Just as with its last appearance in iMovie HD 6, you can move a slider to make the video play back slower or faster (indicated by a turtle or hare icon). The slider lets you choose several speeds: 12.5%, 25%, 50%, 100% (normal speed), 150%, 200%, 400% and 800%.

You can also enter a value into the text field to the right of the slider, and this is where things get interesting. You're not limited to the tick mark values on the slider, so you can set the speed to be 118% of normal if you want. The field below that tells you the clip's changed duration.

But you can also exceed the boundaries of the speed slider. Enter any number between 5% and 2000%:

Here's what 2000% looks like, turning this 23 second clip into a 4.5 second blur:

Tip: If you're not seeing a Speed slider, the video clip may need to be converted before iMovie can make speed adjustments. (This is the case with MPEG-4 video from Flip camcorders, for example.) In the Clip Adjustments pane, click the Convert Entire Clip button, wait a few minutes (because, as the button says, iMovie needs to convert the entire clip, not just the portion in your movie), and then the Speed slider is available.

Flickr Now Offers HD Video for Pro Members

Speaking of 720p, Flickr is now letting its pro members upload 720p HD video. They've set up a pool to highlight some HD video, as well.

Exporting 720p Video from iMovie '09

If you're banging your head against a wall trying to export HD video from iMovie, you're not alone. iMovie '09 has a bug where it doesn't handle interlaced video properly (hopefully fixed soon). Macworld's Chris Breen figured out how to get 720p video out of iMovie, and wrote about it at Macworld.com:

With iMovie ’08, you’d end up with a pretty decent looking 720p movie. But with iMovie ’09, you don’t. And the reason you don’t is because the deinterlace function isn’t working correctly. You can enable that Deinterlace Source Video option from now until doomsday and you still wind up with interlaced video.

This is a problem Apple should address. Until it does, your best bet is to export your edited movie as 1080i video and then deinterlace it with another application.

iMovie '09 Tip: Wraparound Cursor

I just learned a very cool tip that solves one of iMovie's annoyances. When you're skimming a clip and come to the end of a line in the Project Browser, hold Shift or Caps Lock to automatically wrap the playhead and mouse pointer to the next line.

Here's a video of the shortcut in action:

A Couple of Quibbles with Pogue on iMovie '09

David Pogue wrote about iMovie '09 in his New York Times email column today, and while he's pretty spot-on about the update, there are a couple of things I feel compelled to note. They really are minor quibbles, but that's the awesome power a blog grants me.

If you're scoring at home, here are the features that have been restored: themes, extracting audio, chapter markers, direct export to iDVD, visual effects (including slo-mo, reverse motion, black-and-white and more).

iMovie '08 could always do black-and-white, there just wasn't a direct button that did it. You'd bring up the Video Adjustments heads-up-display (HUD) and change the Saturation value to zero. iMovie '09 now has a Black & White video effect which leaves the Saturation slider untouched.

Here's what's still missing: plug-ins, audio effects, manual audio adjustments, bookmarks, importing old iMovie projects without losing all your enhancements.

I'm not sure what Pogue means by bookmarks. iMovie '09 supports DVD chapter markers, but it also includes "comment markers," which function the way iMovie HD's bookmarks did. With the advanced tools enabled in iMovie's preferences, you'll see a little brown dialog balloon icon in the upper-right corner of the Project Editor. Drag that to the filmstrip to create a comment marker that you can rename.

Comment markers don't affect your movie when you output it; they're just for marking spots that you want to return to easily later.

See? I told you they were quibbles.

Say Goodbye to iMovie HD 6

Many longtime iMovie users weren't happy when iMovie '08 came out, because the new version was completely different from what they'd grown accustomed to. But it wasn't a big deal, because Apple made iMovie HD 6 available as a free download to anyone who owned iMovie '08. (If you already had iMovie HD 6 on your hard disk, installing iMovie '08 did not overwrite it, as previous versions would do.) I've had numerous people say, "iMovie HD does what I need, so I'll just stick with it. Who needs the new one anyway?"

Well, today is the day we all knew was coming. Apple is no longer offering iMovie HD 6 as a free download, now that iMovie '09 is available.(Dan Moren at Macworld did discover that although the Web page for the software is gone, you can still download the disk image that contains the installer, a 154 MB download.) (The download is no longer available.)

Although iMovie HD still seems to work fine under the latest version of Mac OS X (10.5.6), if a future update breaks something in the old editor Apple won't be fixing it.

Video Encoders Compared

Real World Video Compression looked at four Mac compression tools: El Gato's Turbo.264 1.3 hardware dongle and software, Apple's Compressor 3.0.3, Episode Pro 5.0.1, and Techspansion's Visual Hub 1.3.4 to see which performs best in terms of speed (not necessarily quality; all rendering was done with default settings).

The tests were run on a beefy Mac Pro and a slightly older MacBook Pro. The Turbo.264 fared the best thanks to its DSP (Digital Signal Processing) chip, but that was the case on both machines - indicating that you'd be just fine offloading some compression tasks to an older Mac and a Turbo.264, versus spending the money to buy a new, faster system.

(Hat tip to FreshDV.com.)