iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide

iMovie ’11 Update Imports iMovie for iOS Projects

[This article originally published at TidBITS.]

When iMovie for iOS 1.2 was announced earlier this year, I was told by an Apple representative that iMovie ’11 would be able to import movies created in iMovie for iOS, the app that runs on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. However, that information turned out to be incorrect: GarageBand was able to import projects created in GarageBand for iOS, but the same was not true of iMovie. (See “New iOS Versions of iMovie and GarageBand,” 2 March 2011.)

It turns out the Apple rep wasn’t wrong, just premature. Today’s release of iMovie 9.0.4 brings the capability to import projects created in the iOS app into the Mac app. That means you can start a project on your iOS device (when the video or your ideas are still fresh, or you just need to kill some time) and bring it into iMovie ’11 for finishing.

In a quick test, I assembled a movie on my iPad 2 and then imported it into iMovie ’11. All the elements in my movie (including background music, sound effects, Ken Burns Effect settings, and themes) came across fine. In fact, iMovie ’11 recognizes that my project used the Neon theme, which is available only in the iOS version, and includes other theme elements not used in the project, such as alternate title styles. Changing the project’s theme to one of the iMovie ’11 themes removes the capability to go back to the iOS theme, however.

Unfortunately, the process of getting a project out of iMovie for iOS and into iMovie ’11 is still as cumbersome as ever. (I’d love to see the capability to sync projects via iCloud the way we’ll be able to sync documents, but I’m guessing the large size of iMovie projects would make the feature difficult to work with.) The steps go like this, if you want a handy reference:

1. In iMovie for iOS, tap the Share button.
2. Tap the Send Project to iTunes button.



3. Connect your iOS device to your Mac.
4. In iTunes, select your device in the sidebar and click the Apps button at the top of the window.
5. Scroll down to the Apps list, select iMovie, and select the project you shared.



6. Click the Save To button and choose a destination for the project file, or simply drag the file from the iMovie Documents list to a window in the Finder.
7. In iMovie ’11, choose the new File > Import > iMovie for iOS Project item and choose the project file you saved. Specify whether to add the project’s footage to an existing iMovie Event, or to create a new Event.
8. Click the Import button to convert the project and bring it into iMovie ’11.

Alas, it’s not possible to make edits in iMovie ’11 and ship them back to iMovie for iOS for later editing on the road. Perhaps in a future update.

In addition to being able to import iMovie for iOS projects, iMovie 9.0.4 fixes issues where some audio adjustments didn’t stick, improves performance when working with large quantities of video clips with keywords and with large iPhoto libraries, and adds support for full screen mode in Lion.

The iMovie 9.0.4 update is a 76.2 MB download, available via Software Update, as a direct download, or as an update in the Mac App Store if you purchased the application there.

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.

First Look: iDVD '08

My first-look article on iDVD '08 is now up at Macworld: First Look: iDVD '08. This one wasn't as difficult as the iMovie one, since not a lot has changed in the latest version of iDVD. Apple has incorporated a few nice polishes. I'm currently testing the new Professional Quality encoding setting, but it's time-consuming: putting together a long enough movie to bunch up against the 2-hour limit so I can then burn at High Quality and at Professional Quality. Now is when I wish I had an 8-core Mac Pro to do some background encoding versus my not-really-pokey-at-all 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro! Ah well. I have plenty of other things to do while iMovie exports.

Here's a taste of the first part of the article, which seems to be generating the most comments so far:

If you watch Apple’s webcast of its August 7 product announcements for news of iDVD ’08, it may take you longer to jump ahead to that point in Steve Jobs’ presentation (the 54-minute mark or so) than the 33 seconds Jobs spends on the DVD-authoring component of iLife ’08 (Best Current Price: $69.98). That gives you a clue to how important DVD creation has become at Apple.

“For people who still want to make DVDs,” Jobs concludes the iDVD segment, “we’re going to make it better with iDVD in iLife ’08.”

So it’s clear that Apple is pushing its revamped .Mac service as the preferred way to share video content, but not everyone has speedy broadband Internet access or is willing to pay $100 for a yearly .Mac subscription. And while iDVD ’08 isn’t nearly as revolutionary as the other iLife ’08 applications, the few changes to the program are welcome.

Consumer HD Camera Shoot-Out

Camcorder Info.com has published a thorough comparison of the top-flight consumer HD camcorders: The Great HD Shoot-Out. It looks at the Canon HV20, the Sony HDR-HC7, the Panasonic HDC-SD1, and the JVC GZ-HD7. Finally, there are several options available for non-pros to shoot HD, though the prices are still pretty high.

Also this week, David Pogue looks at the JVC GZ-HD7 along with the Sony HDR-SR7, both of which record to built-in hard drives: Your Life, in a Movie of Top Quality.

Cinematize 2 Pro review at Macworld.com

Macworld has published my review of Cinematize 2 Pro, a utility for extracting video and audio content from a DVD. The non-pro version also extracts content, but without as many options, such as subtitle extraction (in a variety of formats). Click here to read the full review.

When you burn a DVD from an application like iDVD, you may think you’ve made a copy of your original movie, but th• at’s not necessarily the case. Besides degrading image quality (due to the compression required to fit the video on a disc), the DVD format proves to be a lockbox: you can’t just open the media files in a video editor.

If you want to work with the footage again—for example, maybe you’ve lost the original tapes but need access to the footage, or maybe you want to compile sections of several DVDs into one movie project—you need to extract the video and audio and convert them to an editable format.

Some programs, such as HandBrake, can do the job, but they’re geared toward extracting entire titles. (In DVD parlance, a title is a block of media; so, a feature film may occupy one title on disc, while a making-of documentary would occupy another title on the same disc.)

Miraizon’s Cinematize 2 Pro is designed to extract discrete sections from unencrypted DVDs, a capability found in the company’s Cinematize 2 (4.5 mice) program. However, the new pro version gives you many more options for extracting video and audio.

VisualHub for Video Conversion

Dan Frakes at Macworld looks at VisualHub, a $28 utility for converting video into oodles of formats in "All you need is Hub":

As an example of VisualHub’s performance, I had a 5.8GB, 1 hour 49 minute, AVI version of a movie that I wanted to convert for iPod viewing. QuickTime Player (the Pro version) failed to convert the file after a long time trying, citing an error, even though I had installed plug-ins for AVI support. From past experience, I can tell you that it takes as long as an hour for QuickTime Player to convert similar-sized MPEG videos to iPod format. VisualHub, on the other hand, successfully converted the AVI down to an 87MB iPod-compatible MPEG movie (using the Standard-quality setting) in less than 8 minutes! To convert the same AVI to the higher-quality H.264 format, which takes significantly longer via QuickTime Pro, took under 11 minutes using VisualHub; the resulting video was only 72MB in size. Finally, using H.264 with the “Optimize for TV” setting at High quality took 22 minutes and 40 seconds and produced a 204-MB video file. (All tests were performed on a 2.66GHz Mac Pro; slower Macs will of course take longer; however, performance is excellent on all Intel- and G5-based models.)

Kirsner's Ebook on Web Video

Last month I posted a link to Scott Kirsner's (who runs the CinemaTech blog) list of Web sites that enable you to Make Money from Your Videos. Now, Scott has published a $15 electronic book on the topic: The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers. The 90-page book, available now as a PDF with a printed paperback version appearing in the future, also has a free PDF preview.

Initially, my objective with the book was to put together something that would be useful for independent "creatives" -- filmmakers, freelance TV producers, anyone with a camera and an idea -- who want to understand how they can make money in this Web video economy. I hope I've achieved that. But as I was writing, I expanded the scope quite a bit, getting into the the challenges and opportunities Web video creates for big media companies, advertisers, and entrepreneurs. There are lots of interviews, data points, and case studies.

Make Money from Your Videos

Scott Kirsner at CinemaTech has been compiling a list of Web sites that enable video producers to get paid for their work.

Some of these will be familiar to you (Revver, Atom Entertainment), others less so (I hadn't previously heard of Panjea). Some are geared to short-form content, and others will support selling a full-length feature. Some generate revenue through advertising, and others through paid rentals or downloads. I've tried to explain which sites demand exclusive rights to your content; all the rest are looser, allowing you to sell your stuff in multiple marketplaces. YouTube, though wildly popular, isn't on the list, since it's more of a platform for gaining exposure than making money.

How Video Works Excerpt

You can read an excerpt from this guide by Marcus Weise and Diana Weynand: Chapter 15 Everything You've Wanted to know About Video Compression. It explains JPEG and MPEG, and answers the question, "Just what the heck is GOP?"