iMovie & iDVD Visual QuickStart Guide

Complete Green Screen Setup for $250

In the New York Times, David Pogue discovers that the Westcott uLite Green Screen Lighting Kit is an effective and affordable way to capture green screen footage. iMovie can then knock out the green and let you add other footage in its place.

Hollywood-Style Tricks on the Cheap

(Although I have a minor quibble: Pogue says that “A green screen, of course, is the oldest trick in the movie-making book.” Actually, it's a pretty recent invention, appearing I believe in the 1970s. But, whatever.)

Import Flip Video into iMovie for iOS

When I was reviewing iMovie 1.2 for iOS, I was surprised to discover that I could import video directly from my Flip MinoHD camcorder. During the tech edit, Macworld editor James Galbraith had a few questions (for him, he needed to plug his Flip into a powered hub for it to be recognized by the iPad 2). Following that, he's written up a quick how-to for importing Flip video: "Importing Flip video into iMovie for iOS" (Macworld).

iMovie ’11 Supported Cameras

Apple has updated its list of cameras that work with iMovie ’11, now with a pull-down menu interface that lets you locate your camera model (versus scanning a long list):

http://help.apple.com/imovie/cameras/en/index.html?lang=en_US

Chris Breen on iMovie for iPhone

I'm looking forward to seeing what iMovie for iPhone is like. In the meantime, Chris Breen at Macworld shares his impressions: The merits of iPhone moviemaking.

iMovie '09 8.0.5 Released, Supports New iFrame Format

Apple today released iMovie '09 8.0.5. In addition to improving support for importing video captured using the latest iPod nano, this version introduces support for iFrame, a video format employing H.264 video and AAC audio compression.

According to Jim Dalrymple at CNET and Peter Cohen at The Loop, iFrame is a format developed by Apple. It's currently available on two cameras introduced by Sanyo this week: the Sanyo VPC-HD2000A and the Sanyo VPC-FH1A.

What's notable about iFrame is the capability to edit the footage natively in iMovie; footage recorded to memory or to hard disks using the widely-adopted AVCHD must first be transcoded to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec) before editing. iFrame promises to reduce the time it takes to start editing and also reduce the amount of disk space used by the video. iMovie '09 8.0.5 also fixes an issue with resizing the application window during playback.

HD Camcorders Buyer's Guide at Macworld

Chris Breen has published a thorough guide to what to look for when buying an HD camcorder: HD camcorders: Buyer's guide.

Final Cut Express 4 Adds AVCHD, iMovie '08 Interoperability

Apple today released Final Cut Express 4, the latest version of its intermediate video editing software. Taking its cues (and code) from Final Cut Pro 6, the new Final Cut Express features an open format Timeline that lets you mix DV and HD formats in the same project and adds the capability to import AVCHD formatted footage. (I suspect that AVCHD is getting transcoded to Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) and not edited natively, which is how Final Cut Pro and iMovie handle the format.) Also like Final Cut Pro, simply adding a clip to the Timeline dictates a project's More than 50 new FxPlug plug-ins are also included.

Apple is also touting the capability to import iMovie '08 projects, which it accomplishes by being able to read Apple's Final Cut XML format. (In iMovie, choose Share > Final Cut XML. When you import the text file that's generated, Final Cut Express accesses the footage from the iMovie Events folder on disk.) However, importing is limited to edit points and transitions, not titles; Final Cut Express substitutes cross dissolve transitions for the ones used in the iMovie project. It's currently unclear whether Final Cut Express will acknowledge other types of iMovie edits, such as color adjustments or cropping, but I suspect it doesn't.

Tying Final Cut Express and iMovie '08 is a sensible move. iMovie lacks several fine-editing operations, such as precise control over audio levels within a clip, an area in which Final Cut Express excels. Now, iMovie can be seen as a place to store and manage video, and quickly assemble a rough cut of a movie, before handing it off to Final Cut Express for more control and fine tuning.

The Final Cut Express package also includes LiveType 2.1 for creating animated titles, but I'm not seeing a mention of Soundtrack, the separate audio editor that shipped with Final Cut Express HD 3.5.

Final Cut Express 4 is available now for $199, or for $99 to owners of previous versions of Final Cut Express. It's a universal application that requires a Mac running a 1.25 GHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor, a PowerPC G5, or Intel processor; AVCHD support is available only on Intel-based Macs. Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later is also required.

[Cross-posted at TidBITS because, well, I'd say the same thing anyway and I'm lazy busy.]

Importing AVCHD from DVD Requires Leopard

iMovie '08 finally brought support for tapeless camcorders that record to memory cards, mini-DVDs, and hard disks. (For a great discussion of getting that footage into iMovie HD, see the comments in the post "Sony DCR-SR100 Hard Drive Camcorder".) Specifically, it supports video saved in the AVCHD high-definition format.

Up until recently, iMovie couldn't import AVCHD video from a camcorder that stores it on a DVD. Looking at Apple's iMovie '08 Camcorder Support page, however, iMovie now imports that footage—but only under Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. I'm not sure what component of Leopard makes this possible, but it's good to see that owners of these cameras (which continue to increase in popularity, it seems) now have a way to offload and edit their video.

Pogue on Tapeless Camcorders

Sure, not five minutes after I write the previous post, I see that David Pogue's column for the New York Times talks about the problems of tapeless camcorders: Beware the Tapeless Camcorder.

He brings up several good points, including the dreaded storage issue:

Suppose, for example, that you buy a hard-drive or memory-card camcorder. And suppose that, when the card or disk gets full, you dutifully copy the movies to your computer. But then what? You can’t just leave them on the PC’s hard drive forever; they take up too much room, and your current hard drive won’t still be around 20 years from now. Even if you keep buying new, bigger ones every few years, are you sure you want to entrust your only copy of your home movies to something as crash-prone as a hard drive?

That still doesn't fix my jammed Elura, though.

I think I just became a fan of tapeless camcorders

I've always been on the side of the fence that says, "Stick with MiniDV because you get the highest quality video." But I've been playing with a Panasonic HDC-SC1 camcorder, which records in HD and saves it as AVCHD, and I'm pretty impressed. I haven't really put it through its paces — I haven't really had the time lately - but it's much better than I expected.

But what's making me think this tonight is that my little Canon Elura has decided that it doesn't want to accept a tape. I was attempting to play back some video on it in iMovie's Import window, and without any provocation, it told me to eject the cassette. Now, it won't close, tape or no tape.

This happened a couple of years ago, too, just days before my warranty was to expire. I had to send it in to Canon and have them fix it. With the delicate parts in a miniature device like this, I wasn't able to diagnose, much less fix, the problem. Some itty bitty thing was replaced, and the camera was shipped back to me.

And now I wonder: Is this a sign that it's time to ditch tape and move toward tapeless? (It's not helping that I'm going to be a father in early 2008, and I know I'm going to want to shoot video of the tyke.) Or does someone know of a way to fix my problem without incurring a factory repair? Time to hit Google.