03.30.08
iMovie and Final Cut - I needed both but I understand why!
I took it upon myself to take video at a recent event (Golden Wedding Anniversary!). This was for a couple of reasons.. firstly I thought it’d be nice thing to do, and secondly my memory is shot to pieces these days and I’ve decided that I need to capture as much as possible! 
I resolved to use iMovie to build up the little bit and pieces of footage along with a speech given bu one of the guests with some photo’s overlayed at salient points to assist with visualisation of the life of the happy (still) couple. It was this exercise where iMovie first let me down. Yes, it’s possible to drop a still image over the top of a video clip, but only one any others need to go into a different section.. hmmm OK thinks I, lets split the video into section whereby I can add a singe still image to each.. that’ll work! YAY it does… BOO! It all works until I accidentally drop the wrong still on, I remove the offending still from the sequence and add the correct one, but now the overlay simply doesn’t work. This is bad karma and I was not impressed!
I resolved to find a solution elsewhere for this bit and built up the rest of the sequence in iMovie without any issues. Straight cut’s, transitions and music overlays are not a problem…, well actually the music bit WAS a pain in the rump until some lateral thinking squared the circle. You see if you add more the one background track to a peice (the movie is over 3.5 minutes see) it butt’s them up against each other, now your thinking ‘What’s the problem?’, well I acutall want an airgap in between the peices (I had an up-beat Nat King Cole number for the start and the Anniversary Waltz at the end) so that the speech wasn’t audio-hindered. I had assumed the I should be able to re-position the music to suit, but no. My solution was to take another sound clip (actually a podcast) insert it into the sequence at the point I wanted the speech to sit (when I eventually got it done elsewhere) and set the volume to zero! It’s not pretty but it works.
Now, my speech sequence was going to have to be done outside of iMovie. A situation which initially narked me somewhat but I’ve now rationalised almost completely and I’ll come to that at the end of this missive! I decided to use Final Cut Express 4 and picked up a copy - it felt like home! There was my timeline, there was my preview window, there were my multiple video and audio tracks I felt GOOD!
There was an initial glitch whereby I couldn’t actually view my work because I got an “Unrendered” notice on a pretty blue screen when I hit play.. this annoyed me until a little Google-based research led me to the RT settings, once this was changed to ‘Unlimited’ I was home free! Stills were inserted, cross-fades put in place and the job was done. I simply took my outputted movie and dropped it back into iMovie in the right spot. BINGO!
iDVD gave me a fantastic finished look and 2 burns later (I mistakenly did the first in widescreen format not 4:3) the finished DVD was ready and was very well received after lunch today!
So, my rationalisation here is this:-
iMovie is an immensely powerful consumer sequencing tool. Usable with almost no problems by anyone with a video camera and a Mac.In these circumstances it’s without parallel. It certainly knocks chunks out of anything I’ve paid good money for in the past on the PC. And it’s free! (well OK it’s part of the iLife 08 suite which carries a nominal charge if you don’t have it, but it came free with MY new Mac!)
Final Cut Express 4 is a video editing package for people who want to edit their videos, not just sequence them up with some cool tunes.
Once I’d made this distinction in my head it all made sense! iMovie is like iPhoto… it allows you to do anything you’d want to day to day, but for heavy duty stuff it’s not the right tool, nor does it pretend to be! for me the relation ship is this, iMovie is to Final Cut, what iPhoto is to Photoshop.
If I do more with video and need more poke, I’d have no problems with buying the full-on Final Cut Studio product set and it won’t make me think any less of the Express version. They’re simply tools to do a particular job.
- J.
