Customer Reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Working with iMovie HD, Apr 28, 2023
`Established' Shot and Location
In the Timeline, I set the order of my Clip Panes with the first being the important `Established' shot. Clips are pieces of movie footage that you rearrange into your movie for storytelling. Later, I add a movie title that answers the questions of when and where the movie was filmed. You will find that location and date anchor the movie for your viewing audience.
Major Editing in Post Production
I change the Preference to Clip Panes shelf when I do the major editing of my movie. Next, I split my movie clips into several new clips and drag them to the Clip Panes shelf for later editing.
Most of my movie clips need slitting (Command `T') to remove poor movie footage such as shaky hand-held camcorder shooting. The Post Production editing is the most time- consuming. I find that a ratio of one minute of movie footage is equal to one hour of editing time. This includes selecting the proper music, editing the sound and enhancing the video.
Analog Signals into Digital Signals
An analog-to-digital converter, or ADC as it is more commonly called, is a device that converts analog signals into digital signals. Computers, which handle data in digital form, require analog-to-digital converters to turn signals from analog to digital before it can be read.
Could I convert my VCR cassette`s Analog Signals into Digital Signals?
According to the Canon ZR60 camcorder's manual, the answer was negative for traditional replacing of existing scenes for the AV insert. Taking my roundabout approach, I worked at importing film footage from my RIC master VCR tape from my Rhode Island College Video project from 1992 using iMovie HD. My Canon ZR60 camcorder manual hinted at the solution for importing the VCR's analog video and sound.
How did I connect the devices? I used my ST-250N Stereo Video cable supplied with my Canon ZR60 camcorder and connected it to the VCR's video and sound ports.
I experimented with iMovie HD to solve the problem. My Canon ZR60 captured the master VCR tape footage after I set the camera to AC-In mode. Next, I reverse the book instructions from David Pogue's "iMovie 4 & iDVD, the Missing Manual" to make it work.
I chose File to Share (Shift-Command-E) then I clicked on the "Videocamera" icon. The instructions said, `Record your movie to a tape in your videocamera. This operation may take several minutes to complete.' Next, I changed the wait time to a maximum of 59 seconds for camera to get ready. Finally, I changed the Add time to 59 seconds of black before and to end the movie.
By using this method, I could capture 59 seconds of my RIC public speaking instruction master VCR tape to my MiniDV digital video cassette in my Canon ZR60 camcorder. Importing the entire RIC master VCR tape was 10 minutes and I had to stop and start 10 times bringing in the VCR film footage.
The quality from analog to digital tape was quite good. A commercial Analog Signals into Digital Signals converter sells for $500 to $900 retail. Therefore, the effort was worth it for this project.
Final Notes
I find the iMovie HD program one of the best iMovies program series. iMovie HD worked well with some of my old iMovies 4 footage and enhanced my previous low-light film footage when transported and burned in iDVD 5 program.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Great upgrade, but..., Apr 1, 2023
All I wanted to do was create a DVD for my brother. IMovie is decent. It has a few minor quirks to it. The amount of time for title slides has a max of 4 seconds. All of my slides are 4 seconds. Anything else seems too short and amateurish. It had a problem importing MGEP 1 movies. I had to go through a convoluted process to get the movie into place. Even then, the first .5 seconds of the audio was missing... due to the conversion process. This is not Apple fault, except they should be able to import those movies. all other formats works fine.
I found iDVD to have major quirks. First, the audio was 1 second behind the video on the DVD. Then the audio kept advancing forward, make it ouf of sync, more and more as the movie played on. Then the movie would stop the audio at the first sound effect i placed in a text slide. This was extremely frustrating. I thought it was supposed to be easy!?
iDVD just takes a movie, renders it, and burns it to a DVD with some selection screens. How hard is that? I ended up remaking one of my iMovie projects three time before it finally came out. The other project, well, I had to extract the audio so that it would be on the DVD (except the first and last video). Lastly, the final chapter (movie marker) pointed to the start of the movie.
I like Garageband, it's easy but not a powerful tool like Logic.
ITunes, well, it's iTunes! It is definitive.
iPhoto is awesome. It still feels like it is just feature creeping, for better or worse.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 Sometimes it doesn't just work., Mar 16, 2023
iLife '05 is supposed to support RAW image processing (see product description above) for photos in iPhoto. The surprise is that although my Canon camera is supported, it's RAW image format is not, rendering iPhoto useless for most of my photographs. This was unexpected as third party companies have image conversion software that manages to do this with little problem. I know there are many RAW image formats, but it's the job of good technology to simplify a complex environment.
I'm new to Apple products and very pleased overall since we purchased the imac G5. It seems like in most cases "it just works" describes their system well, but in this case, I guess we needed to read the "fine print".
I also noticed that it is still not possible to record anything on GarageBand with the iSight's (Apples webcam/microphone). Apparently there is some type of software/hardware incompatibility. Expected in Windows machines, (fortunately) unusual in Apple products. Not a major issue for most, but the incompatibility of Apple hardware and software is still an unwelcome surprise.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The iPhoto alone is worth the price, Mar 16, 2023
All of the improvements are great. I was editing a video for a presentation when my order arrived. There was a transition that I simply could not get the old iMovie to do. I installed the new iLife and told it to make the same transition in the film and it worked perfectly. I don't know why or how but I was sold five minutes after the box arrived.
I still think iPhoto is the best improvement however. I really like the scrollable photo index when looking at a picture in edit mode. I also like the ability to eject the camera from within iPhoto(I sometimes forgot to do this before.) And the one-touch red-eye correction is nice too.
Also I like the new themes for iDVD. The movie I was editing ended up getting one of the new themes instead of the old theme I had originally picked and I was very pleased with the end result. The presentation was a big success.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
It only gets better...and better, Mar 11, 2023
I have used both Mac and PC computers. I have also used software written for both. There is nothing easier or more intuitive than Apple iLife and '05 is a genuine improvement over '04. You would have to buy several software programs at $400-$600 each to do what iLife can but they will never match iLife or ease, simplicity, and intergration. It doesn't take a lot of computer savvy to maximize iLife and it does most of the work for you - and now even more quickly than ever. Other softwares we have used for loading pictures are slow, hard to manage, and really a pain. If you are looking for a software that allows you to manage your pictures, make movies, post things on the internet, and be able to access them, you will not find a more user-friendly program anywhere.
With iLife, you can edit your pictures. You can order copies with just a click of a button. With just another click, you can e-mail them to anyone in your e-mail address book. Another click you can post them on a web-sight for your friends to see. In addition, you can set your pictures, web sights to your favorite music in iTunes and load them on your iPod and taken them anywhere.
Speaking of iTunes - . if you haven't discovered iTunes yet go to Apple's home page and check it out. iTunes makes it easier and more affordable to buy music. With iTunes you can buy entire albums or only the songs you want from a particular CD. Once down loaded, you can arrange them in any order you want, burn them on your own CD or hook your Mac to your home stereo and listen through you speakers. In addition, whatever music you have in iTunes is easily used in iPhoto, iDVD or the other applications iLife and is fully intergrated with iWork. You will not be disappointed with iLife unless you love to spend tons of money for three or four different software programs that will not work together as seamlessly as iLife.
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