As the rest of the family is off at a birthday party for a few hours, I had a chance to play with new iLife some. The result is a simple photo movie of Leo.
I’m probably missing a few things about how the new iMovie is suppose to work, but wow it is a dramatic step backwards in terms of capabilities from the prior version. Long term the library integration is great, and it’s dead easy for the basics, but there’s not a timeline. Detail level editing is gone. Effects are gone. Precision control of titles/transition is gone. Also, it appears though you can export it to Final Cut XML, Final Cut Express doesn’t support appear to support opening that for editing.
The integration with iPhoto is nice. This movie is only photos, no video. I edited the photos in Photoshop (as external editor for iPhoto), duped one and created the “sketched” version for the lead-in, then dropped them all into the iMovie project. There’s a nice little editor for the “Ken Burns” zooming effect, but things like how long a photo shows, and how long transitions run are all set on a project level, not a “per photo” level.
Also I fired up GarageBand to lay record the guitar part. Added the iMovie as a movie track to get the timing — but then I was left with no way to tie those in iMovie. I was left having to export the movie from GarageBand, and put it back in iMovie as a complete clip to publish it to the .Mac web gallery. Weird.
Anyway, I’m happy with the net result considering I only put in about 2 hours no the project, including selected and editing the photos, composing-rehearsing-record the music. And the web gallery is slick, particularly for photos.
