Related link: http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
Ok, so there’s been loads of bogs on the new announcement from Jobs and Co, and not without some merit, but I just wanted to mention something that really is going to make my life easier.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a Mac mini, and an iPod shuffle if anyone’s buying, but the kicker for me has to be the upgrade to the iLife apps.
I know the iLife applications are targeted to be as easy to use as possible but looking over the feature list of these tools today I have been struck by just how bleeding edge they are too. We’re not in kansas anymore toto, these tools are helping everyone from the newcomer getting things going at home to the guy that’s trying out the latest stuff to the heartbeat of internet time.
The key app that has got me so excited is iMovie HD. I’ve been using an HD camera for a while now, an excellent Sony HDR-FX1. Untill recently I was either looking at a serious outlay of cash to get an editing suite together or hacking together some code to get the raw MPEG2-TS off of the camera and then into Final Cut Pro - which I managed thanks to the great folks over at HD for Indies. But no more. Thanks to iMovie HD I can now do most of my editing within iMovie - it’s even got most of the tools I need for initial editing.
I’ve yet to see how well this works with Final Cut, but I feel pretty safe in saying that I’m sure Apple will have that covered. So there you go, for me the hardware is great and I’d like to say thanks to Apple for all of it. But the key thing for me when looking at the announcements at this years MacWorld is the sheer quality of the software work that has been done; it’s truly making my life easier.
Any of the iLife applications giving you that ‘one feature’ that you always wanted?
praise for iLife 05
While I'm not as amped about HD as you must be I am amped about everything else to do with iLife and iWork. While the hardware is snazzy as always I'm always more excited to see the applications. I mean, I already own a Mac. Sure, I want more, who doesn't? But, hardware is nothing if there aren't cool apps to play with. Apple certainly came through for us on that front. I'm even excited to play with Keynote and I've never given a presentation in my life.
And I'm sure that like all the creative apps I'll be dreaming of a HD camcorder too.
I hope so...
I would love it if iMovieHD can handle an incoming stream from a set top HD box that has firewire out. Nothing specific says it can, but it sez it can handle 720p and 1080i formats. This would rock- right now I use Apple's Firewire SDK stuff to record streams and then play them back using VLC. Since VLC is not altivec-aware, only the fastest macs can play this stuff back without frames dropping. This might be the answer to my latest prayer. If not, I shouldn't complain, my prayer of the Bosox winning the Series last year was answered ;)
iDVD disc images
The biggest prayer answered for me was the ability to create disc images in iDVD (in a supported way, not through the Hurz/Pfurz hack).
iPhoto also made some big strides forward, especially the ability to import and organize digital camera movies and, to a lesser degree, the organizer bar across the top of the Edit window. I'm still waiting for voice annotation support, though.
praise for iLife 05
Being a Windows user, I wondered ... the "big" Mac mini comes with a 1.4GHz CPU, up to 80GB harddrive, and max. 1 GB RAM. So is that enough to cut and edit HD movies in iMovie?
praise for iLife 05
hmm, excellent question. I would say that the spec should be able to handle HD reasonably well in iMovie HD - after all iMovie is normally written to make the most of the machine but scale back happily depending on what you have got. However, you might want to get the superdrive option as well to burn disks off too ... saying that, DVD disks aren't HD anyway at the moment...
However, I haven't got a Mac mini (just yet) so it's difficult to be totally accurate.