Posts tagged iLife ’09
Quick Look: iMovie ’09
8Probably one of the things I was least excited about in the iLife ’09 suite was iMovie. I sold my HD camcorder last year which was becoming a dust collector, but mostly it was due to my dissatisfaction with the over-sensitive microphone. So, with no videos to edit I wasn’t too interested in what was new to iMovie.
Late last night I opened it up to have a look around to see the new features. The UI is pretty much the same as ’08. I think there are a few cosmetic differences mostly on buttons and also the new Project Library pane which is hidden until you click it’s button and it slides out.
When you create a new project you are given the opportunity to have a theme. You can choose from None, Photo Album, Bulletin Board, Comic Book, Scrapbook and Filmstrip. I created a very quick demo video using the Comic Book theme.
Apart from adding a few titles to videos I created last year, I haven’t spent any extensive time in iMovie ’08 but found that it was quite a basic program. One of the first things I noticed in iMovie ’09 were the newly added animated titles, aswell as Maps and Backgrounds. These are a lot of fun. I put together a very quick transitions demo video after 2am this morning to show just some of the new features added. The globe blows me away and will be great for holiday/travel videos!
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I’m now considering buying a Kodak Zi6 HD Camcorder in the months ahead just to give me a good excuse to waste more time in iMovie ’09. If you enjoy shooting video then I think you’ll enjoy the improvements in this. A few people have asked me to compare ’09 to ’06 and all I can say is I don’t know as I never knew ’06. I downloaded it free from the Apple site last year, but it never wanted to work for me.
Despite my disappointment over the Flickr integration in iPhoto ’09 yesterday, I have to say that iMovie ’09 has restored my faith in the iLife ’09 suite and if anyone asks I’d say yes, it’s well worth the upgrade.
First Impressions: iPhoto ’09
8iLife ’09 arrived around 2 hours ago and after a fairly lengthy installation process my first port of call was iPhoto. As I write this it is currently scanning through all my photos for faces. There’s approximately 40 minutes left on that.
One of the things I was most looking forward to, as were many of Fruit Bytes visitors, was the Flickr upload integration added to iPhoto. For the past 12 months I have used FlickrExport which will upload individual photos from an event or as many as I select within an event. I can also add tags, title and description within the FlickrExport window. This plugin cost £12 from ConnectedFlow.
I thought that the Flickr integration in iPhoto would be similar to that of FlickrExport, however sadly it’s very basic indeed and rather than being able to select individual images from an event, it will only upload the whole event and worse still create a new set within Flickr! I always take more than one photo of everything and rarely (read: hardly ever!) would I upload a whole event to Flickr, much less would I want to create a whole new set out of it!
EDIT: On testing, highlighting one photo in an event will send that individual photo up and not the whole event as originally stated. However, it still creates a new set in Flickr for this one photo. That’s still a little offputting, but at least it will upload individual images which is good.
Following the installation there was an iLife Media Browser Update available in Software Update which would “improve overall stability and address a number of other minor issues”. Once I’d installed that and restarted, the Flickr button in iPhoto was rendered useless. It took a few shut downs of the application before it worked again, but it’s still a bit patchy even now.
Thus far I haven’t had the opportunity to look at Faces and Places in iPhoto, nor any other applications within the iLife ’09 suite. I’ll admit to being quite disappointed so far, particularly with the Flickr upload integration. I have decided to stick with FlickrExport but do hope that Apple will offer an update in the near future that gives us more control over the photos we upload and not insisting on creating a whole new set each time. Of course the problem with using anything other than the integrated Flickr media button is that even if one marks a photo on the ‘Places’ map in iPhoto, this information will not be uploaded to Flickr.
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