Hasta La Gadget!

In this shakey cam tour (sorry) we go over the three most interesting functions in iMovie 09: The globetrotting map animations, an automatic shake stabilizer, and the zoomed in precision editor.

Maps:
• There are 4 versions of maps, each also in a flat mode (along with the original globe). One is a photorealistic map, one is a school map, one has beige continents and one has green continents.
• If you’re adding map animations from scratch, they take a bit of time to render. You have to select a starting and end point (Madrid or Disneyland), and the program will map it.
• Putting two animations back to back, using the same destination and departure city, makes the animation a seamless multi city tour.
• You can update the type of map by dragging the style onto the existing thumbnail in the project line.

Shake Stabilizer:
• It analyzes the entire picture and steadies the motion very, very well.
• If a scene cannot be corrected, because of an overage of movement, iMovie marks the section with a squiggly red line.
• The rendering for this correction has to be done on a case by case or project basis; all the rendering must be done ahead of time and Apple says, “it takes awhile but is worth it”.

Precision Editor:
• Basically, precision editor zooms into the transition between two clips.
• It’s laid out as follows: the upper segment is the first clip, and the bottom segment is the second clip.
• The left side highlights the first and upper clip, because that’s active, and the lower right hand quadrant is also active (as the second clip). Moving the slider inbetween them (the y axis) shifts the transition point. Very easy.

And at long last, slow motion is back.

iMovie 08 was criticized for having a brilliant UI but lacking power, and so many people still use 06 which accepts plug ins. Perhaps 09 is a step in the right direction.