I don't like "non-destructive" editing - any options?
Hello,
I have been using iMovie for quite awhile and I feel like I understand it. I have been pretty satisfied with iMovie 4, but when I got my new iMac I tried out the iMovie 8 which came with it and did not like it at all. But then I "downgraded" to iMovie 6 and I actually like iMovie 6 - a lot, except for one thing, I really don't like the "non-destructive" editing feature.
I still do a fair amount of editing from my older analog videos and when I import this footage I always do a lot of editing. For me, less is more. I know that even my own family can get bored with movies that are too long, so I am fairly brutal with my editing, trying to get down to what I consider the most important scenes. If I import an hours worth of "raw footage" I almost always edit it down to somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.
The point is, when I am done editing, I am really done. I am not going to change my mind so I find it frustrating that iMovie 6 is saving all of the original footage in its original length for each clip just in case I change my mind later. I have a 22 minute project that I am working on that is taking up almost 20 GBs of harddrive space!
I understand the concept and the potential benefits of "non-destructive" editing, but I simply don't like it. Is there anyway to turn it off? Perhaps Apple could allow a user to edit with the "non-destructive" tool turned on, but when the user is finally finished and wants to free up the unneeded storage of the unwanted "trash" the user should be able to disable the non-destructive function and edit "destructively" to get the project down to a reasonable size.
What I am doing now is recording the edited clips back to my camcorder and then importing the edited clips into a new project. I have also been thinking of starting my projects in iMovie 4, editing the raw clips into the shorter clips that I like, and then opening the project with iMovie 6 which would "upgrade" the project - right?
What is everyone else doing? Do most of you like "non-destructive" editing?
Lincoln
I have been using iMovie for quite awhile and I feel like I understand it. I have been pretty satisfied with iMovie 4, but when I got my new iMac I tried out the iMovie 8 which came with it and did not like it at all. But then I "downgraded" to iMovie 6 and I actually like iMovie 6 - a lot, except for one thing, I really don't like the "non-destructive" editing feature.
I still do a fair amount of editing from my older analog videos and when I import this footage I always do a lot of editing. For me, less is more. I know that even my own family can get bored with movies that are too long, so I am fairly brutal with my editing, trying to get down to what I consider the most important scenes. If I import an hours worth of "raw footage" I almost always edit it down to somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.
The point is, when I am done editing, I am really done. I am not going to change my mind so I find it frustrating that iMovie 6 is saving all of the original footage in its original length for each clip just in case I change my mind later. I have a 22 minute project that I am working on that is taking up almost 20 GBs of harddrive space!
I understand the concept and the potential benefits of "non-destructive" editing, but I simply don't like it. Is there anyway to turn it off? Perhaps Apple could allow a user to edit with the "non-destructive" tool turned on, but when the user is finally finished and wants to free up the unneeded storage of the unwanted "trash" the user should be able to disable the non-destructive function and edit "destructively" to get the project down to a reasonable size.
What I am doing now is recording the edited clips back to my camcorder and then importing the edited clips into a new project. I have also been thinking of starting my projects in iMovie 4, editing the raw clips into the shorter clips that I like, and then opening the project with iMovie 6 which would "upgrade" the project - right?
What is everyone else doing? Do most of you like "non-destructive" editing?
Lincoln
iMac - 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
