iMovie '13 "dumbed down" compared to iMovie '11

I am about to buy a new iMac to upgrade from my current one. Does anyone know if I will be able to continue using iMovie 9 on my new iMac (which I assume will only come with iMovie 10 installed)?

Thanks

If you restore from TimeMachine I believe it would bring iMovie 9 over to your new iMac.

So I previously above railed on the new iMovie... but I am slowly turning the corner and see some of the value. A few of my thoughts.

1. Initially it is hard to swallow because it looks so different (I am also told this is what final cut pro looks like... but have never used it... so not sure if true or not)... The biggest change is the Events now hold not only movie clips... but any pictures and music. This initially looks VERY confusing, but I guess this is a good thing. In theory we should never get the yellow triangle of death that says media is missing (if you have never had that... count your lucky stars); Since every thing in a project is now all contained in the event. And if we ever want to go back and burn a project again, it is all there (i.e. if you render in SD and now, 3 years later you want a HD version for example... or you want to modify something 3 years from now). There was a cumbersome way around this in iMovie 11 (consolidating), but this is much easier since this version of iMovie holds all media used in the package.

2. I had a huge problem with the green check mark being gone when adding photos. But now any potential pictures you want in a project... just take them and drag and drop them into the coresponding event in imovie. When you add them, an orange line goes acorss the pic. So that solves that problem.

3. Doesn't matter what version of any video program you use (mac, windows, etc).... number one rule is to make sure the camera's clock is set exactly right.... and when you change time zones... or day light savings... it is critical the clock is correct on the camera (i.e. just like iphone does from carrier). If that is true... then everything lines up (pics and video) from multiple sources (i.e. SLR and iphone camera) when located in the event. I just put together a 13min movie with clips/pics from SLR and iphone.... using 150 pics and lots of video.... the pics landed in order next to the video in the event... so brining the pics in with the corresponding video was quite easy... this was never the case in iMovie 11. You had to find and search where corresponding pics go in the video (i.e. the pics were being pulled from iPhoto... now if you drop them into the event before putting together, they are lined up with the video... providing the camera's clock was correct when shooting video/pics).

Just a few of my thoughts.... 😉.

Maybe I'm trying to look on the bright side... but I have to say.... while there are still lots of flaws... the benifits are potentially huge as noted above.

Karsten,

What happended to the Keyword Functionality: the ability to assign keywords to clips to help one execute a planned Storyboard. This was a big deal to me. Can one still assign Keywords to clips...and I'm just missing it?

@Tigervison.. And many (if not all) of those things could and should have been added to the existing iMovie 11 base of functionality, not in place of.. By your logic of placing things.. Does that mean I would have to double up on loading music and stills IF I still prefered them being in iTunes or iPhoto? What if I use a photo editor like Lightroom to preprocess? Will it read the metadata of when the images were taken, or edited..

I agree that all your "clocks" should be the same on a shoot, but again when working with a timeline, you can pretty much place things wherever needed.. I understand synch'ing in some cases is critical, especially on audio, but apps like PluralEyes are made just for that.

I remember when FCPX came out, and the ruckus folks made because it had been dumbed down vs. the old FCP 6 and 7... Apple up'd the functionality in FCPX.. I'm not so sure that's the plan for iMovie.. I think they've gone too far down the road of trying to make OSX apps act like their IOS counterparts. I'm not so much talking about look and feel, but underlying capabilities.. I didn't buy a Macbook Pro and Mac Pro to run the less capable IOS versions of apps.

Just my thoughts.. :-) (and apparently quite a number of Apple techs who have to take phone calls from customers..they get it, not sure why the folks up top don't)

Hey Jay.... Let me say, even though I have put together over a 100 movies... I consider myself a total novice.

I have all my pics in iPhoto and all my music in iTunes (Apple nerd, you can say). I don't use Lightroom or FCP - Like I said... Novice.

So yes.... this means that I do have some double pictures and music.... since any pics and music I use in a movie project are also in imovie. I go through and flag my favorite pics for a movie and then bring just those over to imovie. So an event might have 500 pics and I only have 50 duplicated in iMovie for a particular project.

Like I said... this was initially hard to swallow (mostly because of my OCD.. lol!). But then... looking on the bright side... this should avoid the yellow triangle of death (have you ever got that???).... since all data is contained in the package. And I guess you can copy your imovie library and bring to another computer and pick up where you left off.

I do tend to agree with you that OSX is looking a bit too much like IOS... which I guess is fine... but like you said... it's got to be able to do high powered stuff that a phone/ipad can't do... afterall... that is the point of my brand new rMBP!

Cheers.

@Tigervision.. Hey back. :-) My point, as I made it in an earlier post, is that they gave users a significant amount of additional function in iMovie 11, that was pulled in the latest version. I can live with some of the nuances of a new interface, but what I can't go along with is reduced function for something they had already given customers. Things like chapter marking are a basic function in just about any video editor. Apple has had this thing in their head about optical media, like DVDs, etc. being bad.. The reality is not everyone can afford to stream, and clients who require some sense of sequence in their video "story" need chapters.. A nit perhaps, but a nice useability feature was iMovie archiving the original stream off the camera, and then allowing you to import that stream, leaving the original untouched.. Yes, there are manual ways to do the same thing, but why remove something so benign???

Sometimes Apple, as much as I would never go back to Windows, believes that just because they believe the world believes it.. I think they lose touch with reality at times for the sake of how they envision the future.. In other words, "if we build it, they will have to follow" .. to some extent that's true, but never give a customer a reason to think they should change.. some just will.. Bottom line is it's fine to add new function, and perhaps even change the way you got to an existing function... but pulling the plug on function just doesn't fly..

As for the dual writes... this is where my OCD comes out a bit.. with SSDs, there is a limited amount of writes.. Now this number is extremely high, but I avoid as much writing to the MBPr's SSD as possible. I run all my data on an externally attached SSD via USB3 (look for UASP enclosures if interested). It minimizes writes to the base, which I can keep clean, and makes for easier transfers over to my Mac Pro.

I think the biggest admission by Apple (or should I say recognition) is that they leave the old iMovie on the system in a different location.. They did the same when they transitioned people form the older Quicktime player (which had a Pro component) to the newer one.. Odd thing on chaptering here, is that Apple Quicktime recogizes it and shows the individual chapters, with titles, yet they pull the function..

Have a great one as well...

You hit the nail on the head with that one. Apple for some reason has a grudge on DVDs and they are trying to purge it. Look at what they did to the macbook pro. They gave it a retina, took away the disc slot and everyone got swirls in their eyes. They thought they would pacify us with an external disc drive that we plug in via usb but that in inpractical since I have to walk around with my laptop with the disc drive hanging out the side. They also have this remote disc where you can share discs, but if all the macs no longer have disc slots, how will that be any good? I will not purchase another mac until they bring back disc drives. For this reason I say windows has got it right; it is very customizeable and they give us the necessities like a disc drive, usb ports, sd card slots, and all these little extras you can get with any windows computer (and no adapters needed). I am having a tough time playing computer games, because all the new computer games are tying this digital version crap that comes with no CD, but I do not like that one bit because we have to rely on the hard drive-even disc games are becomming scarce! The iphone has its idiosyncricies which bugs me also, but I won't get into that now. I will have to go back to windows until they fix these problems.

As for imovie, I find their new version horrendus! They made it as dumb as their precious mobile devices. I am so glad they gave us a second chance and left the old imovie progam there to use. I love the imovie program and it is signifigantly more helpful than windows moviemaker. It's just that you can't introduce these stupid changes and call them wonderful. There is clearly less features. I can't stand the loss of the inspector and the addition of clicking and dragging film clips to extend them. I will avoid the update as much as I can.

There is a beautiful saying I know... "If it isn't broke... don't fix it". I think we can all learn from it. Please apple, bring back the disc slots and everything else apple computers used to have. I get that you can't impress everyone, so I reccomend when it comes to software, we should have the choice of which version we use. We should be able to go online and download any version of the program we want, so we will be happy. i am so worried I will end up losing the old imove in some new update.

@Anthonydyer ... Well, I'm with you on some point, but not on others. I have no issues with Retina on my MBP, but understand some do. I had Thinkpads with 3.5" disks when those got pulled and had to carry a USB 3.5" adapter, so I've been there for that. For me, a burner in a notebook was space I didn't need (unless you wanted to do a double up with OWC).. but I have a tower Mac Pro with two burners.. Routinely, I don't need the optical drive in the notebook, but the point of my complaint was clients who watch videos I create, titled, chaptered, etc.. do use optical on the DVD / BluRay players.. which in many case today stream.. so I get there is a change in process, but optical is not completely dead for large groups of people. I also don't see the need to carry a CD/DVD burner with a notebook... You can get a lot more on an SSD and a smaller USB 3.0 enclosure, but if you have the need, I understand the extra piece to carry.

All that said, there's nothing in these arguments that would make me go back to Windows (can we say just look at the "start" button debalical for starters". It is and always will be a somewhat archaic architecture, with ties still to this day to its DOS heritage. It can't compare to the architecture of OSX, and likely never will. Of course Windows still owns the market, but despite inane things such as we're discussing here about iMovie, I don't see me ever going back.

The mistake was what they did to iMovie.. one I know they're hearing about.. Look at it this way.. maybe it opens the door for an entry level video editor by a third party. As far as the other assumptions regarding trying to marry OSX and IOS, I understand the desire to unify some of the appearance ... but not at the expense of reducing function.. Best thing to do is make your voice heard through the feedback process.. It worked to FCPX..

Hey, as long as the discussion is onto the missing disc drive on my rMBP, I really don't mind needing the external disc, BUT, I bought the "superdrive" and the fact that you have to plug it into the MBP directly and it won't work plugged into a hub is really a drag. Not so "super".

@Grizzlybier.. Are you using a powered hub? When it's plugged into your MBP, power is being drawn from the notebook.. An optical drive requires some source of power. There are USB 3.0 hubs which do come with a small AC adapter.. Might be all you need.. Niether Apple or Windows notebook makers can pass that internal power needed through a hub. Lower power requirement devices, like a thumb drive, should work fine..

Even with a powered hub the superdrive will not work unless directly plugged into the rMBP. I know I'm not alone as I've researched the problem and it is what it is. Evidently there are many non apple drives that will work from hubs, but alas, I have the "Super"drive.....

Holy crap.... now I'm getting irritated.

I have taken a lot of pics and videos... with the exact same camera....

When I combine the pics and video in an event... and go to make a project...

The video and pics are not coordinated next to each other by date.... they are off... they were taken with the same camera that had the same clock set at the same time!

i.e. pic taken at 8am is not next to the video taken at 8am.

Imovie 10.0.3.

Yes... view, Sort events by: date/decending.

So incredibly annoying!

Thoughts???

That was enough for me to go back to the old version of iMovie.

I know many professional photographers that insist the best combination is iMovie 06 and iDVD 09. You can still buy them on disk from Amazon. They run perfectly with maverick.

This seems true for apple products period. Do you know of a better movie editing system?

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/moviestudiopp/techspec