Multi Media Discussion

Hm, I'll have to check it out again. I've had a bias against it and been happy with iMovie HD, but... .

ddt

I think that's the underlying speedbump. You and Tony and many others who were used to the old iMovie style hated the UI reset - which did admittedly step back in functionality. But successive versions have brought most of that back, and much more. Since I never did a project in the old iMovie, I didn't have to unlearn anything first.

True. And I can't speak to the changes since the initial release -- or, really, the initial release, since that's been displaced from my memory by various things including Jensen Ackles lip-synching "Eye of the Tiger" -- but I can say that iMovie HD leveraged the timeline metaphor that traditional film editing has worked with. I do remember thinking the newer iMovie was based around throwing together existing clips without being able to trim or adjust them much. Maybe that wasn't/isn't true.

ddt

My impression of the original release was that it was designed to take the chaotic results of a typical series of home movie sessions and throw them together in a way that could be at least marginally watchable on a DVD. And did nothing else.

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My impression of the original release was that it was designed to take the chaotic results of a typical series of home movie sessions and throw them together in a way that could be at least marginally watchable on a DVD. And did nothing else.

You mean, a fancy wrapper for 'rm' ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2011 10:50AM by YDD.

The initial release of the new iMovie, you mean? I got that impression, too. That's certainly something you can do with little effort. I can't really compare the two since I might launched the old iMovie once, but I'm a perfectionist, and the current version lets me trim and nudge to my heart's delight. I'm not clear on what defines it as a timeline - is it the ability to see your clips in one unbroken line? There's a way to do that with the new iMovie, but I don't see what's so special about that as opposed to multiple lines which let me see more of my project at once.

>The initial release of the new iMovie, you mean?

Yes. I haven't played much after this, original assessment. I very much liked the old iMovie, and the transition hit me hard.

If someone held a gun to my head I STILL could not tell you how to use it. None of its interface 'sticks' with me.

I think Johnny is more familiar with the lit in this area, but I'm pretty sure "put a gun to the user's head" has been shown in multiple studies to be a very poor affordance in user-based design.

ddt

It's great as a motivational tool, though.

It's just my personal experience and capabilities, nothing more.

Let me keep the gushing going. Just watched the FCP X video. (Quicker text summary) John Siracusa says "Final Cut Pro X looks like iMovie Super Duper Mega Pro, and I mean that in the best possible way." Agreed. I've never used it, but from the demo and the raucous cheers, it eliminates a lot of common editing chores and workarounds. The timeline is intelligent about what video/audio tracks move together and what happens when clips overlap, and makes it easy to collapse complex edits down. To an outsider, it seems how it should be, but I think pros have been laboring with very literal timelines in all their apps. It's clear that Apple did their user research.

Other "this is how it should be, of course" features are not worrying about what format or resolution your clips are in, and clip color correction. The latter really shows off what this remake is about. If you want to match color between clips, you apply an eyedropper to the clip you want to match to, get an instant preview image, and in a few seconds it's already rendered the whole clip in the background. To see this used to change a daytime shot to a sunset shot seems... simple. But Apple's applied Grand Central's horsepower to a non-trivial task, and then polished the interaction to make it feel like such a lightweight operation that encourages experimentation. That engineering+design excellence in equal amounts is Apple at its best.

My one experience with the FCP suite was using Motion (again, weekend deadline to learn and implement) to integrate some graphics into some video I shot to fake a UI. (It's the "happiness" gauge.) Pretty quick to get it to track points in the video so that my graphic could move with the camera jitter and fit right in, and animate elements like the needle. If this is the last generation, I can't wait to use the X version. Good software makes me wish I had more opportunities to use it. And at $299 now, I might find myself straining the surly bonds of iMovie much sooner. That price should complete Apple's dominance of the industry all the way down to public access stations.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2011 06:22AM by johnny k.

Thanks for that overview! Indeed, that color matching feature would have been of great use to me last week, when I was totally at sea when trying to get consecutive (in the final version) shots to look like they weren't shot 20min apart as the sun set. Also sounds like a textbook example of the potential of Grand Central as well as Quartz, though at this point I'm talking way above my technical knowledge level.

Very interesting, doing a video to contextualize the system and UI. I should ask you about that sort of thing for my project... .

ddt

Hobbit pre-production video...

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150223186041807&oid=141884481557&comments

This is what our government is all about. Rich folks feathering their nests.

agreed. and they have bigger guns and more coordination to prevent any ability to rise up against it in any long-term viable manner. Unless or until someone gets a nook.

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Unless or until someone gets a nook.

Is that the modern equivalent of the pen being mightier than the sword? :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/12/2011 04:04PM by YDD.

I have no comeback

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El Jeffe
the scene where they are spraying/fumigating the neighborhood. Truck says DDT on the side!!!!!!!!!!!! sorry to be obtuse. ;)

half a year later and t his movie is not out?

Director/Pitt problems?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1387581/Terrence-Malick-director-Brad-Pitt-movie-The-Tree-Life-snubs-Cannes-press-conference.html

Oh
my
gosh

I was totally unprepared for Black Swan. I have or had no idea of the story of Swan Lake.
I am speechless.
My body got chills from head to toe in the final moments.

If ever there was a climax (movie/story, not boy humor) that was perfectly timed with my awe of the whole thing.
It ended, uh no pun intended ... perfectly.

Un
be
lievABLE.

(I'm sure later I will look back and think WHAT!?)