Apple introduces new version of iMovie featuring Storyboards and Magic Movie | Hacker News Reader

Apple introduces new version of iMovie featuring Storyboards and Magic Movie

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265 pointstodsacerdoti153 comments

This is the part of Apple that I love. iLife, enabling creativity with great results out of the box.

Even makes me forget, for a second, that they still run a monopoly on kid casino in form of an App Store.

iLife was fantastic. It was the main selling point in convincing me to buy a Mac. When I was younger (before I could afford to buy a Mac) I would watch the iLife updates each year so jealous given the lack of comparative software on Windows at the time.

Edit: Just had a flashback to iWeb. That was really great. Such a simple way for a kid to build and publish a website before things like Wix (which are still nowhere near as easy to use).

I remember submitting countless work in school, magazines, websites etc that were all done using iLife. It was so easy to produce stuff that looked fantastic. iWeb in particular was brilliant for kids.

Even brilliant for adults: I did my entire professional website in iWeb when I started as a solo attorney back in 2011. I think at that point it had been sunsetted, but I used it for a year and it was amazing. Nothing before or since has been comparable. I wish I still had the files but they are long gone.

The cool part about iMovie and Garageband is they're basically a more approachable UI layer to Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. They share a lot of the same core code, and teach you the same concepts just without the fiddly pro bits.

I love that bifurcation because it really makes the pro apps more approachable without compromising their usefulness (pro apps require info density, consumer apps avoid it), and it allows their power be scaled down to iPhone and iPad.

I wish more software was made this way!

As a longtime user of various pro apps in these categories - AE, Premiere, Final Cut, DVR, as well as ProTools, Digital Performer, Logic, etc, all of which share a lot of UX paradigms that make it relatively easy to switch between them, I find the type of simplification at work in iMovie and Garage Band makes them almost unrecognizable, stymieing my ability to use them at all almost every time I try.

I started in Sony Vegas back around the turn of the century and share your enjoyment of the standardized UI paradigms of professional software. It's great to be able to pick ups something like Davinci Resolve and just know what I can do and find the 10 keyboard shortcuts I want and then get to work, just because I learned Ae and Premiere a decade and a half ago.

I also share your frustration with iMovie and garageband... I can't get a damn thing done in GB and I've tried several times.

It's like the CLI: I already know exactly what I want to do, and I have an understanding of how the computer is going to deal with it. These apps feel like trying to drive a car with an iPhone app.

However, I work with a lot of non-professionals and they love these tools. So more power to them. I remember using logic back when I started 20-something years ago and had no idea baout how MIDI worked. I remember being able to actually have fun getting things done in fruity loops or rebirth. I'm glad there are tools out there which are nerf'd up for the beginners.

It's hard to go back to Duplo once you know Lego. Curse of knowledge.

I have had nothing but endless struggles trying to get iMovie to produce what I want (often extremely simple) and not a Ken Burns slideshow.

Honestly, after fighting with it for several hours, I almost always end up googling some ffmpeg incantations and get close enough to be happy.

It’s interesting how many iMovie defaults you have to un-check — Ken Burns, Stretch to Fit, Fit length to Soundtrack, e.g. — to produce what you want because the defaults were selected by people who know what they’re doing.

VLC logs its ffmpeg incantations which is handy for cribbing, extending

100% re ProTools, Logic and other DAWs that share core UX paradigms with analog tape recorders like Tascam. When GarageBand moved away from this core, I dug into Live. Amazing, powerful and complicated. “Plug in, arm track, record” is still very appealing and I sometimes miss gBand’s familiar simplicity.

I used Final Cut steadily through v7.x but still used iMovie for quick slideshows and rough edits. Final Cut X felt unrecognizable and stymieing, so I moved to Blender VSE. It’s incredibly powerful and configurable and complicated. iMovie is simple for working w mobile screencaps and I like the Storyboard concept in this new release. I’ll see where it fits in my workflows so long as I don’t completely blank the next time I’m in Blender.

I'm still salty about how they had a pro photo app, Aperture, and then killed it unceremoniously in favor of a neutered approachable equivalent.

It's hard to lose a favorite app. You might check out RAW Power¹, which has some Aperture DNA in the form of Nik Bhatt².

Last year I left Lightroom for Photos, which is surprisingly powerful when used with 3rd-party apps and extensions³.

¹https://www.gentlemencoders.com/raw-power-for-macos ²https://www.gentlemencoders.com/about/ ³https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205245

Which extensions would you recommend for Photos?

I'm using it with the Photos integration provided by RAW Power¹, Affinity Photos², and Pixelmator Pro³.

¹https://www.dpreview.com/news/0399283051/raw-power-3-availab... ²https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=page... ³https://www.pixelmator.com/tutorials/resources/a-quick-guide...

You're salty? I bought Aperture a couple of months before they killed it!

In hindsight I probably should have contacted my credit card provider, but I guess I naively thought Apple would do the right thing. No such luck.

Can we talk about how cool Aperture was that it even implemented the use of a private API that Aperture used to dim and desat the system UI elements?

I can’t remember if it was specific to Aperture only or if it went along with other Apple “pro” apps.

You’re thinking of the framework ProKit, which was used by a bunch of apple’s pro apps.

It didn’t dim and desaturate standard elements though - it was a framework offering a set of custom controls that had their own art. That art was drawn to look similar to desaturated versions of standard controls.

You know Aperture has been dead a long time when there is no one left to complain about how relatively poor its performance was, especially in its early years. There were of course some great ideas in there, especially in the UX and photo management stuff, but even on my (at the time!) awesome Dual G5 tower it was a mad resource hog. It never got anything like the love or investment Apple's other Pro apps did, with long gaps between relatively slim feature updates. I also forgot the price trajectory; v1 launched at 500 bucks, falling to just 80 by the final v3.

It was slow but it was great. Leagues beyond Lightroom at the time.

I'm not sure this is correct. Have you worked on software at Apple?

https://alex4d.com/notes/item/imovie-2013-is-consumer-ui-on-...

iMovie is like other Apple software in that it's great if you're on the happy path but worse than useless the moment you try to do something that Apple thinks you shouldn't.

For my basic use of stabilizing clips then putting them in sequence with transitions, DaVinci Resolve was easier and less frustrating to use (for me).

I wish Apple would still make Aperture.

It doesn’t look like it can make vertical videos in the iPhone app yet which is a little disappointing.

I’ve been looking for a simple video editing app for a family member who needs to post short form videos to social media.

Fortunately there are alternatives. Clips looks pretty good. Other suggestions welcome.

Just seems like a useful feature for iMovie to have.

1) Rotate the video to landscape in Photos app.

2) Import that video in iMovie and do all the editing you need to do.

3) Export the final video.

4) Rotate the final video back to portrait in Photo app.

I assume that would break the orientation of text insertions?

Aren't they hard-coded into frames?

yes it’s quite bizarre that key functionalities are split between the built in Editor and iMovie. almost all videos have to be done using both. doing vertical videos + text is very awkward.

Wow, this is the one feature I expected would be the raison d’être for an update of iMovie. Now it's still useless. That's really odd.

LumaFusion is the obvious step up from iMovie. It's much more powerful than iMovie, but aims to also be very approachable for complete beginners.

Disclaimer: My day job is as an engineer working on LumaFusion.

LumaFusion is great. Impressive speed, even on an older iPad. I honestly didn’t think it was possible. You guys are doing great stuff. And thanks for letting me own the software, not just rent it.

Thanks for the kind words. I feel lucky to get to work on it. And I’m on the same page regarding subscriptions. I much prefer to own my tools too.

I looked on the web site but can't find the answer. Does LumaFusion support vertical videos in a sane fashion?

Yes. You can explicitly set your project's aspect ratio, including 9:16 (which is the iPhone vertical ratio) and edit it that way. You can also include vertical video in a non-vertical project with black bars on the sides ("fit"), by cropping ("fill"), or stretching ("stretch").

Wow! I love LumaFusion! It’s hands down one of the best tools on my iPad for professional videos on-the-go.

We’ve developed a simple video camera app. We focus on parents who are beginners in creating videos like most people. And: we only do vertical videos.

https://www.wunderflix.com/en/

PS: let me know what you think if you give it a try!

My god it's tragic that vertical video has become a legitimate format when it really just arose from people holding their phones wrong.

"Holding their phones wrong" — you mean, holding a rectangular affordance ergonomically in their hands?

The odd thing to me is that you can't just tell your vertically-oriented phone to produce landscape video. The imaging sensor is square.

The imaging sensor is a rectangle in roughly the same aspect ratio as what is captured by the stills mode.

You can see that in any teardown.

I do agree there's no "right orientation" though since it's subjective. However having a square sensor would be illogical

Yes you are holding it wrong because the resulting video is clearly wrong if you view the video on a TV (same aspect ratio, other orientation), a computer or if you watch movies, or if you, well, see out your eyes. If you want to capture just about any action, it's going to look better in landscape, and that is why EVERYTHING until phones were put in the hands of plebs is shot in landscape.

Now, you could argue that we've gone more mobile, and newer social media formats expect portrait, but, that doesn't change that it's risen because people take videos and never consider, "hmmm, if I turn it around, I get a better picture and it looks more like a TV! Duurrr." Just because it's more popular doesn't mean it's not stupid AF.

What if I record videos for viewing on phones? Do I deserve insults too?

Well you can do what ya like, but I, as a viewer do have the ability to turn my phone to landscape to view landscape videos. What are you shooting? Pile drivers in action?

“Talking head” video is better in vertical orientation for the same reason painters have been creating portraits in vertical orientation for centuries: humans are vertical. Much of TikTok and other networks’ vertical stories are indeed videos of people.

I know plenty of people that don't own a TV or a monitor, they only own a phone and they have a locked to portrait mode. I wouldn't be surprised if you checked the world and there were more of those people than TV owners at this point. Why should they have to make their videos for TV users?

Point-by-point: phones can (should be able to) unlock from portrait for video. As I said, video is generally better in landscape, so it's not really about TVs, TVs are landscape because viewing video is better in landscape. Why anyone has to even argue this OBVIOUS point just demonstrates the militant ridiculousness of people that get on the defensive because they often (not always) put no thought into their video compositions. Vertical video look stupid, get over it.

It's not square. It's usually cut in 4:3 format.

I used to feel the same as you when the Vertical Video Syndrome came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dechvhb0Meo

Now, I think that there is probably more vertical video made each minute than there is wide.

I really enjoy watching vertical videos on TikTok every day and it is clearly much more ergonomic to hold the phone in the vertical aspect. When I create videos I use two cameras rolling at the same time, one in each aspect. It doubles my edit time, but lets me create content for vertical and horizontal platforms at the same time. Sometimes I have to shoot twice because certain content looks goofy if you try to frame it well for both.

If you find yourself making vertical videos, you need to reexamine your life choices.

Clips is tragically underrated and underused.

> It doesn’t look like it can make vertical videos in the iPhone app yet which is a little disappointing.

The longer we prevent vertical videos from happening as a society the better off we will all be for it. Our eyes aren't designed to watch vertical videos. Continue the good fight.

Honestly the fight is lost with instagram and tiktok

Hm. I am not sure if your comment is sarcastic. So the following may be a waste.

But I’ll follow it. Is your thesis that video should not be moving full screen on mobile devices in casual usage, i.e. Without the user rotating their device?

To expand on this, should mobile device camera apps warn users to not shoot portrait video due to being ”unergonomical”?

My thesis is that the most natural way of viewing videos is with a longer axis in the horizontal than in the vertical. Users should rotate their device to watch videos.

> To expand on this, should mobile device camera apps warn users to not shoot portrait video due to being ”unergonomical”?

Mobile phone camera apps shouldn't even understand the concept of shooting footage in a vertical direction.

The boat you are wishing for seems to have already sailed. Social apps are growing / have grown a generation that ejoys vertical video as a medium of its own. So whether vertical video is unnatural seems debatable either way at this point.

Probably not considered simple, but the free tier of DaVinci Resolve is excellent and can make custom dimensioned videos. I produce a lot of videos in a variety of proportions (including 4x5 and 9x16) and it works well. Downside is that the interface is best for landscape videos; I always wish I could rearrange the interface to accommodate a larger vertical preview.

I love that iMovie just keeps existing.

I think Apple see iMovie and GarageBand as the entry point into funnelling interested users towards Final Cut and Logic Pro when they’re ready to reach for something more capable

You also can’t discount how effective they are as marketing tools to signal “Apple is the computer company for artists and creatives”.

Yeah that’s fair too

Yeah maybe, I think most other companies tho would recognize that all of that is such a small part of their business and cut it off.

I’m so happy Apple doesn’t.

Yes, this is one of the ways Apple succeeds -- by being able to make management decisions like spending money on GarageBand and iMovie that would get cut in any other type of typical Corporate America VP structure.

So who made the call to kill iWeb? Or other iLife products that disappeared?

They are also the reason that Macs turn up in secondary schools in the UK

Yup, and I am still a bit salty Apple discontinued Aperture, which was to iPhoto as Final Cut Pro is to iMovie. I am paying for Lightroom Classic and there are still UI idiosyncrasies that makes no sense to me that just clicked in Aperture (Lightroom CC? Let's not even talk about that version...)

Me too.

I'm using Lightroom CC, because I'd migrated away from Lightroom Classic several years before.

I can't begin to understand why things like "open selected images as layers in Photoshop" _still_ isn't possible in Lightroom CC. It works really well on my iPad Pro, though, and gives me 90%+ of the features I need for my workflow there. I just wish they provided an accessible scripting environment that I could use to automate things.

What stopped you from sticking with Classic or moving to Davinci Resolve?

Resolve? How is that a replacement for Lightroom Classic?

I've been looking at CaptureOne myself as a replacement...

Do it. CaptureOne is the only thing I've found after Aperture that I like. Still miss Aperture, but CaptureOne is great, and they improve it frequently.

I've been dragging my feet because I Keep getting a friends and family discount on Lightroom Classic from an Adobe employee friend. But I really, really should...

If I can also move away from Illustrator for map making, I'll be set. (Read: I really need to spend some time with Affinity Designer to be sure it meets my needs, then just cut the Adobe cord.)

My mistake

I haven't tried in a while, but CaptureOne has very limited lens support compared to Lightroom. I wonder if that's changed.

DarkTable - https://www.darktable.org/ - is a free and opensource alternative to Lightroom but the UI takes some time getting used to.

I really miss Aperture. It was a very nice piece of software, however I'm using Darktable in these days, and it's seriously no slouch either.

As someone who designed the replacement database layer (that literally improved the speed of access by an order of magnitude, after I promised the VP it would do in an off-the-cuff meeting, and my director face-palmed at hearing me say it) and then managed the new graphics engine team, I feel your pain.

Aperture was fundamentally too small a market for Apple to justify keeping a 'pro-app' team working on it. The concept was a high-cost semi-pro feature-set, and the market soon decided it cost too much and the price had to fall. Once that ball started rolling, the doom was set.

Still, I went on to do more interesting things at Apple - the latest being writing the client<-->server team bridge for 'Hide My Email' to let apps like Safari and Mail integrate into the server-side anonymous-email-mapping-to-a-known-address facility. Lots of cool tech in there, under the skin.

The reason why I love apple is exactly because the tech is there, but “under the skin”.

They are probably using ML or AI whatever to get this new Magic Movie thing working. But that’s not their press release, unlike Google which would be parroting this as a major tech thing. Apple goes for the human.

Not just Final Cut and Logic Pro, but the Apple ecosystem itself. I've long lusted after Google Pixel's camera quality but the three reasons I will never switch are iMessage, GarageBand, and iMovie. My literal 4 year old son can use iMovie on the iPad and it is a great way for us to construct family memories (I load in the clips and then he decides the order, the music, and the editing)

I honestly don't understand their strategy with Final Cut and Logic Pro. These apps can't make very much money, they are a suspiciously good value and they never upsell you on anything. Logic Pro cost like $300 over a decade ago, it still costs $300 today, and all major updates in that time have been free for existing users. Compare that to a competitor like Ableton Live which has cost like $800 since Ableton Suite 8 and major upgrades have come out every 3-5 years and cost a few hundred dollars to upgrade. Or compare it to Pro Tools which now costs $300 for 1 year of a subscription license.

So it really doesn't seem like funneling Garage Band users to Logic is a very high priority for Apple. More likely Garage Band and maybe even Logic Pro are loss leaders to show that the mac is a platform for creatives.

On a related note I never understood why they killed off Aperture which was beloved by many photographers, why didn't they keep a similar upgrade path from the free Photos app -> Aperture like they did for Garage Band -> Logic Pro? Seems like another indication that they really don't like to be in the pro software business, they are only there reluctantly at this point.

It probably has a small dedicated team, and the sales revenue easily covers their salaries and any overhead.

I don't get why niche programs like that within larger companies are the exception.

Final cut pro supposedly has around 2.5 Million users. Many of them buy expensive Macs and other Apple products. The software uses the latest features from Apple's hardware, which gives users an incentive to keep upgrading.

I think they keep the software more affordable to attract new (starting out) users. Then eventually they will hopefully go for a Mac studio or something.

Another question you could ask: why not make these pro tools free? I am guessing that they are using the income as an internal development budget. Should be sufficient to afford the development I think.

Final Cut is also suggested as an add-on after customizing a Mac for purchase.

I suspect the pricing has something to do with making that just low enough people to check the box.

I am also suspicious of this flow, it too feels very un-optimized. I think it has existed since back in the days where you had to buy software in a box to install off of a cd-rom. I think they even frame it as this add-on software will come pre-installed on your new mac, like that is a big convenience so you don't have to go out and buy it separately. But now obviously the alternative is you can just one-click purchase it later from the mac app store. They don't even bother giving you some small 10% discount or something for buying it alongside the computer. I wonder how many people do actually check that box and add it on.

It’s sketch.

If it weren't for Final Cut Pro, I wouldn't have upgraded to a Mac Studio. Not as big a business as iOS hardware but it has a halo effect.

The pro apps are probably paying for themselves, but their purpose is to sell hardware, both directly because you want that functionality, and to serve as a benchmark for other pro apps especially when you have shiny new silicon to take advantage of.

1. FCP sells Apple hardware.

2. It’s also a “halo” product. A showcase of what Apple’s computers are capable of.

Is there a Linux company that tries to do high end graphics as their main MO ? (So slick design laptop, but all Linux)

Alas for Aperture

Apps like iMovie, pages, numbers etc are ‘required’ to have people switch to the mac, so you don’t have to pay for thirdparty apps to do basic stuff with all your media. It’s really nice that these apps are also quite powerful to the average user. It ties the whole experience together.

I suspect that iMovie still sells Macs. Maybe not singlehandedly, but it's an important factor.

I don't want to say "there's nothing like iMovie available for PC's", because I frankly suspect there is these days—but I don't think there's anything normal people know about in the numbers that know about iMovie.

They briefly offered Windows Movie Maker and then Windows Live Movie Maker as a free download with Windows Live Essentials.

Recently, they acquired Clipchamp and attempted to extract a subscription fee for it if you wanted to export in anything above 480p. It also placed watermarks on the free tier. The resulting outrage forced them to walk it back.

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/30/clipchamp-free-plan-export...

I used both at the time, and Windows (Live) Movie Maker was never anywhere near as good as iMovie.

Agreed but it was something that they gave away for free

I love how Apple just releases these things out of the blue. If it was Microsoft they’d be crowing about it loudly on blogs for 6 months before then underdeliver a broken pile of crap.

This has been on Windows since like Windows 8. Probably before that since I haven't been tracking it. But I remmember I used to make these types of movies with storyboards years ago.

iMovie is not on Windows. AFAIK it has never been, unlike Logic.

I suspect you're thinking of Windows (Live) Movie Maker. It's nice in a pinch but it's no iMovie.

I don't get this unnecessary flak against MS? Like what's the point? Totally not relevant, they don't even have a similar product on the level of iMovie

Were you not burned by the many iterations of Windows Live Movie Maker? It was a 16-year product. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Movie_Maker

Here’s Microsoft’s Windows blog post about ClipChamp, their latest attempt: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2022/03/09/announc...

They did. And they kept rewriting it, reimagining it and breaking it every damn release.

> Availability iMovie 3.0, including the new Storyboards and Magic Movie features, is available today as a free update on the App Store for devices running iOS 15.2 or later and iPadOS 15.2 or later.

Not for Mac?

You can run iOS/iPad apps natively on every Mac since the switch to ARM

Some iOS apps. The dev has to enable it when submitting to the iOS App Store.

Only if the developer has flagged that it is supported.

There’s a Mac version though.

I wondered this morning why my MacBook said there was an upgrade... Now i know.

Anyone have any experience or anecdotes on the extent to which Apple has Product Managers working on its in-house software? And what sort of overlap or collaboration happens between products and teams? Is it a fun gig?

As a PM, I would love to work at Apple. If I were looking at open job descriptions, should I expect them to call out specific apps I’d be working on?

Just for fun.

This is an ad for first iMovie released, from 2000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oIjd5qsvZo

This is great and all, but it's been years and I'm still waiting for rebooted QuickTime to catch up to QuickTime 7 Pro.

It mostly did. It can open image sequences, trim, cut, export, merge, remove audio or video tracks, display the timecode track. Cutting a piece of a movie is a bit cumbersome, but it can be done (move to the first time, edit -> split clip, move to a second time and split again, and then delete the clip in the "show clip" mode).

It's a shame it doesn't support third party codecs anymore. That makes it almost useless for all but a few supported formats.

Apple has been always about empowering creatives. They have world-class camera hardware and editing software. It always made sense to me that at some point they would close the circle and try to compete against YouTube. They instead went with Apple TV+ that feels more like yet another streaming platform and doesn't leverage many of other Apple's strengths and costumer base. Apple seems to have low tolerance for content they cannot tightly control. YouTube reactive style curation and permission-less publication probably feels alien and scary to them.

> YouTube reactive style curation and permission-less publication probably feels alien and scary to them.

Now that you put it this way, I'd bet no established enterprise would have what it takes to start something like YouTube now. Heck I doubt even Google would be able to given the amount of "doing things by the book" these kinds of orgs require.

Apple stands for a tightly curated user experience overall. Want that weird app? No. Want user-generated content? No. Want to isntall some weird software to make your home screen swipe up-and-down rather than left-to-right? No.

For desktop computing I would find it frustrating (and use a Windows box with a ton of malware/weirdware on it) but for my phone I prefer it this way.

I don't think Apple has any interest in social networks (and that's effectively what YouTube is these days)

The risk to reward ratio for the brand itself is not something they'd want to undertake.

You see it all the time with other tech stories. If Apple does something bad or is even associated with something bad, that is standard across other tech companies too, the news articles will focus on Apple.

Imagine that with user posted comments. Google can get away with it because they have YouTube under a separate brand, and they've established that it's looser. Apple would never want to do it as a separate brand if they can help it (beats and FileMaker not withstanding because they existed prior) and the amount of vitriol that the brand would receive over any contentious content would negate any benefit.

> YouTube reactive style curation and permission-less publication probably feels alien and scary to them.

And to everyone else. Who wants to deal with the headache of moderating PR liability of moderating all the crap that gets uploaded?

The old Windows Movie Maker was the best. So straightforward. No nonsense trying to “help” you. Just give me a basic timeline system please!

FYI: iPhone/iPad only, not MacOS. I have tried editing movies on my mobile devices in the past but the experience was never great. Even just trimming a clip in Photos is difficult with the touch interface.

After trying ~10 different Android apps (all of them pretty bad), I've been very pleased with CapCut (from Tiktok).

I’m using lumafusion on my iPad Pro without any problems.

Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve used iMovie for years for simple movie editing on my iPad but recently I found myself needing something just a tiny bit more sophisticated.

I just bought Luma Fusion ($40) and so far it feels intuitive but I can already tell it has more controls than iMovie — the ones I wished iMovie had (like quick audio fixes and equalizer). This is super useful because I can’t run Audacity on an iPad and sometimes I just need quick audio fixes done.

I'm an engineer on LumaFusion, and one of my specialities is audio. If you run into things that could be better, let us know. support@luma-touch.com (real humans read every email, we're a small team).

iMovie 3.0 for Mac OS X came out almost 20 years ago.

iMovie for Mac OS X is 10.3 now.

I believe the poster meant the release with these features is iOS-only (for now, anyway).

Yeah the release is confusing iMovie 3.0

I wish Apple would just let all its numbers in a row (including Numbers)

If they're not planning on unifying much of their desktop/mobile dual-platform stuff as soon as the M1 is sufficiently widespread (so, another 5ish years, when the last of the x86 machines are aging out of active support?), I'd be pretty surprised.

Totally agree. In fact, iMovie for OSX is really struggling these days. I have a 16" MBP from 2020 with 16GB RAM and it struggles with editing video taken on my iPhone. I had to move to Davinci resolve which runs just fine but is a lot more complex than I would like (honestly, though I'm probably better off just buying a new computer as I have a feeling Apple are going to deprioritise making their Intel software work as well).

I personally use apple keynotes to produce videos. It’s a powerful tool, and just yesterday i was wondering why imovie was lacking so much features. And that is what i like about apple, they target consumers, not professionals

Is there a good way to blend in your face during a slideshow? I am using a third-party app for that now, and then use QuickTime Player to record the screen. It works, but it is a little bit more convoluted than I expected.

Live Video? https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote/add-live-video-tan6a...

Oops :-D I gotta check that out!

Keynote is basically a Powerpoint competitor, right? How do you use it to produce videos?

iMovie is impossible to figure out (it was easy many years ago then they ruined it). How about a simple app to let me trim and splice video and add audio? And a simple way to export, but not so simple that the choices are youtube and something else. Just export at whatever resolution I choose. And don't put stupid intros, outros, and transitions unless I ask for them.

> how about a simple app to let me trim and splice video and add audio? And a simple way to export, but not so simple that the choices are youtube and something else. Just export at whatever resolution I choose. And don't put stupid intros, outros, and transitions unless I ask for them.

That's literally iMovie.

Who is the target user for this? All video editing happens within the TikTok app nowadays.

Apple will probably add more and more features to iMovie than porting over Final Cut Pro.

Maybe Youtubers, as soon as you want to do something barely elaborate. Sometimes free tools don’t benefit the user, but their audience ;)

Would it surprise you to know that not everyone is editing or making (or even consuming) TikTok videos?

Can I work with 2.7k 60fps HEVC videos from my GoPro in it yet? Or is that still busted?

I jumped through endless hoops getting DaVinci Resolve's free version setup because I didn't want to degrade my video quality.

What hoops are there to jump through besides the forced registration? It’s a one click installer.

Mostly learning curve and time to render optimized previews (considerable).

My needs are very lightweight and perfect for the iMovie use case beyond it's inability to handle what I consider not uncommon quality with today's rise of higher resolutions and frame rates.

Sounds like you are in the best position to give it a shot and see if it works. You have source material, you have iMove...

Why not just Buy Final Cut Pro or screenflow? I’d rather pay $149 (screenflow) for for a product that just works vs wasting hours of my time trying to get something setup.

Resolve is fine and it’s free. I work in the moving pictures industry and Resolve has been used at some step for 99% of the films you see out there.

I highly doubt that claim. Most end to end pipelines are still heavily driven by Avid and Final Cut.

For smaller ventures, Resolve has gained a lot of traction. Especially for its color workflows.

But a claim that the vast majority of films use resolve is highly unlikely IMHO

The claim you are responding to is that Resolve is used "at some step" in the vast majority of films, not that it is used specifically for cutting the vast majority of films. For example, Resolve might be used on a DIT cart for on-set color work, or it could be used for color grading in post—even if the film is actually cut on e.g. Avid or Final Cut.

Resolve's editing features are newer and less established, but I personally really like them.

For anyone interested in trying Resolve, I strongly suggest taking a look at Blackmagic Design's own oft-overlooked training material, which is put together by professional trainers and does a great job of working in useful concepts, workflow tips, and keyboard shortcuts at just the right times. The free video tutorials are a good place to start, and the free PDF books offer more of a deep dive. Project files to follow along are also included.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/tra...

(I've posted about Resolve once or twice before; for the record, I do not work for BMD, I just enthusiastically like them.)

Yep. Resolve is used for DIT and dailies at Company 3 which has done the post and colouring for a lot of the biggest movies out there.

Source: I have friends there.

You are of course completely wrong. I have friends at Company 3 (one of the best colourist companies in the world) and they use Resolve for DIT and dailies all the time, including for such small films as Not Time to Die, Wonder Woman 1984 and the next Jurassic Park.

But of course this is the typical HN attitude of “I know better”.

I literally said I work in the industry, and your first claim is “there is no way that’s true”.

edit it’s also revealing that you think there are post pipelines set up around Final Cut. In my experience, there is no Final Cut at the high end (with extremely rare exceptions).

Just in time for a video project I’ve been considering. Oh, wait… for iPad and iPhone. Not at all how I want to cut together ~100 video files stored on my Mac and NAS. C’mon, Apple…

When people diagnose Apple’s software business as wilting, that’s no joke.

Well, you could just do a YT tutorial and do it with DaVinci Resolve.

Apple is clearly thinking about the kind of user here who doesn’t know what a “Mac with NAS” is. Someone who maybe doesn’t even know how to get video files from their iOS device into their Mac.

iMovie exists on a Mac? And there's Final Cut Pro?

These features probably aren't for you and your use case, and that's okay.

iPads and iPhones have pretty good video processing performance.

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