hey since the gui is being looked at right now and apple just updated their software, I thought it'd be a good time to run through (and maybe reiterate) a couple features that would simplify video editing without sacrificing features.
That tends to be a lot of "proprietary" software's problem, the gui' might suck but there are a lot of features; or the gui is intuitive and all the features are removed so a professional would pay more for a less intuitive software. The process starts when the footage is imported, rather than edit the original material, automatically a whole set of identical compressed files are stored for the actual edit, allowing for an almost renderfree nonlinear workflow. each clip added to the timeline is really just a sequence from the clip. The software has a function which scrolls through the footage as the mouse hoveres over the clip left or right from beginning to end, surving as a exotimeline. Clicking from one point of a clip to another point in a clip creates a sequence with in's and out points set for the clip, then that sequence is combined in the timeline xml file. I am not sure what type of file is the default edit file but I believe it is a well compressed version of motion jpeg. After the edit is finished and has been viewed for comfirmation, a true HD render can take place while the editer is at a cafe or taking a nap... Of course as this program was built by Apple, the nutorious feature deleter, there are some problems... Mainly imovie isn't a real editing program, of course there is not reason why we can't have the same features in a real program like cinelerra or lumiera (which is why I bring up their features in the first place) New features for 2009 include the ability to have separate audio and video clip sequences, in order to allow clips audio to overlap another clip or be used for a series of clips in a montage or sequence... another feature is control over the speed of the clip even in the MJPEG mode, allowing for timeline designed clipspeed (forward backwards, and variable framespeed) here don't take my word for it, here's apples take on the matter, (don't mind john, he's a little creepy but he means well) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mOw0vCzmmU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TwbI4GXhdU&feature=related other than gui, basically there is a built in image stabilizing feature which doesn't seem like it would be too hard to incorporate through a plugin but thats another discussion for another time. still its cool and not new, its been in other software like avid, premiere, FCP (its called smoothcam in FCP) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WRXcULhkk&feature=related
