What the new iMovie wants you to do then is push this new creation — which when you think about it, looks suspeciously like a ‘music video’ — to iTune and to the .Mac Web Gallery. With a click of a button, a drop down menu appears: you can choose to save it as Tiny — 176×146, Mobile – 40×772, Medium – 640×360, Large – 960×540, or in most cases all four sizes. From iTunes, you can move your movie to your iPod, your iPhone, or Apple TV for viewing on your large screen HD TV. From the .Mac Web Gallery, you share with family, friends, or anyone. You can even push your creation to You Tube with a click of a button, should you so desire.

All this is not to say that you cannot create more convential, longer movies.
You can. You can select any or all of any or all of your clips, not just snippets. You can exactly control the length, of your creation: the time is displayed at the bottom of the project window.
You can create some very impressive titles, even with the few templates Apple has provided
thus far. The pallette of transitions is limited, compared to all the plug in’s many of us loaded in the ‘old’ iMovie, but this is probably a blessing in disguise. Many people over-used transitions anyway, and so one could convincingly argue that in this case, less is more.

For many of the ‘old’ iMovie power users, this new version is a betrayal. Never have I seen so many flaming postings on any discussion forum. What’s going on on Apple’s the iMovie 08 formum is … curious. Some posting have
been so objectionably, apparently, that Apple had to take them down. Which further infurated those who seem to feel that something has been take away from them. Not only has nothing been taken — Apple quickly posted a lnks from which a copy of iMovie HD 06 can be downloaded, but much has been given. Just the potential for organizing one’s video, into easily accessible Events seems
to me to be a promising development. It does take the patience of Job to move video into the iMovie Library, but when you think about about that’s shouldn’t be a surprise. Video equals huge files, and it just takes time to do whatever
they do to create the thumbnails, the Events, etc. I’m not at all sure exactly how this works. I’m all but certain that iMovie 08 uses reference files, like Final Cut, rather than duplicating the video over and over as iMovie sometimes
does. Which makes sense, given the huge file size of just mini-DV; add HD video, and it would easily overwhelm even the largest storage system if it were not carefully managed and controlled.

Overall, I’ve gone from skeptical, to surprised, I guess, to fascinated, and more than a little impressed. Apple again has come up with something completely original, very simple to use, stunning to look at — well this does assume you shoot decent video:-) — and elegant in its execution.
Hal