So, what's new with iMovie 09?
Well, at first sight, not much: the interface is quite similar and you could be lulled into thinking it is a minor update.
But fear not, Apple has seriously revamped iMovie, after down-vamping it between iMovie HD and iMovie 08.
The first thing is that now you can activate "advanced features", and get many more fine tuning options.
Amongst the new features, let's mention a few.
Green screen: OK, this might be a bit "gadget" and we sort of saw it coming with iChat's "blue screen" feature, but it does work fine (although it seems it's not really easy to find how to use it, as the Apple staffer I was talking with could not find how to do it). I had a look at a greenscreened video and if it's not pro-quality, it certainly does the trick.
Precision editing: this allows you to do fine editing, going down all to way to the frame level.
And this is what people have been asking for since they simplified iMovieHD into 08.
Maps: seems like Apple loves geo-features, since after adding geotagging to iPhoto, they offer a tool in iMovie that allows you to mark a number of locations on a map, then iMovie will generate an animated "itinerary", just like one of the map sequences in the Indiana Jones movies. Maps can have various styles, and there even is a pseudo-3D globe. I'm not sure this is essential stuff, but it goes along with the iLife apps and is mostly done with taste.
Image stabilization: this is quite an impressive feature, especially if you shoot in HD. iMovie can detect and highlight clips that are too "shaky" and you can ask it to "stabilize them". What it does is zoom, rotate and crop the video frame by frame so that the final result is stable. The demo clip from a Safari in a Jeep was quite impressive, although the cropping means that if you shoot in SD, you could face significant pixellation. Oh, yes, the feature is real fast, like, live.
There is now the possibility to crop and rotate (by 90° steps) clips, which is really nice, and you can add chapter and comment markers for export to iDVD and H264 video.
Unfortunately, the tool that allowed you to fine-tune the volume of the soundtrack using anchor points is still missing.
Overall, this, like iPhoto, looks like a solid upgrade to the previous version, and I must say it is damn fast.
