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SCREAM
So ... I make songvids for fun ... and I've been doing it with a 10-year-old copy of Premiere, which produces really lousy quality files and, in addition to that, isn't available in versions that can run on Mac OS X. This means it has to run in Classic and it's slowwwww ... plus, since Apple no longer supports Classic, whenever I buy a new Mac I won't be able to use Premiere anymore.
Thus I've been sniffing around for alternative sources of video editing goodness. I really like Premiere. If it was available for OS X, I'd buy it. Alas, it's not.
Which leaves me with iMovie.
Which makes me want to scream and throw my computer across the room.
Word cannot really do justice to how much I loathe iMovie. There isn't a single thing I've tried to do in the program that isn't implemented in a completely asinine way. Just to use one example -- whenever you import a clip into iMovie, it feels compelled to convert it into its own, uncompressed and hideously huge format. One 3-minute clip comes out at about 700 Mb. It takes, like, 10 minutes to do it, too. And here's the kicker. These clips end up in a sort of ... bucket of unassigned clips, but if you drag one of them onto the timeline, it's GONE from the bucket. Meaning, if you accidentally screw up when you're messing around with the clip, you're screwed -- you have to re-import the clip.
Once you're done editing a movie in iMovie (and if you can actually manage to do this without needing Prozac and months of therapy, more power to you) then you probably want to save it in some sort of format that other people can read, as opposed to iMovie's horrible proprietary format. In order to do this, you have to go to the menu option "Share". (Not "Export" or "Save As" or anything reasonable.) And this asks you if you want to email your movie, make a DVD out of it or save it as Quicktime. Well, not really any of the above, but I guess if I save it as Quicktime I could maybe convert it into something else ... so I choose Quicktime, and THEN it ... gives you an error message and refuses to actually do anything useful. BUT. If you select "Expert Settings" beforehand, then it actually comes up with a menu of various formats (e.g. AVI, etc) THANK YOU JESUS ... but still it refuses to allow the hapless user to choose, oh I don't know, actual SETTINGS for your movie, so you're stuck with whatever horrifically huge file it chooses to create for you ... And somehow, it seems perfectly capable of creating HUGE avi's that are still horrific quality, so it *looks* like a 10 MB .wmv only it's 70 Mb for some obscure reason.
SHRIEK.
Thus I've been sniffing around for alternative sources of video editing goodness. I really like Premiere. If it was available for OS X, I'd buy it. Alas, it's not.
Which leaves me with iMovie.
Which makes me want to scream and throw my computer across the room.
Word cannot really do justice to how much I loathe iMovie. There isn't a single thing I've tried to do in the program that isn't implemented in a completely asinine way. Just to use one example -- whenever you import a clip into iMovie, it feels compelled to convert it into its own, uncompressed and hideously huge format. One 3-minute clip comes out at about 700 Mb. It takes, like, 10 minutes to do it, too. And here's the kicker. These clips end up in a sort of ... bucket of unassigned clips, but if you drag one of them onto the timeline, it's GONE from the bucket. Meaning, if you accidentally screw up when you're messing around with the clip, you're screwed -- you have to re-import the clip.
Once you're done editing a movie in iMovie (and if you can actually manage to do this without needing Prozac and months of therapy, more power to you) then you probably want to save it in some sort of format that other people can read, as opposed to iMovie's horrible proprietary format. In order to do this, you have to go to the menu option "Share". (Not "Export" or "Save As" or anything reasonable.) And this asks you if you want to email your movie, make a DVD out of it or save it as Quicktime. Well, not really any of the above, but I guess if I save it as Quicktime I could maybe convert it into something else ... so I choose Quicktime, and THEN it ... gives you an error message and refuses to actually do anything useful. BUT. If you select "Expert Settings" beforehand, then it actually comes up with a menu of various formats (e.g. AVI, etc) THANK YOU JESUS ... but still it refuses to allow the hapless user to choose, oh I don't know, actual SETTINGS for your movie, so you're stuck with whatever horrifically huge file it chooses to create for you ... And somehow, it seems perfectly capable of creating HUGE avi's that are still horrific quality, so it *looks* like a 10 MB .wmv only it's 70 Mb for some obscure reason.
SHRIEK.
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I've actually found a couple of demos/free versions of different software that I'm going to try. And I'm eyeing the "light" version of Final Cut, because it looks very similar to Premiere and that would shorten my learning curve considerably.
For some silly reason, I hadn't even thought about asking around on comms. I always use Google to research stuff and completely forget about trying LJ. I'm so 2002! *grin* Thanks!
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I, too, have given up on iMovie for the pain and suffering it causes. If you do try out FinalCut, I'd love to know how it works for you. Trying to decide if it's worth the money. ^_^
Soooo glad I'm not the only one frustrated!