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Apple iLife '05 (Mac)

List price:	~~$79.99~~
Our price:	Too Low To Display that is 100% off!
Manufacturer:	Apple Computer
Release date:	22 January, 2005

Average user rating: Average user rating: 3

Need a Different Operating System

Amazon clearly says OS X. I have 10.2.8. I can't install ilife5. There should be a bold face warning that you need Panther or Tiger to install.

Working with iMovie HD

`Established' Shot and Location

In the Timeline, I set the order of my Clip Panes with the first being the important `Established' shot. Clips are pieces of movie footage that you rearrange into your movie for storytelling. Later, I add a movie title that answers the questions of when and where the movie was filmed. You will find that location and date anchor the movie for your viewing audience.

Major Editing in Post Production

I change the Preference to Clip Panes shelf when I do the major editing of my movie. Next, I split my movie clips into several new clips and drag them to the Clip Panes shelf for later editing.

Most of my movie clips need slitting (Command `T') to remove poor movie footage such as shaky hand-held camcorder shooting. The Post Production editing is the most time- consuming. I find that a ratio of one minute of movie footage is equal to one hour of editing time. This includes selecting the proper music, editing the sound and enhancing the video.

Analog Signals into Digital Signals

An analog-to-digital converter, or ADC as it is more commonly called, is a device that converts analog signals into digital signals. Computers, which handle data in digital form, require analog-to-digital converters to turn signals from analog to digital before it can be read.

Could I convert my VCR cassette`s Analog Signals into Digital Signals?

According to the Canon ZR60 camcorder's manual, the answer was negative for traditional replacing of existing scenes for the AV insert. Taking my roundabout approach, I worked at importing film footage from my RIC master VCR tape from my Rhode Island College Video project from 1992 using iMovie HD. My Canon ZR60 camcorder manual hinted at the solution for importing the VCR's analog video and sound.

How did I connect the devices? I used my ST-250N Stereo Video cable supplied with my Canon ZR60 camcorder and connected it to the VCR's video and sound ports.

I experimented with iMovie HD to solve the problem. My Canon ZR60 captured the master VCR tape footage after I set the camera to AC-In mode. Next, I reverse the book instructions from David Pogue's "iMovie 4 & iDVD, the Missing Manual" to make it work.

I chose File to Share (Shift-Command-E) then I clicked on the "Videocamera" icon. The instructions said, `Record your movie to a tape in your videocamera. This operation may take several minutes to complete.' Next, I changed the wait time to a maximum of 59 seconds for camera to get ready. Finally, I changed the Add time to 59 seconds of black before and to end the movie.

By using this method, I could capture 59 seconds of my RIC public speaking instruction master VCR tape to my MiniDV digital video cassette in my Canon ZR60 camcorder. Importing the entire RIC master VCR tape was 10 minutes and I had to stop and start 10 times bringing in the VCR film footage.

The quality from analog to digital tape was quite good. A commercial Analog Signals into Digital Signals converter sells for $500 to $900 retail. Therefore, the effort was worth it for this project.

Final Notes

I find the iMovie HD program one of the best iMovies program series. iMovie HD worked well with some of my old iMovies 4 footage and enhanced my previous low-light film footage when transported and burned in iDVD 5 program.

Great upgrade, but...

All I wanted to do was create a DVD for my brother. IMovie is decent. It has a few minor quirks to it. The amount of time for title slides has a max of 4 seconds. All of my slides are 4 seconds. Anything else seems too short and amateurish. It had a problem importing MGEP 1 movies. I had to go through a convoluted process to get the movie into place. Even then, the first .5 seconds of the audio was missing... due to the conversion process. This is not Apple fault, except they should be able to import those movies. all other formats works fine.

I found iDVD to have major quirks. First, the audio was 1 second behind the video on the DVD. Then the audio kept advancing forward, make it ouf of sync, more and more as the movie played on. Then the movie would stop the audio at the first sound effect i placed in a text slide. This was extremely frustrating. I thought it was supposed to be easy!?

iDVD just takes a movie, renders it, and burns it to a DVD with some selection screens. How hard is that? I ended up remaking one of my iMovie projects three time before it finally came out. The other project, well, I had to extract the audio so that it would be on the DVD (except the first and last video). Lastly, the final chapter (movie marker) pointed to the start of the movie.

I like Garageband, it's easy but not a powerful tool like Logic.
ITunes, well, it's iTunes! It is definitive.
iPhoto is awesome. It still feels like it is just feature creeping, for better or worse.