Pros & Cons
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- Cool trailer creation.
- Sharing to popular Web video sites.
- Good use of multitouch.
- Responsive performance.
- 1,080p output.
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- Some operations not so intuitive.
- Can't share to desktop iMovie through iCloud.
- Limited text formatting.
- No picture-in-picture capability.
Apple iMovie (for iPad) Specs
| Tech Support: | Online community and FAQ. |
| Type: | Personal |
With its new, faster quad-core processor, the new iPad is capable of more-taxing app duties. And few tasks are more demanding on a CPU than editing video. So, to show off its powerful new tablet, Apple has released a new version of iMovie for iPad ($4.99). The app is available now in the iTunes App Store or as a free upgrade to existing owners of iMovie. It's a fun and powerful application, with its new Hollywood-style trailer creation, but is it the best iPad video editor for your needs? Read on to find out.
Getting Started with the New iMovie for iPad
First, you need to know that the new iMovie won't install unless you've upgraded to iOS 5.1. But you'll want to do that anyway, since it offers a bunch of OS tweaks and fixes some battery-killing bugs. As a "universal" app, the new iMovie app is actually compatible with iPhone 3GS and up, and with 3rd and 4th-generation iPod touches, but the large retina screen on the new iPad is a better choice for a screen-real estate-hungry application like video editing. It's memory-hungry, too. At 404MB, iMovie is big for an iOS app, so you may be waiting a little while for it to download and install, and you should probably only do so using a Wi-Fi connection. It took several minutes on my iPad 2 with a fast Wi-Fi connection. I also tested on a 16GB third-generation iPad.
View All Interface
iMovie's top new feature, movie trailer creation, is hinted at right from the start screen, which features a movie theater marquee above a brick wall. To start a new project, you hit the plus-sign icon, and choose whether to create a standard movie project or a new trailer. If you chose the latter (which is more fun), your view moves inside the theater, and a curtain opens, ready to display your new video creation. As in iPhoto for iPad, you can hit a question mark icon to open help, but I only saw this in the new trailer creator, not the standard video project view.iMovie's editor interface uses the typical video editing three-panel view—source tray and preview window on the top, and timeline across the bottom. You just drag a source clip down into the timeline to add it to your movie. The app does a nice job of rearranging the display when you switch from portrait to landscape orientation, filling the top (nearly) half of the screen with the project video preview. You can pinch and unpinch to contract or expand the timeline, but you can't adjust the three areas' relative size.
For some interface actions, iMovie isn't as intuitive as it could be: For example, to split a clip, you have to swipe down on the timeline insertion point. There's nothing in the interface that tells you that's what you have to do. By comparison, in Avid Studio for iPad[link], you simply tap a razor icon. iMovie also shows a hybrid thumbnail-timeline view—unless you hold your finger down on a clip's entry, when it changes into a movable storyboard thumbnail. Again, there's no way to know how this works without some experimentation.
Your Own Hollywood Trailer
Its unique Trailers feature sets iMovie apart. An Apple-produced sample trailer is ready to play when you start a Trailer project, and along the bottom you'll see nine appropriately decorated theme choices: Bollywood, Expedition, Fairy Tale, Narrative, Retro, Romance, Scary, Superhero, and Swashbuckler. Hitting the Create button opens a handwritten-looking outline page on the left, with the movie preview window and source video content on the right.
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The outline is where you enter your movie's name and credits, and you can change the studio and logo style from the default "HighDef Films." But the really cool stuff happens when you switch from the Outline tab to the Storyboard tab. Here, you'll see suggested scene thumbnails, such as group, wide, action, and landscape, each with a time indication in seconds. It's almost identical to what you can do in the Mac version of iMovie.
Just drag one of your own clips from the right onto one of these thumbnails to use it for that spot in the trailer. Or, shoot the scene on the spot using your iPad's camera. The newly shot clip will zip into the storyboard thumbnail and will actually be longer than the required scene so that you can trim off that often-unwanted beginning or end. The same goes for existing clips. You can swipe your clip left and right, while a selection box indicates the required length in the middle of the clip (see slideshow).
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You might be surprised to see how many shots a movie trailer requires. I tested with the Swashbuckler theme, which requires 26 clips of varying scene types. One disappointment with this theme was that I couldn't add cast members; other themes like Romance do list cast members, but it would be nice to be able to add these to any theme.
Sound is a strong point for iMovie trailers. You get high-quality, large orchestral soundtracks that sound as good as those you hear on real Hollywood trailers. And the storyboard approach means that your clips will be in sync with the mood of the music. You can also turn the sound on and off for your own included clips. In the end, it's hard to imagine a more fun way to create with your video, without involving yourself in all the intricacies of multitrack editing.