I haven't used iMovie for five years it is interesting to come back to iMovie and see how clunky, difficult and how bad the UI has become. I pay all of this money for a fancy phone but don't even try to download movies from the phone to MacBook Air for editing in iMovie! I wasted hours figuring out how to do this as all of the 'simple instructions' such as go to your import menu and select your file don't actually work. Don't even get me started on those fecking black bars and getting rid of those. For Fecks sake apple this is a mess clearly so that customers don't use your ****ty product and pay for external apps right? How sad for your company that your apps are now so crap they are no longer easily used with the updated technology you produce.
I'm using version 10.1.6 on a 2010 iMac running Hig Sierra. I think this is the point where iMovie has started to suck beyond belief. It used to be good and smooth, but now it is full of inexplicable glitches, slow non-performance and random behaviour. Clips randomly move from one library to the other, projects get mix up or dissappear altogether, only to show back up in months later without any provocation. It seems to have moodswings, where it will import clips of a certain type without hesitation, only to totally refuse to import the exact same type of file the next moment. HD exports sometimes look perfect and sometimes they resemble old VHS-tape. Exporting a 10 minute finished film will sometimes go in 5 minutes and sometimes in 5 hours or even days.
iMovie now behaves like a zoo-monkey on meth: Totally unreliable, erratic and pathetic.
I have used I-movie for many years and have found it extremely efficient, fast and easy to operate. Lately I found that the green screen is not working as it should. Would it be possible to have only the green screen upgraded or keep my present version of i-movie together with the new one ?
The latest version 10.1.16 is a disaster. There are so many glitches and malfunctions that it is virtually unusable except for the most basic purposes. Wish I had never updated to Catalina.
The new update is very bad, information on leght in short videos clip in the streamline are gone, exportation to Youtube is now only in low quality, very shitty. If you can avoid to upgrade, consider it. The older versions were still ok, now it turned to be a very basic limited program. I don't recommend it.
In my experience, and this happened many times over many years of use, imovie updates DESTROY past projects! Frustrating! I made a movie 2 months ago...wanted to revisit it but as I recently upgraded to Catalina I was forced to upgrade to iMovie 10.1.14. Missing clips and no solution (yet). Googling the problem shows SO MANY frustrated users with similar issues and spite in their posts. I DON'T TRUST iMOVIE!
It's dumbed down, but dumbed down in a way that's not even that intuitive/user friendly. Poor, amateur design which barely lets you have control over what you want to export; it's excruciating. Editing is clumsy and bumbling in many ways. Apple used to be aimed at people who do above the ordinary things, but unfortunately they left that pasture years ago in many ways, exemplified perfectly by the current incarnation of iMovie.
It's dumbed down, but dumbed down in a way that's not even that intuitive/user friendly. Poor, amateur design which barely lets you have control over what you want to export. Editing is clumsy and bumbling in many ways. Apple used to be aimed at people who do above the ordinary, nut unfortunately they left that pasture years ago in many ways, exemplified perfectly by the current incarnation of iMovie.
Great app :) 5 stars from me :) Really good video editor if you don't really need something as professional as Premiere or Final Cut Pro... but I think that even for professional use iMovie can be pretty good, if the project doesn't require some very advanced features or the level of tweaking something like the green screen videos that more professional video editors can have... you can still make a pretty good video with what iMovie offers :) and the UI is really nice and easy to use.
I should mention that you should update this page, since Apple made the iMovie free for all Mac users recently, so now it's freeware :)
BTW... I really don't understand why are some complaining in the comments that they find it "difficult" to use and/or giving the new version just one star and then writing how they like more some very old versions, even though those versions had less features and were in fact more complicated to use without actually doing a better job... I mean things like having to convert videos to that Intermediate format before editing them, which used to be very slow and used to consume lots and lots more space than an average .mp4 video does... and if you don't remember, iMovie 7 used to cause noticeable posterization of gradients if you were just importing pictures or .mp4 videos and relying on iMovie 7 to automatically convert them to that Intermediate format (if you didn't manually convert them first with something else to a format that iMovie 7 would accept without trying to convert it automatically)... Now, in newer versions of iMovie you don't have to convert stuff to that Intermediate format, you can just drag&drop mp4 videos directly to the timeline if you want and it's there... and you can start editing right away... and editing is not difficult too... the way someone edits in iMovie didn't change that much (some buttons were moved from being in the middle of the screen to the area above the video preview, instead of small icons for backgrounds and transitions under the video preview you now have buttons with text above the library area... some new features were added, the theme is different, but I don't see why would someone be confused by that), if you don't understand some of the new features very well, you don't have to use them all... Apple isn't forcing you to use each and every feature they add... you can still just split the video where you want (with CMD+B or by right clicking on it and choosing that option), delete the parts you don't need by clicking on them and pressing the backspace key, drag&drop some transitions that you like and export it... it's not difficult at all....
Objectively speaking, iMovie 10 is better than iMovie 7 or 8 and I gave you some of the reasons why... and there are also things in iMovie 10 that you just can't do with iMovie 7 or 8.
It's a good app and it deserves 5 stars in my opinion :)
I've been an Apple & Mac user for 30 years, "been there and done that" with most everything out there of any interest to me, and have rarely had a problem I couldn't solve. But iMovie has always frustrated me. While I'm sure it can do a lot of neat stuff, I still can't get the hang of it, and have problems with even fundamental steps, let alone advanced features. It's one of the least user-friendly apps I've encountered, and, AFAIK, there's no really good, thorough user manual, either by Apple, who should have written one (their support site is almost insultingly lightweight), nor by anyone else.
2 stars because it's probably very good (maybe a 4 or 5), but, thanks to Apple, very hard to use well (just barely above zero).
PS: I'd be thankful if anyone could point me to a good manual or tutorial.
We have a Mac Pro with iMovie 10.0.5 and Final Cut Pro v10.1.3 and my husband manages a popular HD YouTube channel using both of these Apple applications. Previous versions of iMovie were difficult to learn and certainly no where near as flexible as these latest releases. The uploaded videos are primarily produced in iMovie then enhanced using the additional features of FCP. We could do everything in FCP but find iMovie much easier. Tip: if you want HD movies on Vimeo or YouTube save to 1080p (FCP) or iTunes (iMovie) then copy off to your desktop and upload. Great quality. Take a look at today's upload: http://goo.gl/1kKupr and judge for yourself. BTW, the outro at the end of the video was produced using Final Cut Pro.
I have the most current version installed 10.0.3 but Desktop 6 shows my installed version as 9.0.9. Is there a way to fox this on my end? I know v5 gave us this option but I can't find it with v6.
I have done a fresh install of OS X 10.9 and then installed iLife 11. Apple say's you can upgrade to the newest version of iMovie and iPhoto. Yet when I try to update on the MAS I get an error about having the wrong account or the app being refunded. Apple needs to fix their crap.
Before the '08 version, iMovie HD was a great editor with an easy-to-use interface in the classic Apple fashion.
Since iMovie '08, it has been utter garbage. The interface is barely more intuitable than a switchboard without labels.
Still waiting for Apple to wise up and return to making powerful yet elegantly simple applications. Ease of learning and use is what brought me to the Mac, but the lack of these elements is keeping me away from Apple's apps these days.
Hmm, so over 1GB, mainly to get pushed higher-res stuff for Retina-display MBPs it seems...the new localizations are probably some of that, but I imagine the main thing is retina display support.
Anyone notice how much extra space it takes up after actual installation? Never having actually launched iMovie, I'd be a bit annoyed if it was just 1GB of extra high-res retina display stuff. If it's replacing lots of stuff and isn't anywhere near 1GB, that's much better.
Below find the direct download link to the non MAS version:
http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/Mac_OS_X/downloads/041-5542.20120611.ME3tt/iMovie9.0.6Update.dmg
OS X 10.7.4 or later, I guess Snow Leopard clients are no good for Apple for Software stability and improvements. Apple is really leaving users behind!
iMovie 9.0.6 has been released as of today, now supports new MBP with Retina Display, adds a couple of localisations and improves general stability according to Apple.
iMovie is cool, but when you export your masterpiece you find out the output quality is soooo bad it makes it useless, yes and it's not just me, there's users all over the web talking about the same thing, iMovie creates awful banding on black areas of video footage. Apple is rotten!
Overall, this is a great update. However, the audio playback while scrubbing through a clip can get annoying at times, and when you open up the music panel, the navigation bar can get shifted to the left, so if you want to insert something at the end of the movie you must scroll down. Not all of the kinks are worked out, yet....
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"App Store only"??? Does that mean those of us who have iMovie NOT via the App Store are going to be left behind / ignored? Is Apple forcing us to (re)purchase this app on the App Store in order to stay current? WTH?
It took me several YEARS to finally get comfortable with the "new" imovie- I loved imovie 6- but this latest version finally did it. I literally forced myself to give up comparing it to imovie 6 and sit down and learn to use it and now I must say it is really quite easy and it is hella fast on my MBP and attains warp speed on the imac. Now if they would just allow 3rd party transitions and effects all would again be brilliant in movie making land.
It might not be any good at making movies, but iMovie's file compression is simply outstanding and can be used solely for that purpose - tasked with compressing my wife's 750MB AVI file down to a size compatible with a uni project she was doing, iMovie managed to reduce the size of the same movie down to 7MB. I've never heard of such a ratio amongst most if not all of the shareware apps out there.
The download link on this page doesn't work for me. If you have the same problem, you can download the update directly from Apple at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL859.
I second the previous guys comment... iMovie is atrociously irritating to use compared to the good ole days of 4-6. MUCH more difficult and frustrating to accomplish the same thing. Thank God I almost never do video work anymore.
I never dawned on me how much Imovie had changed since I had Ilife 06. I have been trying to edit a movie I made of my family from this summer and it has been such a frustrating experience. For one thing, the removal of the multitrack and timeline just threw me. It also seems like I can't easily cut scenes like before. I am going to have to use something else abit more intuitive than this.
I have NEVER at any time been able to get iMovie to launch on my Core Duo Intel iMac 7,1 running Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.4. It ALWAYS crashes immediately at launch. I installed this most recent upgrade in the hope that, just maybe, it might solve the problem. But NO. Just the same. Can anyone tell me precisely what I need to do to get iMovie to launch successfully ? My computer is very new, but iMovie has NEVER launched.
Just a note that this 7.1.2 update requires Quicktime 7.5 as well - if you haven't got it yet, the update will not install, and iMovie happily tells you it's all up to date.
When adding an .mp3 sound file to iWeb (iLife 08 version), I get prompted with the message that I should use iMovie's QuickTime web export to reduce the file size. Unfortunately, I can't find this feature or any documentation of this feature iMovie. Help anyone?
