Any experiences with using iMovie?
Comparisons with other moviemaking / editing software? What would you recommend?
Prices in Taiwan and places to find the right movie software?
iMovie is easy to use. Never tried other softwares. I edited a bunch of shorts I made on my digital camera together with transitions and titles by using iMovie. Even a chimp could do it.
My buddy, brother and I hiked Taroko Gorge a few years ago and my buddy made a fantastic iMovie of our adventure… folks back home say its as good or better than anything on Discovery or National Geographic.
You should enter your imovie in The Urban Nomad film festival, Tigerman.
urbannomad.reeltaiwan.com/index2.htm
imovie is a sinch to use. As soon as you connect your video camera, imovie will detect it through the firewire. Hit import, and it will conveniently put all your clips into the right panel for you, already cut from each time you hit record or stop on your vid cam. From there, it’s child’s play. I’d also recommed an awesome little imovie plugin called slick that gives you hundreds of extra transitions, titles and effects. Once you have that, the only thing you can blame for a bad product is your own filming 
. I also have final cut pro which I honestly haven’t even touched due to the simplicity of imovie. What a waste.
Ok iMovie as I understand it is for Apple computers. What’s a comparison application for Windows computers. I have a Canon s400 digitcal camera and have taken a few movies with it. Unfortunately I rotated the camera 90 degrees and as you can guess some of the video now displays sideways. Is there a program out there that can rotate the video mid stream? Since Canon uses MJPEG, assuming I have the codec I’d guess that I’d just have to go frame by frame to rotate?
Any help would be appreciated. New to the whole movie thing. Thanks!
Well, there is nothing on Windows comparable. Media Center is just hideous to use and you get one format. No VCD, no DVD, no .mov, nothing but what they’re feeding you.
You’ll folks that’ll tell you Ulead this or Adobe that… don’t listen. Been there, done that. There are things on Windows I do like and given the current offerings, video isn’t even a consideration on the PC side.
Regarding your unfortunate penchant for turning the camera on its side, I believe Apple’s Final Cut Express – their “prosumer” editing package. Get a Mac and they’ll load it for you.
As to Macs, eMacs start at NT$29,000 and iMacs start at NT$48,000. On the portable side, the G4 iBooks start at NT$40,000. Better still you can get a 900MHz G3 iBook and a 10GB iPod for the price of an entry-level G4 – will do ya just fine.
Give MacCare a call at 8931-2031, ask for Eddie or Jessica. They both speak English well…
I have been using Pinnacle Studio and Vegas4 for editing-burning (VCD/SVCD/DVD). You can do pretty much stuff (transition effects, color correction, menu etc) with them. New version Cyberlink PowerDirector3 is also very good capture/edit/burn software. I belive, except Vegas (around 400USD), others are below 2500NT.
Yeah I’ve heard about those for burning to VCD/DVD. But first I need to get the video right. What’s a good video editting software for Windows? Specifically I need to rotate some frames from a movie clip taking from a Canon s400 digital camera. mjpeg format. Assuming I have the correct codec (like morgan’s).
Again any help is appreciated.
P.S. Thanks but got a laptop already. So can’t switch over to a mac.
[quote=“Alien”]You should enter your imovie in The Urban Nomad film festival, Tigerman.
urbannomad.reeltaiwan.com/index2.htm[/quote]
A… its not my movie… I’m an idiot with anything the slightest bit technical. I bought a digital camera in SC last summer and still haven’t even used it. I guess I should read the instructions… :? I was hopin’ that Blueface could show me how to use it… but then he split to warmer climes.