iMac 27 with imovie or final cut express 4

[loves2travel]

We are planning on getting the iMac 27" i7 with 8 gig of ram. We have a lot of HD DV tapes that we would like to put on to DVD to share with family and were wondering if iMovie would work or if we should upgrade to Final Cut Express 4.

With all the talk about Apple upgrading the iMacs, should we wait or should we go ahead purchase. We heard they might be upgrading the graphics on the iMac.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Ballis]

I think iMovie will do just fine for your use with family movies. If youre not experienced with this kinda software, it will also be alot more pleasant to use.

 

[weekendsrule32]

I have to agree with Ballis. I own both pieces of software, and even though Apple markets Final Cut Express 4 for "pro-sumers", it is definitely a little more on the complicated side, especially compared to imovie. If all your going to be doing is putting clips together and burning dvds, just stick with imovie.

 

[akm3]

iMovie is fantastic and produces excellent results for what you are describing.

The people who bash it really do a disservice as the new iMovie does exactly what it needs to, in exactly the way it needs to, without feeling like an 'old' application with tons of cryptic key shortcuts.

Anyone can pick up iMovie in minutes, Final Cut...amazing power, amazing learning curve.

 

[JoshBoy]

I agree, I have imovie, final cut express 4 and final cut pro 3 on my machine. I started with iMovie and slowly moved up (but i also do it for a living now) but to be honest when I want to quickly spit something out I still go back to imovie now and then. Once you reach a level with imovie and get all you can out of it or have a massive passion for doing it I say spend the money then. Just remember you can also use garageband with it for sound clips, editing etc.

good luck

 

[loves2travel]

Thanks for your responses! How long a clip can be made on imovie? Looks like we shall start there and work our way up if need be.

 

[dolphin842]

Just something to keep in mind: You mentioned that your footage is HD. However, any DVDs you make will only be in SD resolution. (While it recently became technically possible to get blu-ray-compliant HD content on a DVD, there's no easy way to do it yet).

Of course, if you don't need to play the discs on a DVD player, you can use iMovie export HD content to QuickTime files and stick them on a DVD (they would have to be played on either a computer or a blu-ray player that supports mp4 playback). I haven't used the latest iMovie that much so I don't know if its YouTube export feature supports HD.

 

[loves2travel]

(While it recently became technically possible to get blu-ray-compliant HD content on a DVD, there's no easy way to do it yet).

Hmmm...Looks like we need to do a little more research!

 

[dolphin842]

Hmmm...Looks like we need to do a little more research!

All the pertinent info at the moment can be found in this post. Long story short, an open-source video encoder used to make h264-compatible quicktime files can now be used to make blu-ray-compliant video streams. However, the software doesn't yet exist to actually author the dvd (i.e. creation of menus, sticking the files in the proper directory structure on the disc) in conjunction with the encoder.

If you to put high-def video on DVD now, it appears that Roxio's Toast Pro will let you do so. However, I don't know how they're doing it or what how good their compatibility is with blu-ray players. I know in some cases, blu-ray content on DVD will work fine in standalone players, but not the PlayStation 3.