- IMovie VS Final Cut Pro - Head-to-Head Comparison Between iMovie and Final Cut Pro If you are a Mac user with an iMac or MacBook, you may sometimes use it to edit your video clips. When you come to choose video editing software on Mac OS X, you may first choose the Apple native software rather than the third-party software.
- Final Cut Pro on the other hand is specially recommended for professional jobs There is no sense of time in iMovie while Final cut can give the total timeframe of the project All projects viewed in final cut with their times. IMovie only allows 6 projects and for these, their time is not known.
- Difference Between Imovie And Final Cut Pro
- Difference Between Imovie And Final Cut Pro X Download
- Difference Between Imovie And Final Cut Pro X Download Free
Check out Understanding iMovie Projects and Events at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Been using iMovie for about 4 years and was alway a little confused between Events and Projects. This was an extra awesome explanation Gary. I've though of upgrading to Final Cut Pro. Is the file structure similar? Is there a way to convert/Import iMovie Projects and Events to FCP? (Disregard if too far off topic) Many Thanks.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On this episode let's look at iMovie Projects and Events.If you're new to using iMovie, or even if you have been using it for awhile, you may be a bit confused about the difference between Project and Events and where clips go when you import them. It is very confusing. So let's take a look at an example and see if we can get to the bottom of it.You really can't do anything in iMovie until you create a project. So here I've got nothing in Media stored here and I've got nothing in Projects. I'm going to create a new project. It's going to be a standard movie project.Now on the left I can see the sidebar here that shows all the different media I've got. I've got the media in my current project which is called My Movie. The terms movie and project are pretty much interchangeable in iMovie. I look there and I've got nothing. I've got a big Import Media button.I can also look down here in the iMovie Library. This is where events will be stored and there are no events. Everything is totally empty and I just have this one empty project to start with.Now there are two main ways to bring video clips into this project. One is that I can go to File, Import Media. The other is that I can simply drag and drop to here. Of course I can also click here. It's the same thing as using File, Import Media.Just to make it simpler I'm going to drag and drop a video into here. Now I see the video clip here as part of My Media under My Movie. Notice there's still no events that have been created. So where are these events that everybody always gets. Tons of events in here. Well, it turns out that if you import something directly into your Projects, your movie, with it selected on the left sidebar it doesn't get added to an event at all. It's simply a piece of media. A movie clip that is only for this project. If you were to create another project you wouldn't have access to this clip. Only this project, this movie, has access to this clip and any other clips I import into it.So for many people you never need to mess with events at all. You can simply import video into the project, into the movie, and then forget about events and just create your video here by dragging and dropping from the media area into the timeline.So what about events? How do I get clips into events and what difference does it make having it in an event rather in a project media. Well I cannot create a new event here, File, New Event is grayed out, because I have the Project Media selected. I'm going to instead click where it says iMovie Library and now I can do File, New Event. It'll create an event and give it a name that has the date. I'll just change that to My Event, change it to whatever you want to be descriptive.Now I can import media and since I have the event selected rather than the project media selected it will import it into that event. So I'm going to choose three videos here. Import selected. You can see now that I've got My Event selected. I've got those three videos. When I look at Project Media I've got that other video I selected.If I were to select iMovie Library I actually will see all four. I see under My Movie one video and My Event three videos. So it's going to show me everything when I select this. I can also select All Events and I can just see the events, I would see this thing here and I can flip between them and if I had a second event I could flip between that. I can select just a single event. I can go back and select just My Movie and just see the stuff in there.Now at this point it is still somewhat straightforward until I go to My Event, which is basically just a storage space for clips. I select a clip and I drag it into the timeline. Nothing changes here but if I go to Project Media, to My Movie, I see both clips here. So what I've got now, is I've got one clip, this one, that's only part of Project Media. I've got another clip that appears to be part of Project Media but is also part of My Event. In fact it's not in two places. iMovie is smart enough to only store one copy of it in the iMovie Library. Since I originally brought it in as part of My Event this is where it is. It sits in this folder, if you want to think of it as a folder. But My Movie is going to give me a look at things that are in Events that I'm using in a current movie and it's going to give me clips that are not part of any event but I've imported and are just part of this project.Okay, so then what's the advantage to having clips stored in My Event here in the library rather than as part of the Project Media. Well, if you were to start a second project and this one by default is called My Movie 1 but I haven't saved it yet. You can see it has no clips in it. However, the events are all listed here. There's the three videos that I imported into the event but not the video that was imported into the other Project Media.So I have access to videos that are in events in all of the projects. So if you're going to be using your videos and creating a variety of movies from those clips then store them all in Events and then easily access each clip from an event, bring it into different movies. So you've got these two movies here. I can access all the clips in all of the events in either one of these. But in this one since I only imported this video of waves into the Project Media it's only available for this movie. That is the difference.But what happens if you've made a mistake and you've brought this in as part of the Project Media but you realize that you want to use it in other projects as well. Well, in this view it is very simple. You just click and drag to the event that you want to add it to. Now it's part of that event. When I leave this project and go into another one and I select that event I see this video is there as well. So it's very easy just by dragging to correct that mistake and make the Project Media part of an event. iMovie is smart enough not to duplicate the clip. It simply moves it. This is all just for organizational purposes anyway. Everything is handle under the hood. You're not actually creating more copies of the same file.So the bottom line is if you're not into organization at all and maybe don't use iMovie that often you just want to bring clips into Project Media and not use Events at all.However, if you are into organization and plan on mixing and matching your clips into different movie projects then you probably want to go to the media section of iMovie and here you can access under iMovie Library the clips used for each movie and the clips in each event and you can zero in on specific events. You can create new events. You can drag and drop items between events. So we could do, let's create a New Event. Then we can go in here and drag this over to this one and we can do all sorts of organizational things to put our clips into organized events and then access them in projects.You have either way. Either you can kind of use iMovie without organizing your clips in iMovie or you can use iMovie to heavily organize your clips into events before you even start making projects.In my last post I talked about zooming into and cropping an entire video clip in iMovie and Final Cut Pro X (FCPX). Another approach to this is to use zoom as an effect to 'crop' into your image while panning in your video clip, an effect if not originated at least made very famous by Ken Burns. In both iMovie and FCPX there is a function to do just this, appropriately named the Ken Burns Effect. This will let you create an animated pan (the effect of motion within a video clip) to a crop that has a smooth flow from one section of your video to another.
Video is shot in frames, and each frame is a picture still. Most U.S. made movies are shot at 24-30 frames per second (fps), but directors like Peter Jackson are just beginning to shoot at 48fps. There is debate as to the merit and need for this level of resolution (similar to the sample rate fidelity debate- 44.1khz compared to 96khz in audio sampling), but that is beyond the scope of this blog. The human eyes starts seeing motion somewhere between 16-20 fps. Early black and white films were at these frame rates.
To make any kind of animated transition within a video clip your software needs to 'key in' on the starting and ending frames to demarcate them. This is called 'keyframing' and effectively creates a meta marker embedded into your video clip as a reference point. iMovie and FCPX apply an algorithm that makes this transition from the beginning keyframe to the end very smooth. In iMovie your only choice is the Ken Burns effect. iMovie does all the keyframing in the background for you. In FCPX you can also use the Ken Burns effect but you have the added ability to do this manually, and add your own keyframes through the use of the transform tool. FCPX offers many parameters to adjust for the the transformation and manipulation of your video clip besides just scaling between your keyframes. For this post and tutorial I will focus on the Ken Burns effect in both programs.
How to pan and zoom in iMovie
Step 1: Crop tool and the Ken Burns effect
First, select the crop tool and the 'Ken Burns' effect, as shown below.
Step 2: Understanding the terrain of the Ken Burns effect.
In this step I will explain five aspects of the Ken Burns effect that are essential to understanding how to use it. They are broken down and labeled A-E in the screenshot below: (A) the 'Start' keyframe, (B) the 'End' keyframe, (C) the center crosshairs for the start and end-along with the trajectory (yellow arrow) that your animation moves as it transitions between those two crosshairs, (D) the border of the active or selected frame is in bold; the inactive frame is dotted, (E) handles that allow you to resize the selected frame while maintaining the aspect ratio, (as referred to in my previous blog).
Step 3: End frame selected
First, select the crop tool and the 'Ken Burns' effect, as shown below.
Step 2: Understanding the terrain of the Ken Burns effect.
In this step I will explain five aspects of the Ken Burns effect that are essential to understanding how to use it. They are broken down and labeled A-E in the screenshot below: (A) the 'Start' keyframe, (B) the 'End' keyframe, (C) the center crosshairs for the start and end-along with the trajectory (yellow arrow) that your animation moves as it transitions between those two crosshairs, (D) the border of the active or selected frame is in bold; the inactive frame is dotted, (E) handles that allow you to resize the selected frame while maintaining the aspect ratio, (as referred to in my previous blog).
Step 3: End frame selected
Move the end frame to where you would like it to be and adjust its size to the desired area you want to crop to. The crop will fill your viewfinder when done. Here is how the view looks when you select the 'End' frame, notice everything is dimmed but the selected frame (this occurs only when the selected frame is the smaller frame). Whichever frame is selected is the one that you can resize and slide around your viewfinder.
Step 4: Press the Crop icon again to finish and play your video
Below is a video of the final pan to zoom based on the above examples.
That concludes a pan from a full shot to a cropped shot. You can also invert this, and start with cropped frames and end with a full frame. Below are the steps for starting with a cropped frame and ending with a full frame.
Step 1: Starting close (zoomed) and moving out using Ken Burns
This time you'll diminish the size of your 'Start' frame to crop into an area. Define your crop area as with step on above. In the example below notice the center point of the 'Start' frame and the center frame of the 'End' frame and the yellow arrow showing the movement trajectory of the pan. For this example we are filling the view screen with the 'End' frame.
Step 2: Choose the Crop icon to finish and play video
Below is a video of the inverted pan to zoom sequence.
That concludes a crop in to out pan in iMovie.
iMovie is a consumer grade program, so the choices are not as robust as in FCPX. For many things though, this software is perfectly adequate and features less of a learning curve than FCPX.
Difference Between Imovie And Final Cut Pro
Using FCPX for Pan/Zoom
The main difference between the pan/zoom effect in iMovie and FCPX is the ability to preview and switch your start and end frames. You also have the ability to see and tweak the keyframes on a granular level if you wanted to.
Step 1: Crop and Ken Burns effect
The 'Start' and 'End' frames are both color-coded in FCPX. Choose 'Crop' from the dropdown and then 'Ken Burns' in the view screen amongst the three selections.
Step 2: Resizing your crop frame
Choose 'End' and resize and move the frame to where you would like it.
Example: Parameters – Start
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Here is the view of the 'Start' frame with the parameters revealed. Here you can see the keyframes in orange.
Example: Parameters – End
Here is the view of the 'End' frame with the parameters revealed and the ending keyframes.
Step 4: Inverting Start and End frames in FCPX
You can easily switch your 'End' and 'Start' frames by using the switch button. You can also preview your switch by using the play button.
Difference Between Imovie And Final Cut Pro X Download Free
Both of these pieces of software are available at the PARC; iMovie is available in all the Mac labs on campus.
Have a great summer.
Joe
