Fun with iMovie 08

I've been somewhat delinquent in my postings over the past week as things have been fairly busy at work and I've been working on finishing reading and writing reviews of several new books. However after spending some time tonight working with iMovie 08 I wanted to post some quick thoughts on the tool and the future of digital media. For those that don't own a Mac, iMovie 08 is part of the iLife 08 suite of consumer digital applications sold by Apple for use on the Macintosh. iMovie is an application that enables you to import, edit and publish your own digital movies recorded from either a camcorder or digital camera. Historically, I've never been a big user of digital video editing applications but iMovie has changed that given it's simplicity and ease of use.

I've never been a big home movie fan or camcorder fiend but here is what has changed my mind with iMovie:

Ease of Use
- the interface is simple to use and powerful in its ability to enable even a novice user like myself to quickly edit and build an impressive looking movie
- the ability to incorporate music from your iTunes library means that you can really dress up your clips with your favorite music

Publishing
- integration with Apple's .Mac web hosting service that enables one-click publishing to the web and easy maintenance of clips in the event that you update them in the future
- integration with YouTube provides you with the ability
- built-in ability to export your movies to iTunes and have them preformatted for your various iPods (e.g., Touch, Nano, iPhone, Classic) makes it very simple for the new user and allows you to skip the need to use third party apps such as iSquint

My take is that the editing functions are a major step forward for the average consumer. However, the big reason that iMovie is a major step forward is the seamless publishing and integration with various playback devices (e.g., iPods, external websites) making this a very powerful tool. I'm now at risk of getting hooked on developing and publishing lots of Movies to the web!

Follow-up: In spending more time working with iMovie08 I wanted to provide a link to a great resource the Unlocking iMovie '08 blog offers a variety of great tips and useful tricks for getting the most out of iMovie.