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Integrate Review — Apple iLife '04

Aug 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Tom Patrick McAuliffe

Software suite offers plenty for video pros.

In 2002, when I first heard that Apple was releasing iLife, a series of four programs, for only $49, I thought the company was nuts. But now Apple has woven together iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, and iMovie, as well as the new application, GarageBand, into what it calls “Microsoft Office for your life.” At the outset, iLife was a package that every Mac-using digital content creator should have, and it has been a large factor in many PC users defecting to Mac (or at least including one in the edit suite).

The new version, iLife '04, comes pre-installed on all new Macs. With the addition of GarageBand music-creation software, it goes one step further than its predecessor. All of iLife's applications have received significant updates, in some cases bringing a steeper learning curve. Luckily, a new crop of tutorial books, CDs, and DVDs are available, as are plenty of online user groups.

I'll focus on the three applications germane to what most Video Systems readers do — editing video with iMovie 4, creating DVDs with iDVD 4, and creating music beds with GarageBand.

With a beautiful interface, iMovie 4 is one of the more polished apps. It has a number of new and important features, although it is still somewhat slow and CPU-hungry (especially true with longer projects). One new feature is the ability to trim clips directly in the editing timeline, a simpler and quicker way of editing that combines three or four steps into one. Just click on the clip, and drag either end to the duration desired. Unlike in the old version, a clip is not destroyed (non-destructive editing) and can easily be restored or re-edited, as is the case with Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. You can also choose any number of clips and add an effect globally.

There's more. Plenty of new transitions and CG effects are available in iMovie 4, and titles are sharper with no discernible jaggies. Apple has also added support for its iSight webcam for videoconferencing. But for me, the best new enhancement comes in audio. iMovie 4 finally sports an audio waveform timeline, allowing you to see exactly what the audio is doing and making it much easier to see and edit a cough or loud noise during a video's soundtrack. Via hotkey combinations, you can also perform audio scrubbing to find that precise edit point.

On the iDVD side, the interface and operation are pretty much the same as the previous version's. Apple has added 20 more of the nifty pre-built DVD menu themes, along with some other new features. On some menus there's the new Auto Play function, which plays a short slide show or QuickTime while the rest of the DVD loads. Pretty cool. The biggest news, however, is that you can get up to two hours of high-quality video on one DVD. The iDVD 4 software now uses the same MPEG-2 encoder technology as its more expensive cousin, Apple's DVD Studio Pro ($499). The video quality on a SuperDrive-burned DVD is stellar, with no discernible artifacts from the original DV footage. Beyond that, iDVD 4 now has a Project Map feature, just like in a standard DVD-authoring application. You can have multiple menus and sub-menus all in one window, allowing easy navigation of DVD content. Pretty nice for only $49.

Since its announcement at MacWorld in January, the new GarageBand software has been turning the heads and ears of users and competing manufacturers alike. Any video creator who has paid for less-than-artistic music backgrounds should appreciate this new tool. Although primarily aimed at the musician and not as complete as Apple's Soundtrack professional software, GarageBand allows anyone to create great-sounding music by combining included music loop samples or by digitally recording live instruments. With an interface that's as easy and simple as dragging and dropping pre-recorded sound files onto a timeline, GarageBand lets you add audio effects, edit, and then output to a variety of audio formats — or use the finished soundtrack in your iMovie. GarageBand is the icing on an overall great cake, but even more so than iMovie, this is software that needs CPU horsepower to operate at peak efficiency.

I tested iLife '04 on two machines. One was a PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.2, with a 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive, and a SuperDrive CD-R/DVD-R recorder. The other was a 500MHz G4 tower with 512MB of RAM, also running OS X but with no SuperDrive. The install on both computers was without problems, and using OS X's multitasking, I registered automatically in the background during installation. I was, however, unable to load iDVD on the G4 tower, a moot point as it had no DVD-R drive (required to load iDVD). Across the board, the suite of applications did not like the lowly 500MHz CPU and operated sluggishly.

The laptop's faster CPU was evident right from the start; a 7-minute project rendered in less than half the time that it took the tower. The ability to roll right out to DVD was a godsend.

I did have a few problems at the start, though. They say that you should always stay current with the latest OS and software drivers, and such was the case here. I had created a demo of my singing, and after adding titles and effects and rendering, I created a DVD using one of the iDVD templates. Upon playback, the audio and the video did not match up. With the help of some online support resources, I found the problem — an old version of QuickTime. I upgraded to the latest version, and that helped, but extracting the audio from the tracks and then locking the audio to the video (within iMovie) solved the problem of the audio being out of synch. Speaking of audio, I also had difficulty adjusting the volume of a clip before rendering it. I solved this by always setting the volume to full, rendering the clip or transition, and then adjusting the volume. The simple things will get you every time.

Another problem I encountered was that iMovie would sometimes corrupt the first clip in a project, usually when opening a video with titles and/or photos imported from iPhoto. I now keep two 5-second black still clips (also called “slugs”) as the first clips after running 30 seconds of color bars. That way, if the first becomes corrupt, I won't miss any content. I recommend that any time you encounter speed and reliability problems, remove all your plug-ins, even the old Apple-supplied ones. Then run iMovie without them to see if it makes a difference. On the G4 tower, it did. It's also always a good idea to check with all your third-party software vendors to see if they have updated their plug-ins to take advantage of iMovie 4 or any new software you've installed.

iLife '04 is a head-and-shoulders improvement over its predecessor, and at less than $50, it is one of the greatest values on the market. It has its problems, but Apple has a great history of releasing fixes and maintenance updates. By the time you read this, I expect many shortcomings to be addressed.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Apple Cupertino, Calif.; (800) 692-7753 www.apple.com

Product: iLife '04

Assets: Very low cost; inter-application operability.

Caveats: Needs a fast Mac; somewhat of a learning curve.

Demographic: Any Mac user.

Price: $49 or free with new Macs

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© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.