One of the reasons I was so curious about the Mac is because of its reputation as a multimedia wizard. So, having just filmed most of the Calgary Stampede Parade on my new camcorder, it was time to put the Mac to the test. The video files that my camcorder produced didn't seem compatible with iMovie, so I tried importing it into Windows Movie Maker. Same difference. So I pulled out my handy dandy Super conversion utility and converted all of my mpg-1 files into mp4s. iMovie had no trouble importing mp4 clips. I managed to import the clips, arrange them how I wanted and add video transitions, titles and credits with absolutely no outside assistance. But all iMovie does is create a movie project and save it as a computer file - in this case I chose Apple Quicktime .mov file. This produced a 300MB file containing over an hour of video, but contained in a player window about 300 by 300 pixels. In order to make this into a DVD, I would need iDVD. iMovie exports movie projects right into iDVD. Unfortunately, I did not find the interface extremely intuitive. But after doing a little research, I managed to create a title screen and encode the project for burning to DVD. Since my MacBook does not have a DVD burner (reader only), I chose to burn the movie to an image. I then copied that image to my Windows computer and Nero made it into a DVD flawlessly.That's a wrap.
6 comments:
So it might not be all its cracked up to be?
I wouldn't go that far. After all - this is a movie creation program we're talking about here. Pretty complicated stuff.
Wow. and you still needed a real computer to do half the work. It's amazing how much Apple talks itself up as a "media wizard". I've been doing all the same tasks on a pc for years and rarely had problems.
I only needed the PC to burn the DVD because the MacBook model I chose didn't come with a DVD burner (it's the bottom model). Had I spent a little more and bought the next model up, I wouldn't have needed the PC at all. So it wasn't really a 'problem'.
Also, all of the software that was required to perform these tasks came with the OS - free. Could I have done all of this on the PC? Yes - but not without spending money on software first.
Oh - the reason I didn't bother with a MacBook version with a DVD burner is because I already have 4 other burners on 3 other computers.
So I guess you could say I purposely rely on the Windows PC for DVD burning. If I had no PC, I would have chosen a model of MacBook with all the necessary hardware.
I still wouldn't want to use the crappy mac software, when I could go out and chose from thousands of opensource windows apps that will do the same thing, usually better, faster, and you can do it on a machine that is actually upgradeable and doesn't cost an arm and two legs for a pretty white bezel.
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