This is an article written but never published, and written before FCP 7 was released. While I am luv'in the new FCP, this post may be helpful for those working only with what god gave them (iLife 09) or for those that need a break from FCP and want to try something new.
Knockdown: iLife ’09 vs. FCP Studio 2.0
Introduction
The idea for this seemingly absurd Knockdown arose when I was faced with a recent baby project for my nephew and his family. They all came into the Studio one night with stills and videos from various cameras and in even more varied formats. It was all dumped on my desk just hours before my relations were to fly back home, and my wife was with them with a look on her face that said to me, you better get it done! They wanted a DVD of the materials that rivaled our studio work, with soundtrack, DVD menus, films, and photo slideshow. My first reaction was to calculate how long it would take to do in FCP using my wizbang editing bay before me. But then I looked at the clock - it was already 6 PM on a beautiful summer evening, and their flight was leaving first thing in the morning.
I groaned, thinking I would be up all night with this family project, editing raw footage in FCP, adding titles, creating special effects in Motion, editing music tracks in Soundtrack Pro, and then creating a still slide show with even more music, all before minting a disk using DVD Studio Pro. Just the thought of the project made my head hurt, knowing that the photos would be overexposed and film underexposed, and in general, a total mess of raw materials just ready to cause problems within my delicate FCP setup.
Coincidently, I had just updated iLife ’09 on all the studios shiny new Macs. I don’t know why I did that, except for the fact that whenever I get updates from Apple I feel obliged to install them, just for good measure. I had never even opened up any of the iLife apps before, and why would I with FCP Studio 2, Aperture, and all the other goodies at my full disposal! So I decided, what the heck, this would be learning experience and one that might be fun. To my utter amazement, in just a few hours, the project was done: 5 music video length videos of the kid at the playground, in the pool, at restaurants, and being bitten by my dog. Plus 1 animated photo slide show with over 100 of the best photos (from a pool of thousands), all packaged nicely on a DVD with animated menus and music. The footage in the videos looks great on a 24” flat screen TV, even though the majority of the video was shot on still cameras of various levels of quality and design. The relatives were extremely impressed, even more so when I transfered that exact same content to their iPod Nano for review on the plane trip home.
Tools Used
- iLife ’09 update
- iMovie
- iDVD
- iPhoto
- iTunes
- iMac 2.4 GHz w/ Leopard 10.5.7
Part 1. Using iLife ’09
IPhoto
Without using a manual or tutorial at all, I just dove right in. The first thing I did on a test lab was to load up the raw materials - about a hundred video clips and a thousand or so photos all from various kinds of memory chips. I first turned on iPhoto’s auto-import feature to capture all the media right into a new iPhoto library (Preferences/When Camera Opens/Use iPhoto).
I was pleasantly surprised when iPhoto sucked both photo stills and videos off the SD cards. One thing I have always hated about Aperture and Lightroom is their inability to handle video. This eliminated one step from my normal workflow with FCP: CatDV video file management!
Within 15 minutes or so I had a complete database of all the materials I needed for the project at hand. I was duly impressed. The interface to iPhoto is so simple (and visual) I was almost confused by it’s purity, as compared to file management in Aperture and other tools.
I had originally planned to bring all the stills into Photoshop CS4, but I found the built in editor for iPhoto to be good enough: one click red-eye, rotate, crop, and image adjustment, RAW handling, plus a limited assortment of cool special effects that reminded me of my Tiffen and other Photoshop filters. But without the heavy weight of having PS open all the time!
Okay, just one hour into the project and I had all my photos and video sorted and marked for use, with the photos all pre-processed. But the clock was ticking - and the harder parts were yet to come.
iMovie
This being the first time I had ever opened iMovie, I was left feeling a bit bewildered. Where the heck is the timeline? However, it was comforting to see that what iMovie calls an Event Library, were my video assets - just waiting for me to drag into a new project and to begin editing.
I was taken aback on how editing is done in iMovie, which is linear in a sense, but perhaps a bit too so. But once I got the hang of creating clips and stringing them together with transitions, everything fell into place nicely. I was really surprised by all the built in filters under the Video Effects pane (reminded me of Red Bullet Looks in FCP). There was also an interesting assortment of filters, transitions, and themes. Within minutes after clip assembly, I was able to get the timelines complete and ready to roll.
What I did miss was Apple Color, which at the beginning of this exercise I vowed not to use, so I was stuck with iMovie’s crude adjustments there.
Also a surprise, was the complete integration of iTunes assets within iMovie - so I grabbed some of the kid’s favourite tracks there, and within one hour point five, I had my 5 finished videos ready for DVD placement.
Total time so far, 2.5 hours. I remember thinking that if I could get through making a photo slide show and cool DVD menus soon, I might get a good night’s sleep before seeing my in-laws off at the airport.
iDVD
Usually at this point in any FCP project, I am so tired and cranky that I hate dealing with Compressor and DVD Studio Pro, two apps that always seem to have a bug at the last minute. What a joy iDVD is! I simply fired up the program sight unseen, and within minutes I was able to figure out how to create an animated menu structure with music (also sucked in from iTunes). A few clicks later I also had a decent photo slide show with more music from iTunes. Drag and click, click and drag, and it’s done. iDVD is much like DVD Studio Pro, but without all the headaches.
I was easily able to experiment with output compressions in iMovie, as I was not sure how the raw (and terrible) footage that my relatives had provided would play out, but it seemed not to matter what reasonable setting I tried, it all came out looking grand. I am so used to worry, it’s hard not too.
The one big timesaver throughout iLife ’09 seems to be assets management, as all assets are available at all times and neatly tucked away in libraries, unlike my FCP projects, which during production are usually all over the place and not handy when you need them, at least not without some amount of extra brain power.
As in iMovie, iDVD has a decent sent of canned effects and themes. Enough to find one that would knock the socks off my relatives, who have high standards being in the business and all, albeit on holiday and using a point and shoot to take videos (arg!).
But this project clocked in with a total time of 3.5 hours, including the time taken to read some of the online help and to figure things out as a first time user.
I estimate that I must have saved at least 3.5 hours using iLife apps, then if I had gone the FCP route (with Color adjustments and animated Motion titling).
Part 2 - The Knockdown
Okay, there really is no Knockdown here, as its silly to try and compare iLife with FCP in the professional media production environment. But for a one-off project that needs to be done in hours instead of days, I found iLife ’09 to be acceptable to use - and will use again! So here is a table of what is worthy of iLife ’09 and what is not when compared to a professional editing suite like FCP 2.0 Studio.
