January 29, 2009
Apple's iLife gets a makeover
When Apple released it's iLife '08, suite of applications, it somehow forgot everything it knew about making intuitive, easy-to-use programs that made tasks like creating and editing movies both creative, easy and fun.
The consensus was clear when it came to iMovie '08: It sucked.
Gizmodo has taken a look at the latest version, and it appears that Apple listened to the critics and fixed iMovie. Amongst the tweaks are a feature that adds image stabilization.
For the common shaky video clip using video stabilization will impressively make the annoying camera movement disappear. iMovie '09 does this stabilization in two steps. First it will analyze the video clip frame by frame and pixel by pixel, comparing one side of the frame to the other. Once it has analyzed the clip it applies a function that scales, rotates and moves the video based on the comparison. It zooms and trims the clip as much as it needs to apply the reverse movement of the camera shake and still not go outside the video frame. What's more interesting is this video stabilization is the same effect Apple uses in their professional visual effects program Shake.
That's something I could use; my Casio EX-V8 pocket digicam produces excellent video, but when zoomed to the far end of its 7x-range, the slightest hand shake produces fairly significant image bounce. The video stabilization feature in iMovie will eliminate the need for a tripod -- or Dramamine.
Posted by Mike Lief at January 29, 2009 07:26 AM
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