Have a look in the AppStore: 14€ but iM comes pre-installed on any Mac, so, you just have to pay for major upgrades (updates are free). Well, if you are Mac user, you can easily turn to the default iMovie that comes preinstalled on your computer. IMovie is often overlooked by many as a good video editing software. Most people think it’s primitive and so it’s not up to the task of making a great and well-edited video.
Just in a few short years, video has legitimately taken over the internet. As an incredibly versatile and powerful storytelling medium, video is able to grab and hold our attention better than text, audio, or imagery. So no wonder there has been an explosion of tools to help you create the exact look and feel you seek.
While professional movie editing software costs anywhere between $240 and $450 a year, Apple generously offers its video editing suite iMovie on both iOS and macOS platforms for free.
If you’ve extensively used iMovie in your work, you may have experienced it slow down, lag, or in the worst case scenario — crash. Even if you are not working with large HD files, or using Stabilizing or Rendering features that demand a lot of power, it’s possible for iMovie to come to a standstill. This can be extremely frustrating, especially if you are on a deadline!
If you are wondering what’s causing your Mac to freeze repeatedly when cutting clips or why it’s taking forever to drag and drop things around, look no further than iMovie’s hunger for performance power. How to use mac os pdf.
To see how much impact running iMovie has on your Mac, just open up Activity Monitor and inspect the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Random Access Memory (RAM) levels. While CPU points out the amount of work your Mac can handle and how quickly it can perform a task, RAM affects the processor’s ability to quickly and easily access information.
Buying more RAM is a good idea, but can be costly. Luckily, there are a few other ways to speed up iMovie that can save you money, energy, and time.
Charging is a simple hack that can give your Mac a noticeable boost! Here’s why it works: the CPU adjusts its speed on the fly in order to balance performance and power consumption. As such, it automatically switches to low power mode when not hooked up to a power adaptor. But when plugged in, CPU doesn't have to concern itself with energy conservation.
If you are not close to a socket or happen to be without a charger, you can manually adjust the Energy Saver preferences to not let macOS put hard disks to sleep, so they wouldn’t spin down and turn off motors while on battery power, thus making iMovie wait longer when it needs to access data.
To change or adjust Energy Saver preferences:
Still finding iMovie slow? Delete some files — a general rule of thumb is to have at least 25 GB of free space on your hard disk to run iMovie smoothly.
Start by deleting iMovie cache files. Gameboy color emulator mac. Cache files are essentially data files that log what you have done. They document changes you make and speed up revival next time you want to work with the same data in iMovie.
Mac pc time machine. To delete unnecessary iMovie cache files:
Now, move all unwanted cache folders from your Mac to the Trash:
In addition, to really trim the fat from your Mac’s storage files, you should delete outdated iMovie folders. If you’ve updated to the latest version of iMovie, and no longer want to use the previous versions, iMovie Projects and iMovie Events folders can be deleted. Also, remove what’s duplicated and no longer needed from your iMovie Shared folder.
You may have noticed iMovie slowing down if you have other programs open on your desktop. How to center text on a mac. To speed it up, close all the apps you don’t need. And don’t forget to quit all the background processes that demand power as well, such as Energy Savers, Spotlight Search, Time Machine, and FileVault.
Some more tips for streamlining your Mac’s efficiency include:
While optimizing your Mac manually can seem daunting and repetitive, you can achieve even better results faster by using smart optimization software. A tool such as CleanMyMac X could be a perfect and quick solution.
Textbar 2 0 523 download free. Among other things, CleanMyMac X deals with storage, speed, and malware issues. It magically turns junk into free space. Here’s how to do it:
The app makes it very easy to find those large cache files and “needy” programs that prevent your Mac from reaching its full potential.
Besides Smart Scan, it’s a good idea to go to the Optimization and Maintenance modules , where you can review other methods to give your Mac a much-needed boost.
Now your Mac and iMovie are ready for you to create your video masterpieces. You will want to repeat this cleaning process from time-to-time (at least once a month) to avoid any lags or disruptions, whether you do this manually or using a tool such as CleanMyMac X.
When it comes to video creation, editing is probably the hardest part. To properly edit a video, you need to be proficient with a good video editing software and have a great knack for video storytelling.
Looking for a best iMovie Alternative? Check out Movavi Video Editor.
However, there is a myriad of video editing software out there. So, it begs the question, which video editing software should you use? Well, if you are Mac user, you can easily turn to the default iMovie that comes preinstalled on your computer.
iMovie is often overlooked by many as a good video editing software. Most people think it’s primitive and so it’s not up to the task of making a great and well-edited video. Well, is it?
In my over 4 years’ experience as a video creator, I can confidently say that making a professional looking video has more to do with your technique and less to do with the tools you use.
Regardless, there are certain professional features that I judge every video editing software I come across by. Let’s put iMovie to the test and see how well it performs.
Color correction is one feature that I immediately check any video editing software for. These tools enable you to fix any color problems you may have in your video arising from various lighting conditions or white imbalance that may have been present during recording.
iMovie features a default color correction tools that enable you to tweak the brightness, color saturation and contrast of your video.
There is also a color temperature shift control that comes in handy when you are trying to fix a white balance in your recording.
Video speed control is another critical feature that I look for in any video editing software. Video speed control allows me to alter the speed of any video clip. Speeding up or slowing down a video clip is ideal for representing various scenes in a video.
iMovie allows you to either increase or reduce the pace of a video clip to illustrate multiple scenes in your video clip better.
This feature is an absolute must. Having the ability to view multiple video tracks gives you an added flexibility and edge during video editing. This can come in handy if you ever need to add more video footage to your project. This is also called b-roll into your project.
Also, you can use this feature to add a green-screen, split screen and picture and picture.
iMovie does permit those features; however, you can only make do with only one extra video track. For very complex 4 or 5 layers composting effects, you are going to look further than iMovie.
Although, for most video editing projects, dual track multimodal editing system will do just fine.
One other important feature to look for in any video editing software is the quality of the on-screen titles and texts.
Texts are important parts of a video, and they can be used to add text, captions and titles.
Your video editing software should be more than capable of adding quality on-screen texts. You really do not want to have a separate software for editing videos and adding titles and texts.
Which is why having a video editing software that edits video and is capable of adding text is a big plus. iMovie has a plethora of nice templates for titles, captions, credits and lower thirds.
Most of the templates are already pretty much animated, although you may choose to edit them to your liking. You can use a bunch of tools to tweak the color, sizes and fonts. However, you are a little restricted as you cannot change the location of the text on the screen.
But with a little technique and creativity, the default iMovie templates will come out right.
How about when you need to show custom graphics or text in your video?
To achieve this, the video editing software has to be capable of importing graphics file from another source – the ability to use graphics overlay is another essential feature that I am keen about in any video editing software.
Basically, graphic overlays are custom animations, images or graphics that you create in other applications and then import them into your video project. But to use this feature, your video editing software must first be able to import graphics that contain transparency information or something known as an alpha channel. There is a limited amount of image format that is compatible with an alpha channel, with the most common ones being tiff and PNG.
iMovie can import either of TIFF and PNG including their alpha channels.
This feature is one that you may not ascribe too much with a video editing software.
Key frame animation enables you to choose the position, appearance and size of objects on your screen. Having this feature in your video editing software is very useful as it saves you the hassle of having to work with other applications such as Adobe After Effects, even for some of the simplest animations.
iMovie has the key frame animation feature that can be found within its picture and picture feature. Although its pretty basic. But once you get a hang on it, you will find it very useful for creating simple animations.
Audio is an essential part of any good video. People might bear a bad video quality, but nobody will put up with terrible audio quality. Poor audio can render even some of the best videos unwatchable, which is why I am very particular about the audio editing features of any video editing software I use.
Audio meters help you gauge the sound of your audio and tell you if it’s going to be too low or too loud for your audience.
They also help you to set a reference audio level for all your videos so that they all come out at a consistent audio level, which is great. You certainly don’t want your audience either scrambling for the remote or adjusting their speakers each time they see a bunch of your videos.
In the case of iMovie, there is no traditional audio meter. Instead, there is a color-coding and waveform that helps you measure sound levels.
Another crucial feature I always search for in any video editing software is the range of its audio filters. Audio filters are important for enhancing the sound elements in your videos.
In iMovie, you can find a bunch of basic audio filters, among which is an automatic optimized filter that helps you to even out and boost all the low-quality sound levels. It also contains several equalization and noise reduction filters to help you enhance the sound of your project.
In my opinion, multiple audio tracks is a crucial feature that any video editing software should have.
With multiple audio tracks, you can add sound effects, music and voiceovers to your project to make them more exciting and engaging.
iMovie allows you to create multiple tracks of audio that enables you to add several layers of voiceovers, sound effects and music to your project. However, they could all come out weird if you cannot possibly control the audio levels of each track.
iMovie allows you to adjust the individual sound levels of each of these tracks. This is a reasonably easy and effective way of controlling the sound levels.
In a process known as audio ducking, iMovie also features a sound mixing tool that automatically reduces the audio levels of other video clips on the timeline in relation to a chosen clip.
After walking you through those features, do I still think iMovie is a good enough video editing software?
Well, for most of the videos which we see today, I would say iMovie is more than capable. Sure, it’s not the best software to use If you are creating lengthy videos or videos that contain lots of animations or effects.
Regardless, you can always create animations and other special graphics and effects on a separate application and then import them into your iMovie project.
Once you factor in the features, usability and price, iMovie becomes a decent competitor.
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