Hi
Is anyone using imovie to edit XF footage ? I usually use FCP myself but just wondered if it was any quicker for event work and the like. I have the new version of imovie but can't say I have ever opened it. I have a job in mind though were the client wants me to shoot during the day and have the edit ready for an evening viewing. So I was going to do a very basic edit to music and thought i movie would maybe be a quicker way of working. Any thoughts?

I haven't yet got an XF but do know iMovie & FCP. iMovie has some very nice library features that allow you to scrub through a load of clips very quickly, trim them & drop them on the timeline so you can do quick assembly edits very rapidly. The nice thing is that you can export an XML project file & later import that into FCP to do a 'proper' edit.

The problem that I can foresee is that iMovie will not work with native XF files so they will need to be transcoded preferably to ProRes (if you have FCP installed on the system) although AIC is still a reasonable CODEC if you are doing simple editing. Whether the extra time spent transcoding will be worthwhile because your editing time is shorter I really don't know.

I suggest that you just go ahead & try the workflow. iMovie '09 is a very sophisticated & capable piece of software that is often ignored & looked down on because it is seen as consumer software supplied free with every Mac. There is a good overview on Ken Stone's FCP website iMovie 09 (http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/imovie_09_stone.html)

Thanks Nigel,
Very interesting so I think I'll stay with FCP especially for this job I have coming up. Shame really as I would like to give i movie a chance especially if its as good as everyone is saying.
Cheers
Mark