iMac 2010. Still using Snow Leopard and wanting to upgrade to Lion. However, shall I need to upgrade iMovie (and iPhoto) first? There are so many negative reviews about iMovie 11 which appears to have several bugs. Is it really worth paying £10 to upgrade when I am not sure if it is going to work? Would Lion work with version 09 of iMovie and iPhoto 09. Have used iMovie several times to create great home movies on DVD, (using iDVD) and iPhoto a great deal. Shall look forward to your comments.
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Val Irani
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Should I Upgrade iMovie 09 To 11?
Comments: 16 Responses to “Should I Upgrade iMovie 09 To 11?”
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Negative reviews of iMovie 11? Like what? What have you heard specifically? I upgraded the minute it came out and never had any problems. I can't remember hearing of any complaints when it came out. Even so, it came out a long time ago There have been small updates since then. Maybe whatever bugs you are reading about were from the initial release and have been fixed long ago?
I used iMovie 11 to create more than 100 episodes of MacMost Now before switching to Final Cut Pro X.
I definitely recommend upgrading to iMovie 11. New audio controls, new effects, video trailers, a 2D timeline if you don't like the stacked timeline, etc.
I was on the Apple website looking at the iMovie 11 upgrade page, noticed that there were reviews so had a look. The main problem was with users losing their movies and also not being able to export, and with freezing. Freezing was a problem with the past Windows compatible software I was using a couple of years ago, and boy was that frustrating. However, losing your great time consuming movie project must be even worse. On the other hand there were also users that were delighted with iMovie 11, thus my question for you.
Never had a problem with freezing or losing movies. And I am a heavy user.
Hi Gary,
I really appreciate MacMost!
I also use iMovie a lot in production of home video tours. Ever since upgrading to Lion on my 27" iMac 2011, a 21.5" iMac 2009, and 20"iMac late 2008 iMovie 11 has a horrible issue with upon export, it comes up with an error message about needing more memory and prompts the user to restart iMovie. This is 100% consistent across not only my macs but other's in my editing departments as well. Also it's very well documented in the iMovie forums on Apple support. This is quite a bug that has cropped up. I see no help from Apple in any of the support forums. Have you not noticed this issue?
My questions are:
1. Do you know if iMovie '09 will run on Lion? As our company never had any issues with production before using iMove '09 and would be willing to roll back to this version.
2. Do you know if now that we have projects sitting in iMovie 11 if they would be downward compatible to iMovie '09 or would we loose all the projects?
3. Same question regarding event libraries...
Thanks so much for your reply... I know this is an older thread.
Murray Brown
Odd. I've never had any trouble at all. I wonder if it has to do with some QuickTime extensions or something else you have installed. Have you tried many different export settings?
There's a new update to iMovie 11 out today. Maybe try that.
I have no idea if iMovie 09 would work on Lion. But downgrading isn't the way I would go. I doubt that the projects would work.
Hi, just wanted to tell about my experience - I upgraded to Lion and then to iMove 11. I really like iMovie 11 so far. HOWEVER, I must mention one thing. It's really best to finish off your productions and burn to a DVD first. I did have a couple of mishaps with productions loosing the music. I have jpeg and video mix. It took a bit of time, but I certainly didn't loose productions. So for what it's worth, those are my thoughts. Also, check out Gary's iMovie settings video when you burn, GREAT INFO.
I want to import video from a non-encripted home DVD to iMovie. Is that possible in iMovie 09 or 11? If so, how is it done?
Encryption or no encryption, you still need to read the DVD and convert it to a format iMovie can use. http://macmost.com/importing-dvd-video.html
Garry, I want to upgrade from iMovie 09 to iMovie 11. On the AppStore page for iMovie 11, all but a couple of reviews gave iMovie 11 a one star rating and says it sucks. What's the story? I have an aluminum 17" that I bought in Aug 2009. I just installed Mountain Lion. Now I need iMovie 11, but I'm worried about this. Thanx. J. R.
A quick look shows that a lot of people seem to have trouble running it -- so it isn't a review of the app, really. I've never had an issue running it. I wouldn't worry about it. I have used iMovie 11 to make most of the videos here (more recent ones with FCPX) and I am still a huge fan of iMovie 11.
I have imovie 11 and on july 3rd it started freezing, now I can not work on any of my 12 projects that I was finishing up. I spent 1:30 at the genius bar and they could not figure it out. I have seen many people having the same issue with the preview screen working only for the clips below but not for the projects. If I could go back to 09 I would in a heart beat.
Whoever wrote of designed the interface of Movie 11 was never taught logic at school or university. It is a time wasting mess.
The whole concept is desperately non intuitive. Which is what Macs used to be about. Now one suspects all the effort is going into MOBILE applications.
I never had any trouble with any former editing program, including Final Cut, Adobe or AVID products. Or previous versions of iMove (except those with this EVENT crap).
Playing with semantics in a traditional trade or profession is a very dangerous and foolish thing to do. Image if all plumbers had to start calling pipes, 'lines' or carpenters had to call planes 'smoothing irons'?
Stop messing about with basic concepts that lead users by the hand into new products and start getting the basics right.
My recent negative experiences of iMovie 11 include: destroying all the quality of my imported video. The ridiculous hassle of not being able to import ones own photos - without going through the equally awful iPHOTO. Where one names an album only to find that it has put the photos in an 'untitled event'?
I have had MACs & PCs since they both came out and have worked for all the major companies in Europe, including US corporations. Where I always tried to persuade users to change to Apple. This is the first time I have had SERIOUS doubts. Culminating in a recent upgrade to Lion, which promptly rendered many of my favorite applications unusable, including AOL. Now, hopefully fixed? But one is never sure now. My confidence in Apple has gone. For heaven's sake get the designers to employ some linear logic in their user interfaces. If their car's instrument panels were anything like iMove 11 they would never get to work in the morning!
A few things:
1. You can use (import) video at any quality you want.
2. You certainly don't need to use iPhoto to bring in photos. Drag and drop any photo into iMovie.
I love iMovie's interface. It is simple to learn and use. Sounds like maybe you got too used to some other programs. The first 500 or so MacMost videos were all done with iMovie, BTW.
My i-movie '09 keeps crashing. I've been on with apple support for several MONTHS! And, so far, they can't figure out what's wrong. I use video, audio, and jpgs, but when titles go in, it crashes. It doesn't seem to be crazy about all the transitions, either. I'm running snow leopard 10.6.8 with a 2.26 GHz Intel core 2 Duo and 4GB memory. Any ideas? Also, if I upgrade to '11, would that help or make matters worse? Appreciate your help.
Why not upgrade to iMovie 11? I don't see how it could make matters worse -- as you can't use iMovie 09 anyway.
I am on 09 and have run into the problems mentioned above. The last iMovie I created took extra hours and frustration due to the program doing unexpected things & the quality of the DVD produced was not high. I upgraded to Mountain Lion and would love to upgrade to iMovie 11 but will not based on the bad reviews it continues to get. Gary's responses do not jibe with the amount of negative feedback from users. I switched to iPhone and bought iPad and so far I am not sold on Apple's superiority.