What Movie Editors Do You Recommend? (For Yosemite)

[Ormond]

Hello again,

I'm in the process of upgrading from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, which means I now need a replacement for the venerable iMovie HD. Please share your experiences and opinions.

I'm probably still in the newbie consumer market when it comes to movie editing, so for me at least, we can rule out the top of the line pro apps. That said, I'm hoping to add the following features to my workflow.

1) Green screen transparency (or whatever this is called) which would allow me to remove the background of a movie and place the foreground on a different background video.

2) Multiple video tracks. Two or three probably enough.

3) Whatever the software, it should come with Diane Lane, who would show up in person and instruct me on all the features of the movie editing software from her place in my lap. I'm willing to pay a little extra for this advanced feature, say, $100,000.

What do you edit movies with? If you use iMovie, do you happen to know what version works with Yosemite, and where to get that version?

Thanks!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

You can continue with iMove 10

What’s New in Version 10.0.6

• Updated look for OS X Yosemite
• New file export options including Custom H.264, ProRes, and Audio Only
• Share any video frame as an image
• Email HD video with Mail Drop when signed into iCloud
• Select a portion of a clip by dragging across the bottom of the clip
• Adjustments Bar is always open for easy access to audio and video tools
• Improves performance on older Mac computers
• Addresses reliability issues with copying and pasting certain adjustments
• Support for Indonesian, Malaysian, and Vietnamese

 

[Ormond]

Thanks Spawn,

Well, the reason me and a lot of other people are still using iMovie HD is that we weren't fans of Apple's attempt to "improve" the classic iMovie interface. I haven't checked back with iMovie in some time, and I suppose I should.

Here's a page which claims to offer a way to run iMovie HD on Yosemite and El Capitan. I haven't tested this yet, but according to the author you can run iMovie in these later OSs simply by running a two line script.

http://blog.iharder.net/2015/01/23/run-imovie-hd-and-maybe-other-older-applications-in-yosemite/

Check out the comments section of that page. Many, many people very very happy to not have to upgrade to the latest iMovie.

 

[Ormond]

So I went to the iMovie page in the MacApp Store and found the useful collection of those who really love the latest version ,and those adamantly cursing confusion and constant crashes.

Not wanting to get involved in all that, I tested out the solution linked to above explaining how to run iMovie 6 on recent versions of OSX. It works!

1) Instead of double clicking iMovie directly, you double click an icon which runs some commands in Terminal.

2) You have to leave Terminal open while using iMovie.

3) You can't double click an iMovie project file, but you can easily open any project file using the Open command from iMovie File menu.

Other than these details, iMovie HD (iMovie 6) seems to run on Yosemite just as it does on Snow Leopard. So for the thousands of members of the forum who have been clamoring desperately to learn how to run an ancient iMovie on an almost ancient OSX, this is how it's done.

I have to say, I love good old iMovie HD. I've been testing some alternatives to it, and none of them seem to offer the same ease of use.