Even though I have never gone to a Macworld Expo (and now probably never will, since Apple will no longer present there), I have always enjoyed watching Apple’s infamous keynote presentations via Internet. However, being so familiar with Final Cut Pro, I never thought I would be blown away by the presentation about iMovie 09, which you will see later in this article. I was quite surprised when I heard who was going to present it (Randy Ubillos), by the new features in iMovie 09, and even more so by Randy’s astonishing comment, which I will visit later in this article.
Who is Randy Ubillos?
Surprisingly, very few video professionals I meet know who Randy Ubillos is. It reminds my how shocked I am when I observe how few people in the communications field seem to know who Marshall McLuhan was. I am not going to publish Randy’s full bio here. I will limit myself to say that Randy:
- Created the first three versions of Adobe Premiere, without a team.
- After finally been given a team at Adobe after writing versions 1, 2, and 3 of Premiere by himself, Randy and his team was hired by Macromedia to create KeyGrip, which was later purchased (Randy and all) by Apple, and re-named as Final Cut Pro.
- At Apple, Randy later created iMovie 08 and then later iMovie 09.
Now that you know who Randy Ubillos is, you will take his astonishing comment more in perspective.
New in iMovie 09
- Advanced Drag and Drop
- Precision Editor
- Dynamic Themes
- Animated Travel Maps
- Video Stabilization
- New Titles, Transitions, and Effects (possibly borrowed from LiveType)
iMovie 09 will be part of iLife 09 at end of January. It will be free with new Macs… and cost either US$79 (single user) or US$99 (5-user family pack) for the rest of us.
Click here to see Randy Ubillos’s iMovie 09 demonstration, and then continue to my interpretation of his astonishing comment.
After extending the audio of the first camera’s shot, you just heard Randy say:
“As you can see, this is a really complex edit. In a pro tool this would take a lot more steps, and we’ve done it in a nice really interactive, visual way.”
Those words just didn’t come from anybody’s mouth: they came from the father of Adobe Premiere and of Final Cut Pro! To me, that must mean that this new simplicity (and some of the other new features mentioned earlier) must have a future in a new upcoming professional editing tool from Apple, whether it be called “Final Cut Pro 7”, “iMovie Pro”, or by some other name. I predict that whatever its name, it will likely offer two alternative interfaces: timeline and storyboard. What do you think?