11-04-2006, 10:30 PM

Please excuse my ignorance.

I have a Canon DV video camera. I have edited my home movies using iMovie and burned them using iDVD. Very impressive on the ease of use.

I also have iMovie HD.

Here goes...Do I need an HD burner and use HD discs? Furthermore, must the original video source be in HD format as well? Mac's "requirements" for iMovie HD does not even skim the surface on this subject. What differentiates iMovie and iMovie HD?

No one has given me a straight answer...

11-04-2006, 11:16 PM

The difference is that if you have iMovie HD you can edit your HD footage, or if you have a camera like the XL2 that shoots native 16x9 footage you can edit that too. If you don't have a HD camera, the there is no difference besides the templates..

I don't use iMovie but I think thats all that is new in it. Somebody correct me if I am wrong, I only opened iMovie once to see what it was all about.

11-05-2006, 04:18 PM

iMovie HD, as mentioned has the ability to bring in HD content from HD cameras. It also has the ability to create HD content from photographs.

The problem comes in that the only appropriate output codec format right now is H.264 I think. Your current DVD players apparently are not capable of taking advantage of it. Still, if your intent is computer users who could play it, then it isn't a critical problem. In the future I'm sure the new HD writable drives will be supported, and just maybe DVD drives will be able to handle it.

As far as up-converting a non HD camera, I'm not sure if that is possible with iMovie HD, and if so, what the quality would be like. In the expert settings you may be able to up the size and find out. :spook:

As far as HD editing requirements go, I thought Apple was recommending a very high end G4 or a G5 and newer system. Also, you might need a system with a dedicated graphics card, so that would exclude Mac Minis, and Mac Books. Of course what Apple recommends, and what will work are often two different things. For regular non-HD editing, you should see about the same performance as the non iMovie HD version of the software.