The 6400 Zone - Apples iMovie info

Apple removed their link but a reader has found an alternate way to download the 1.0.2 iMovie that Apple used to post for free :) I assume Apple removed the link when they decided to sell version 2? Here is yet another link given to me. Thanks guys!

5/4/2000 Apple just announced that they are giving iMovie (the DV editing software that comes with the latest iMacs) away for free! Here are the specs Apple lists

I also installed it on my B&W G3 350 with OS 8.6 with no problems. The G3 is probably not needed in the 6400 but sure helps! I only used it once so far and that was to make a movie out of several different JPEGs which it can import with no problem . Then I added a music track and then exported to QT format. Now it took 1/2 the night to make a 2min movie but I had picked Sorenso Highest Quality at 640x480 so this may be why it took so long? The file only ended up being 33MB which isn't bad but remember this is only a 2min movie! You need HD space for this thing :) Below find more info I collected on using Apples iMovie.

Here is a link to Apples site with more info on iMovie and please email me with any info you have on it. Thanks.

Here is some reader feedback on iMovie and Final Cut Pro on the 6400/6500. Thanks guys.

[Hi Tom,
Just wanted to let you know that Apple has iMovie 1.0.2 available for a free download. I have tried it on my 6500 (Sonnet 500 L2G3) but wasn't able to get it to work. When I launched it, a warning came up saying that I don't have Quicktime Firewire DV Support installed. I proceeded to enable and update that extension and the Quicktime Friewire DV Enabler too. However, when I launch iMovie, it still came up with that warning. Desktop rebuild (using Techtool and traditional restart with extensions off) and PRAM zap did nothing, and iMovie will crash after that warning dialog box is closed with a type 12 error. : (

I did read that someone was able to get it to work with his 6500/250 (no G3 upgrade) in the MacCentral forum. He said that it felt really slow and that G3 will be needed to speed things up. He also said that iMovie crashed on him too.

Just thought you might like to know this info. : )
Regards,
Tiong]

[Tom,
Both iMovie and Final Cut Pro work fine on a 6400. Even before mine was G3 upgraded to a 300/200 1Mb machine. The only thing I don't know yet is if it will work well with a live feed of digital data via a Firewire PCI card. I only have a PC card for my G3 Powerbook. However, I can take the data file from my G3 Powerbook and transfer it over to my 6400 and launch Final Cut Pro or iMovie and still watch the video and/or edit it. In short do everything but import live Firewire video due to not having a PCI Firewire card yet. I HIGHLY recommend you tell others on your site about the RocketFire card from macworks.com. It is working better than the Orange Micro or Newer Fire-2-Go cards from what I hear.
Rodney]

[Tom,
You're welcome. I'm using OS 8.6 and Quicktime 4.1.1. Tell all of your many readers that if they don't have a digital camera, but do already have a good 8mm analog camera, then just buy a Sony DVMC-DA1 or DA2. I have the DVMC-DA2 and it works great. I can take all of my Sony 8mm tapes and VHS tapes and convert them to digital format. Then I can output it back to analog and it looks like a pristine first generation tape recorded live and not dubbed. I tell you, iMovie and Final Cut Pro are making me miss Avid Cinema less and less.
Rodney]

Solving Type12 error and importing QT movies: Tiong sent me a tip on how to solve Type12 errors with iMovie and how to import QT movies into it. This part will require the Pro version of QT though which costs $30. Not too much to ask for to get this great little movie editor :). Thanks Tiong

More info from Rodney on Sony's analog/DV converter boxes: Previously Rodney had sent me info on using Sony's DVMC-DA1 or DA2 to convert regular analog camcorder video to DV format for streaming over FireWire to your computer. Here is a very detailed letter he sent that should describe these products more fully so you can decide if you would like to get one if you already own a good video camcorder. Thanks Rodney.

6/10/2000 iMovie on OS's older then 8.6?: Jeff would like to know if anyone has gotten iMovie to install on an older OS like OS 8.1? If you have iMovie running on anything older then OS 8.6 Please let me know. Thanks.

[Do you know if anyone has successfully installed iMovie with an older OS? The iMovie installer states that OS 8.6 is required. I attempted to install on my 6400/200 w/Vimage 240 running OS 8.1, but could finish when the installer discovered OS 8.1 on my hard disk. Any ideas or is OS 8.6 really the minimum OS required to operate iMovie?

Thanks for any info.,Jeff]

10/20/2000 iMovie 1.0.2 not available anymore?: Looks like Apple removed the free download of iMovie 1.0.2 from their servers since they started selling version 2.0. None of my links work and doing a search on Apples web site results in nothing :( If anyone has a secret link to a download of it, please let me know .

iMovie may not ever work properly on the 6400?: Here is a letter from Vick who received an email reply to a question he asked Orange Micro on using their firewire card in a PowerBase 180 (which is like a 6400/180). It doesn't sound promising for out Macs :(

[From: VickN
I've been having DV editing problems (dropped frames, no export to camera, etc..) with my PowerBase180 with PowerLogix G3/350 using OrangeLink card. After all failed, I started to suspect that my system may be too slow for the job even after the upgrades. I have 124 MB RAM, 7200 RPM Hitachi 9.1 GB internal SCSI HD. When I asked OrangeMicro support about the minimum hardware requirement for DV editing using FireWire, this is their answer. I hope this will shed some light to some peoples confusions.

"The tests we have done here required a minimum of a G3/233 processor with an ultra-wide drive and ultra-wide scsi card and 80mb of ram to not drop frames. The minimum system bus speed I have gotten good captured video with is a 50mhz bus. On the Windows side, I was able to capture with a 233mhz PII with a 5400 UDMA hard drive and 64mb of ram. TO not drop frames, the system has to keep a sustained transfer rate through the PCI bus to the hard drive of greater than 3.6mb/s. If your 7200 RPM drive is only get a sustained rate of 4mbs, then you are probably running it from the built-in scsi controller.

To improve hard drive performance, you would need to add in a scsi card that is meant to support your hard drive at its optimum speed. A separate hard drive or partition is also suggested for capturing video files and preview files to. But, as Adobe states in the manual, even with all of the upgrades you can make to your system, you still are limited by the system bus (your system bus is only 40mhz). Their anology is that it is like putting a race car in rush hour traffic because information with log jam on a slower system bus. I have tried firewire on my 6400/180 at home, and I can captue with dropped frames, and I lock up on export because the hard drive is too slow. Their is too much involved in upgrading to meet the demands of video editing on the machine, so I will pass on editing on my mac until I get a G4. The needed upgrades would be about 65% of the cost of a G4."]

11/3/2000 Link to iMovie found!: Alan found a cached page from Apples web site on a popular search engines web site. I tried the link and it still works. The page asks for an email address so I don't know where that info is going since Apple removed this page from their web site? I suppose Apple is getting this info and may wonder where it came from? Thanks Alan.

[I saw on the 6400 Zone site that you were looking for iMovie v1. Last week someone gave me info on getting v1.0.2 by doing a google search and downloading it from their cached site. Might try
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.apple.com/imovie/download/+iMovie&hl=en
Hope that helps
Alan]

12/2/2000 TIL on Apples iMovie default export settings. For those of you that have used iMovie, you will appreciate this info. It tells you the compression settings used for each of Apples default export settings. Thanks Apple :)

http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n60766

Possible solution for iMovie reporting your HD is too slow: I found this on MacFixIt.

[iMovie error follow-up Following up on Doug Mitchell's previous report of a "disk responded slowly" error with iMovie 2, Doug found that shifting the resolution and color depth from 1024 x 768 and millions to 800 x 600 and thousands eliminated the symptom.]

They also noted that a Powerbook (firewire) user noted replacing a 20G IBM drive with another brand fixed his issue. So just having a fast drive might not be the solution for some?

12/30/2000 40 gig drive and iMovie, happy together!: Ralph sent me some info on his installation of a 40G ATA/100 drive solving his iMovie slow HD warnings. Thanks Ralph. He installed it on the stock 6500's stock IDE bus and not an one of the IDE-PCI cards so he is only getting a max of 16MBps. From the couple of postings above, I think sticking with the stock IDE bus for audio/video may be better anyway?

[Hi and thanks,

I moved the iMovie folder to the new drive partition and after deleting the old folder on the slower SCSI drive it now works at a steady video pace (some frame drops but MUCH smoother than before) and the best part, NO slow drive errors anymore! BTW you have to delete the old copy of iMovie to make it work from the new drive. Leaving both had the iMovie going back to the slower drive to read from with its frame drops and slow disk error every 10 seconds or so.

The ATI TV capture at normal window size (320x240) is almost steady as well. There is some picture frame strobing, but its regular and when converted to xxxx.mov file or compressed file the frame rate is steady. The sound is perfect. I have to experiment with it more, but its at least 300% better now.

So going to the 7200rpm ATA100 drive now gives me very good video capability and reason to save up for a dual USB/Firewire PCI board to try iMovie with the Sony digital 8 Handycam. There is still some life left in this old PM6500.

Now I have to decide which USB/firewire card works the best with PM6500s and iMovie, Sonnet has one now, I would trust them more than OrangeMicro. I'll have to see if they are offering any rebates or discounts.

I'll keep you posted on how the video editing goes. R.]

1/13/2001 iMovie info from Ralph: Ralph also sent me a lot of misc iMovie info which some of you may find usefull. Thanks Ralph. Again its very large so I made it a text file.

2/24/2001 iMovie 2 may work on slower Systems better then iMovie 1?: Ralph, who was having much trouble with iMovie 1.0.2, just send word that iMovie 2.0.1 seems to have fixed his problems! Thanks Ralph. Click here for more info I have on iMovie.

[Hi Tom, I got a chance to play more with iMovie 2.0.1 today. I was able to sync the Brittney flash video clip with the MP3 music file I had sent you. I'm no expert on using iMovie yet, but using the help menu I was able to do a fade open transition, sync the audio with the video and fade to black. I than converted it to a small QT movie file. No freezes so far. I even forgot to up the iMovie memory before using it. So maybe version 2 fixes the iMovie 1 freeze issue I had (I gave up on version 1 and trashed it, anyone want a CD of it for $10?).

Since I had a small success with it, I got a bit more ambitious and copied the Blair Witch like analog video footage I had taken in the fall and created QT movie files using the analog ATI TV recording feature and converted them to DV files using QTpro4 for use in iMovie. I also loaded all the latest special effects plugins, sound clips and background picture clips and set them up so I can do all the editing of the my Blair witch movie. So maybe tomorrow I will take the tutorial and try a real movie edit.

Some things I figured out using the my fast 7200rpm 40gig ATA 100 drive on the stock PM6500 bus with a L2 cache G3 Sonnet 400Mhz upgrade and with the ATI XClaim 128 VR PCI video card (MacOS9.0.4, 96Megs Ram, VM on).

Using the ATI TV window to input my video, the best capture I can get is achieved using the following settings (this gets usable real time capture and viewing in QuickTime 4): Best Analog Capture: window size 708x240, 22.5fps, High quality, VM on, for playback the ATI graphics acceleration must be off, no compression needs to be used at this stage. If the window size is increased or the recording quality set to Best, the QT4 playback will be frame droppy and choppy, unless you compress it first.

Note: I turned VM off and capture works in the ATI TV player but trying to play the files back in QT will freeze the system. VM must be on to avoid freezes and while using QT, the ATI graphics acceleration must be off to get smooth playback. I also left the iJam USB MMC station unplugged to be sure it did not interfere with the sound.

Things I noticed: iMovie 2 does not care if the ATI acceleration is on or off. I also upped the QT player memory to 9,096k and the ATI TV player memory to 10,101k as a stability measure.

So you can pass this on if you like. I'll let you know if I get any freezes while doing a real 1gig movie edit with music, transitions and all.
R.]

10/5/2001 iMovie 2.1.1 update kills dragging the preview window to add transitions!: Ever since iMovie came out, I had always added transitions and titles to my movies by picking what I wanted and then dragging the little preview window to the point on the time line I wanted to add it. Well, under v2.1.1, this is broken. Now the only way to add a transition or title is to drag the name of the transition or title you want from the list to the point on the time line you wish to add it. I think this feature worked in older versions of iMovie as well but now its the only way yo do it. This is for the 2.1.1 version in OS 9 and OSX.

4/7/2002 Premier info from Sanh: Sanh sent me some info on using Adobe Premier. His experience on using Premier is from the PC version but he thought that some of his experience would help us out. Thanks Sanh. Click here to read his info.

I thought some of this info might be useful for iMovie users as well :)

7/20/2003 Guide from Roxio on how to make nice VCD's: Ralph sent me a link to Roxio's web site where they have a guide on making good quality VCD's. Thanks Ralph!

[Hi Tom, hope you and your family are well. I noticed this article from Roxio about vcd production. Pass it on. R.

http://www.roxio.com/en/interest/articles/video/vcds_toastimovie.jhtml]

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