But working with a combination of the two has proved quite practical. Each has its weaknesses.
Video editing
Making a video of several excerpts of other videos is much more convenient in iMovie. But as the videos in question have been downloaded from YouTube (mostly being in *.flv format) iMovie can't import them directly.
No problem since Avidemux opens anything and lists 16 different video codecs, 8 different audio codecs and 13 different containers for export options. That's a theoretical 1664 different combinations each with many possible varieties (quality settings and filters). And most combinations actually works - but check your output files because some might have failed without warning!
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| Powerful: Using Avidemux to save a .flv file downloaded from YouTube as something iMovie can import. Here by choosing MPEG-4 AVC as video codec (shown as "x264 in the encoding progress window), AAC (Faac) as audio codec and MP4 as container. |
Saving a file in iMovie is a completely different experience. In fact it probably couldn't be any more different. And in this case I believe a screenshot will say more than a thousand words:
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| Fool proof: The export menu has a table listing resolutions on the vertical and target platforms on the horizontal making it hard to make a bad choice for video size. The file will be a special Apple type of MP4 and so far I haven't noticed anywhere in iMovie to change that. |
iMovie, being ridiculously picky on the other hand, imports only about four (4) different video file types. Googling for some format that will work turns up a wide selection of software that will fix the problem without telling me how it does so - no doubt commercial trial versions most of them.
Software upgrades
So, mid-October with some excitement I notice my clear favorite photography manager is released in a new version 1.5. Mid-December the version available in openSUSE is still 1.2.
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| The digiKam website presents a new release of their awesome software. |
Apple on the other hand misses few chances to throw a popup about iLife 11 at me. "iLife" - the suspiciously named package of audio, image and video editing software. When trying to get something done they want to tell me about the new features I can get for only about 55 euros. OK I peek at it: hmm... new backgrounds for title frames? Really?
Now, on a final notice, comparing Avidemux and iMovie really is comparing apples to oranges. Other programs for Linux should share the drag and drop multi clip functionality of iMovie. I wanted to try OpenMovieEditor since that program is what is mentioned in Crafting Digital Media by Daniel James which I bought. That program installed fine via YaST but didn't run so I posted a question in the openSUSE forum and got highly competent help pretty fast. Another user was able to help me find out which little extra package to install - now it runs but crashes at any edit.
Differences in nutshells indeed: Linux is free, very powerful and bleeding edge. The Mac is annoyingly commercial, fool proof and conservatively designed.
