Not wanting a PC v Mac debate...

[alecstilleyedye]

How does Movie Maker 2 compare to iMovie?

i've got movie maker open on my pc and i don't think it has the same "feel" to it. if you already have it on your computer, get your son to try it out. a complete newb can get going in imovie quite quickly. if that's not the case in movie maker then you're better off with imovie, regardless of what else the two applications do.

bearing in mind the fact that with a mac you can boot into or run windows within osx, you can have both applications anyway. if school uses movie maker but college uses imovie/final cut express, you've covered both bases.

think of the mac as being everything you could need, and just look at whether a cheaper option really fits purpose.

 

[another_dave_b]

if it's an intel mac, dave, you can dual boot it to run windows, or use parallels to run it within osx. the days of "you can't do this on apple hardware" are long gone.

Yes you can, and I do. But that just makes the choice of an Apple Mac even more expensive, because you are then also shelling out for a copy of MS Windows.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

Yes you can, and I do. But that just makes the choice of an Apple Mac even more expensive, because you are then also shelling out for a copy of MS Windows.

unless you already have one of course…

 

[ACS]

How does Movie Maker 2 compare to iMovie?

It actually does not matter which package you use for any production you undertake it is how you learn to make that software application work for you. When you have mastered the application and it starts to limit your creativity then is the time to upgrade, hence MM2 to Adobe Elements 2.

For example, a lot of our students want to learn web design and have to dive straight into Dreamweaver, produce a cutting edge design, publish it on the network to show off to their mates and be finished before break.
When they realise that there is a little more to it than that most switch back to ‘Kevin’ mode.

Learning a new skill based around IT takes time, long term interest and commitment to achieve a creditable result. Before investing in a high end PC or MAC with all singing and dancing applications, test the resolve, ingenuity and creativity by letting him show you what he can achieve with what’s freely available.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

the best advice might be to try both and see which is preferred. there are demos of imovie on apple's website.

 

[another_dave_b]

No, if you use something like Dreamweaver, you can test in different modes, including IE7, on the Mac.

How does that work? IE7 only runs on MS Windows.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

How does that work? IE7 only runs on MS Windows.

which you can run as a guest os on the mac via parallels.

 

[another_dave_b]

You can test your finished page from within dreamweaver. You can set the browser version you want to test. It's very easy. I do web development for a big corporate intranet whose users are exclusively Windows IE7 users. And I do all the work on a Mac.

Yes, but doesn't Dreamweaver use webkit to render things?

 

[Danny]

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Should have made clear that he has already invested a lot of time in learning to use Movie Maker, and has produced some videos that look pretty good for me. One of them was about a school visit to the war graves at Ypres which was shown in a city wide rememberance day ceremony, and mentioned in the local paper.

He is already getting to the point where he is frustrated by some of the limitations of Movie Maker, hence my question whether iMovie would offer any real benefits over Movie Maker.

Having said all that I have strongly advised him that if he is really interested in film making he needs to approach it seriously and properly learn the basic elements of the craft, rather than just thinking about creating fancy effects with whizzy software programmes. As a result he is going to be going on a taster course for a film making A Level in a few weeks time.

 

[Carwash]

In any case, as I said, IE7 is a huge improvement over IE6, and it pretty much adheres to the W3 specifications. You can be relatively certain that what you publish from any platform will run OK in IE7 if you stick to the standards.

It's an improvement over IE5 and IE6, that's true, but there are still loads of standards that it frustratingly doesn't support that everything else (Firefox, Opera, Safari) does: many CSS pseudo-selectors, and - oh! - the correct XHTML content-types to name but two.

 

[Carwash]

He is already getting to the point where he is frustrated by some of the limitations of Movie Maker, hence my question whether iMovie would offer any real benefits over Movie Maker.

I'd say it does, but by the sounds of things he will probably get frustrated with its limitations after a while too... at which point he will want Final Cut.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

Should have made clear that he has already invested a lot of time in learning to use Movie Maker, and has produced some videos that look pretty good for me. One of them was about a school visit to the war graves at Ypres which was shown in a city wide rememberance day ceremony, and mentioned in the local paper.

He is already getting to the point where he is frustrated by some of the limitations of Movie Maker, hence my question whether iMovie would offer any real benefits over Movie Maker.

Having said all that I have strongly advised him that if he is really interested in film making he needs to approach it seriously and properly learn the basic elements of the craft, rather than just thinking about creating fancy effects with whizzy software programmes. As a result he is going to be going on a taster course for a film making A Level in a few weeks time.

i'd go for final cut express then, but might be worth hanging on until he sees what software the a level course is based on.

 

[another_dave_b]

No, it uses its own rendering. It performs the same task identically on the Mac or the PC version, so I doubt Webkit would be appropriate would it?

My understanding was that Dreamweaver includes a copy of webkit, which it uses on Mac/PC. Which is why I was confused by your assertion that "you can test in different modes, including IE7, on the Mac."

Is this perhaps that Dreamweaver's 'IE7 mode', renders in webkit, the properties that IE7 is supposed to have? Which would, I would think, still make testing with IE7 necessary to check against implementation differences between IE7/webkit and of course JScript/javascript

 

[another_dave_b]

it would make sense for it to use its own rendering engine.

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I'm suggesting that Adobe include webkit in an installation of Dreamweaver Mac/PC. That webkit is Dreamweavers 'own rendering engine', entirely separate to the installation of webkit that is included with Mac OSX.

 

[Carwash]

Do Apple do student pricing for Final Cut?

I think they might... I dunno. I don't really do video, but my brother is a student who does; he just bought Final Cut (and Logic?), and I remember he was investigating student pricing beforehand... I shall ask.