My husband and I are YouTubers who like to put out a professional product but don't yet have money in the budget for a professional movie editing program. We have found iMovie to be a very good product for the price! We're actually amazed at being able to combine multiple video and audio tracks together, do various transitions, change the speed of clips, crop, use filters, etc. There really is so much you can do, and I'm learning new tricks all the time to improve my videos. The frustrations I have with this program, first and foremost--the "Titles" are very limited. I find myself constantly tweaking the few options that are there to "kind of" do what I want, and there are such limited places and styles to overlay text on a clip. I would also love to be able to include other animated graphics, such as moving arrows or circling an object. And finally, exporting videos is excruciatingly slow and requires so much hard drive space! I have had to connect a bootable external hard drive to my Macbook just for iMovie use, since I've started shooting in 5K .If these issues could be resolved, I would honestly not ever have need for a "professional" movie program, and would give this a resounding 5 stars.

I use this software all the time when it comes to creating videos and so far everything is going great. However, I have a few suggestions for improvement of this app that it really needs. First of all, why do the movies have to take up so much space? And second of all, why are there extra black bars on the screen that plays my video in square shaped like seriously. Why does it have to play the videos in a smaller screen?! This is something that is really bothering me and I hope there will be a solution to this ASAP! Apple, please make iMovie not alter the size of the screen of the original video clip and please remove those extra black bars above and below the video clip as well as the ones on the sides please!!! I want to play my videos on a big enough screen and iMovie ruined it with those extra black bars so PLEASE REMOVE THEM AND STOP MAKING IMOVIE ALTER THE SCREEN OF THE ORIGINAL VIDEO CLIPS PLEASE!!!! FIX THIS ISSUE RIGHT NOW ASAP PLEASE!!!!!

I’ve been using Apple’s resident video software since iMovie 9. I make (or made, to be more accurate) a lot of short videos for classroom presentations. A LOT. Like hundreds and hundreds of them over the past decade. I loved using iMovie 9. Inserting text was easy, inserting cuts and transitions was easy, precision editing was easy, and the stacked timeline view was very, very helpful. Even though I upgraded my OS a couple times, I continued using iMovie 9 rather than whichever new version of iMovie Apple was inserting into its upgrades. Now, however, I can’t do that, because iMovie 9.0.9 washes all the color out of videos that are imported or re-used for another project. I suspect this was deliberate. So now I’m stuck with iMovie 10.x. This is a terrible, terrible “update.” Counter-inuitive, needlessly clunky, not at all user-friendly. It can’t even find all the videos I’ve already created on its own — it requires a janky process of teaching the thing where to find iMovie projects. Simply ridiculous. It’s as if the design/development team set itself to the task of finding the greatest number of ways they could force otherwise loyal iMovie users to have to relearn everything they’d already learned about video editing. So now, even though I need to make far fewer videos for classes, I’m at the point of frustration with this software that I’m going to drop a couple hundred dollars on REAL video editing software and strip this kludge out of my system once and for all.

As soon as I begin to create videos of any real length over a minute or two, iMovie chokes completely. I recorded about an hour of 1080p video with my Sony video camera, imported it to my Mac and tried to edit down to about 10 min. I wasted days letting it process my video files which Windows Movie Maker had 0 issues with in the past. The first thing I noticed is the temp files wiped out about 100gb of space on my drive to store temporary data.When editing for even a minute or so the spinning wheel would begin again. I’d literally fall asleep watching it. My Macbook is mid 2015 model with the video all on an SSD drive and 8GB ram. I made sure it had plenty of memory and CPU available. After weeks of wasting my time with iMovie, I finally started from scratch on my 2011 Windows PC with non SSD hard drive, using the old Windows Movie Maker software. Within about 2 hours time I had somethng that could be published. My expensive Mac was crushed by my old cheap PC with the free Movie Maker software from Microsoft, in the department Apple use to be known by - Video. My how have times changed. I spoke to customer support, they asked for details of the video files. It was noted. Weeks later I’ve heard no response.

I’ve been using imovie for years now just to do some amature experimenting. I saved all of my videos to theater so I could access and edit them on all of my devices. Then lo and behold, I open the app today and all my videos are gone. Some of the videos in my theater were made on devices that I don’t have any longer. Which means-you guessed it- they’re gone for good. This new update has me extremely frustrated. Imovie used to be something fun and (somewhat) easy to use but now it’s turned into one giant junk pile. And since I’m already on a roll, why not go over everything else I hate about this app that I’ve put aside in the past? Want to overlay text? HA! Too bad. Because it’s ridiculously complicated and not at all customizable enough. I’d like to be able to put and size my text however I want instead only have 3 options: left, middle, or right. AND I also hate how long the transitions have to be (you can shorten them down to like .2 seconds but not.1???) Also, it would be nice to be able to layer more than two videos on top of eachother (although you could probably do this if you get final cut pro…FOR 300 dollars. Hard pass fam.) In addition, I’m not sure if it’s just my device, but this app is seriously slow at some points. It lags, which is really obnoxious when I’m trying to cut video to match a different audio. OH ALSO: there’s almost no point in trying to export a video thats more than 3 minutes long. It’s just not gonna happen. Like I said before, I am an amature so maybe this is just a case of me being an inexperienced and grumpy but somehow I don’t think so. I’m not the only one having problems. If you don’t want to bother reading all that I’ll summarize: the app was decent and now it’s just bad.

Apple just refuses to leave well enough alone when it comes to their software. I used to create band promo videos with EASE with the previous version, imported audio & video, synced everything up, edited clips, and came out with a good final product… NOW?? they have discontinued some of the features and created an entirely new interface. 3 calls to tech support to try and figure it out only to find out it will no longer do what I need it to do. WHY DISCONTINUE USEFUL FEATURES?? Why make an interface LESS user friendly??? Not only that, when I upgraded from the previous version, I lost a good deal of my existing projects… Poof!!! gone, not recoverable. And one of the imovie ‘specialists’ at tech support actually told me he doesn’t use imovie so doesn’t really know all the features…. omigod!! Apple, I am absolutely furious that, having learned how to use the previous version of iMovie, I now have to search for and purchase a different software program and learn how to use it simply to accomplish the same thing . They’v done it with iTunes also, every time there’s a major update it becomes less user friendly. If I could just break off from Apple completely after this I would, I am that upset.

New problem to this update, I cannot import any MTS files. It trys to import them as .mov files but they are not, they are AVCHD .MTS files. iMovie crashes every time I try to stop the import which isn’t working. I did a test to see if I have corrupt Sd card or camera isn’t writing files properly but that is not the case. I use iMovie all the time for years and just updated, but also updated to High Sierra as well. Could be a problem of the two together. My iMac is the newest version as well, two months old. My Camera is Panasonic HC-X920, pretty darn good camera, defineatly an apple issue after the update. Please Fix this issue, iMovie is useless if it can’t import AVCHD files. Love the program when it works! One star for this only…….APPLECARE had me uninstall "Perian and MacFUSE" from the system preferences pane, and also do a “Command, Option P, R, reset on startup(Hold all these keys on Startup until you hear the sound or the screen flashes. Solved the issue. Pretty common apparently.

Because this app does it all, it isn't the easiest to use out of the blocks, but there are a lot of videos on how to do most everything you'd want to do. I have been working on a movie with my grandkids and have been using green screen, and am very happy with that. I thought I would need to do that editing in another app but it is right there. Making audio is great too, raising the volume of the recording is just a click, which worked for me since I was filming with just my iPhone 10 and the grandkids conversations were a little low so didn't have to refilm. Background music and sound affects are right there to use too. Once I got started with the project I'm as excited about it as the grandkids. I know it might be easier but with the power it has and everything you can do it will take some time to be good, been using it a month and still need to research how to do some thing I need to do. All for free too. 5 STARS

My first macbook this year! I was so excited having already invested in much of the apple market and wanted to finish it off. I was utilizing garage band on my other devices, partnered with another program to edit on that was slightly easier on my PC. I also loved utilizing imovie on my iPad. So it was a natural progression that when I needed to invest in a new computer, I would go with Mac. I loved imovie on the ipad, and the transition to my mac was easy (unlike garage band which the programs were not utilized the same). Movies for work, for personal blogging, and for fun was easy to do using imovie. Upon the most recent update (10.1.7), however, it is impossible to create a movie as the app crashes upon opening. Call me impatient for a new bug fix release (as the update just occured). but it is kind of important that things work as they are supposed to when I need them to. That’s what we expect from Mac/apple, right? Seamless integration, effectiveness, productivity, etc… can’t be productive if the app doesn’t work. :(. Wil update my review when apple fixes this issue. :)

I have never used something so counterintuitive. I hate this software, it's so hard to use. Why is it so difficult to add text to images? I have to add a “Title” to a picture instead. When I do manage to get a title synced up with a picture, I can barely edit the text. Some title slides won’t even let me change the size of the text, but even when I CAN edit the text, what I can change in minimal. I can change the font, size, color, and make the text bold, italic, or outlined. I can also align the text within the text box. What I cannot do is change the size of the text box, delete extra text boxes that I’m not using, and move the text box around. Literally all I want to do is make a picture slideshow with words overlayed on the pictures and background music. I can’t even do that with iMovie. I’ve resorted to desperately trying to find different, better software. Oh, how I wish I had Windows Movie Maker right now. APPLE EMPLOYEES: If your product has more reviews that are 3 stars or less than reviews that are 4 stars or better, there is something wrong with the product. FIX THIS APP.

So everytime I make a project the clips keep disappearing in my projects. The majority of the clips are still in the media section so I can just add the majority of them back from the media section into the project. However this is highly annoying that everytime I reopen imovie to watch a project that I've made I have to readd clips that I've added over and over again. A few clips are not even staying in the media section as well which means i have to readd them from the updated project media folder all the way back into imovie. Sometimes they automatically show up in my project if I add it into the project folder in imovie but I've noticed that sometimes the time or date is different. Meaning that even though its the same clip the project thinks its a different clip and wont automatically add it and I have to manually reedit the clip and try and add it back into my project. Apple is already slow on updates if this keeps up I may have to pay for another movie software program or possibly even switch back to windows. This is horrible!!!

The most recent update has left me speechless. iMove used to do everything I needed for my video podcast. It was quick, responsive, and I didn’t have any issues. Now, exporting is taking twice as long as before (the prior version would do my 4+ hour podcast in about 35 minutes, now it is taking over an hour to do the same export), and the later parts of reviewing the video is making the video jittery. I don’t know if this is a iMovie viewing problem, or if the exported video will do the same thing. I really hope that I don’t have to use some other software for this, I had a pretty simple workflow for what I was doing.UPDATE: So I have been trying *ALL DAY* from about 10 AM this morning and it is currently 8:20 PM at night to export to a file a 3 hour, 31 minute, 57 second file. There is no way possible that this is the desired speed for file creation. I am *REDUCING* my rating because iMovie *WAS* working just fine! I could produce a 5 hour movie and it would be done in about an hour. There is no way this is how iMovie should be behaving.