While travel film artists are a diverse lot when it comes to digital editing, preferring Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, Edius Pro 3 (formerly Canopus) and Macro-System’s Casablanca stand-alone systems and others-several filmmakers also depend on Apple’s easy-to-use iMovie. “It will accomplish all the simple cuts and transitions, etc. that our audiences have come to expect,” as one filmmaker told Travel Adventure Cinema. Here’s a look at the new i-Movie 09 by one of our contributors.

By Wim Vermolen

It was with some sadness that I entered San Francisco’s Mascone Conference Center last month, knowing that this would be the last time for Apple to be part of MacWorld. Despite announcements to the contrary, I was still hoping Steve Jobs would appear with news of a new Apple product. Alas, he was a no-show as promised.

Apple did announce new software, however, some of which impressed me favorably. Included in the newly introduced iLife 09 and iWorks 09 releases were updates for all its programs.

The most anticipated changes were made to iMovie-part of iLife. Last year iMovie 08 was released, and although it included revision 08, it was a brand new program to edit movies. The overall reception was less than desirable. In fact, it was so bad that Apple had to reintroduce the previous iMovie edit program, iMovie 06 (iMovie 07 never existed). Either program could be used independently to edit film.

The Missing Manuals author David Pogue wrote a New York Times article criticizing all the things missing in iMovie 08. Pogue told a Mascone seminar group what happened next: Shortly after the story appeared Jobs called him personally to ask, “Who do you think you are to criticize the latest iMovie program?” Jobs obviously had not expected-nor did he like-such criticism.

Fortunately, the new iMovie 09 release has corrected almost all the prior problems, although the lack of a “timeline” is still an issue. A new feature is the stabilization option. A demonstration showed how a movie taken from a Jeep on a dirt road became a steady handheld movie. Check out http://www.apple.com/ilife to see for yourself. The new animated title and map program are also great improvements.

In addition to Apple, there were other companies displaying their products. Many concentrated on software to improve photos.

Roxio introduced Toast 10, an update that makes it possible to transfer a double-layer DVD to a couple of single layer DVDs. It also records any movie that plays on your computer. A new Toast Pro 10 has a photo-editing program to lighten or darken sections of a photo-a completely different approach than the methods used by iPhoto or Photoshop.