TheStreet.com Offers Two Thumbs Up For iMovie & iDVD

If we had been asked to compile a list of all the mainstream media outlets where Appleis consumer video production software would get a review, let alone a positive review, TheStreet.com would not have been very high on that list. In fact, it probably wouldnit have made the list at all. TheStreet.com is a financial magazine that usually covers things like profits, warnings, market share, and IPOs, but the site published just such a review today, and the reviewer, Tish Williams, had some pretty positive things to say. From that article:

Appleis advertising campaign is oddly compelling: Not because youive always wanted to elope to a tropical isle and donit know how to break it to your parents, but because weive all had the urge to climb into the directoris chair. iMovie is your beginneris course. For $3,000 in starter cash -- youire going to need an Apple computer -- anyone can take simple home-movie clips and turn them into snappy, finished products with music and effects. Weigh that against tuition payments for the University of Southern Californiais film school.

"There was almost no learning curve. Maybe Iim some kind of savant, maybe Iim Spielbergian," boasts one satisfied amateur with a dozen iMovies under her belt. "Iive learned so much about techniques of making film. Lighting, shots, transition from scene to scene. Now when Iim watching North by Northwest I notice how it goes from scene to scene, no transition, just quick cuts."

And you wonit just be copying your movie onto the DVD; you can build table- of-contents pages with selected background music, fonts and thumbnail pictures. Apple has brought the price of blank DVDs down to $6 apiece from 2000 prices in the $40 range. While DVDs may look like CDs, thereis a big difference -- each holds 90 minutes of video and takes about twice the length of the video content to burn. And for the Windows faithful, the new XP operating system from Microsoft offers a new version of Window Movie Maker, which has XPis updated graphical feel. (Movie Maker debuted with Windows Millennium.) Movie Maker is no iMovie, but it has a similar look, up to the point when you are searching for audio, transition and special-effects tools.

If youire dreaming of munching seared tuna with Hollywoodis A-list, iMovie is your starting point. When youire on the red carpet, remember who gave you the tip.

There is more in the full article at TheStreet.com.