GeeThree effect bypasses iMovie limitations by bypassing iMovie
October 24, 2002 | by Chuck La Tournous
The longing I had for Apple's Final Cut Pro is pretty much gone now -- sated by the slew of incredible third-party plug-ins for the once-lowly iMovie. From offerings like GeeThree's original Slick Effects package to newcomers like Stupendous Software, these add-ons may vary in sophistication, but the choices they provide to "Weekend Spielbergs" like me is nothing short of astounding -- and liberating.
One of the features I longed for most was the "pan and scan" effect used with such great effect in documentaries. Moving across and zooming in on a still image can add drama and life to still photos, and with the ease of importing digital photos into iMovie -- it's a terrific way to break up to longish footage that often makes up home movies.
Virtix was first on the scene with a plug-in that was long on substance but a little short on style and, more importantly, quality. Its interface was a little on the clunky side, but the real deal-breaker was the fact that imported photos lost an unacceptable amount of resolution almost as soon as an effect was applied. At issue, explained Virtix, were limitations in iMovie itself that made it impossible to retain a photo's resolution.
GeeThree -- already the grand-daddy in iMovie plug-in makers -- encountered the same limitation. But they approached it in a very different way: by bypassing iMovie altogether. SlickMotion is included with their latest effects bundle, Volume 4, but it's a standalone application, not an iMovie plug-in.
We admit we were skeptical about the usability of a separate application. We thought it would disrupt the "creative flow" of deciding the hows and wheres of choosing and applying photo effects.
Man, were we wrong.
SlickMotion is lightning fast, and its thoughtful, sophisticated interface makes creating effects a breeze. The single window of the program is split into sections reminiscent of Final Cut Pro. Positioning the start and end points for the pan can be done by either dragging the photo around within the preview windows or by typing coordinates into X and Y axis fields. This flexibility makes it easy to create effects or precisely align pans or match other shots. A preview button quickly creates a low-resolution QuickTime movie of the effect. When you're satisfied that Ken Burns himself couldn't create a better move, the program creates a high-res digital video file that can be imported into iMovie. Best of all, the resolution of the finished movie isn't set until the effect is applied -- so even zooms stay clear and sharp, as long as the original photo was up to the task.
We fully expected the quality of the effect to come at a price: speed. Happily, we were wrong here as well. In fact, in our quick test, it took 2.5 minutes to create a simple pan within iMovie using Virtix's plug-in, with -- as we expected -- a loss in quality that was disappointing. Using the standalone SlickMotion and importing the finished file into iMovie took us a full minute less -- and we retained our high-resolution image. The examples at left give something of an idea of the difference in quality, but it's even more striking in full-resolution video.
The Virtix Pan and Scan Pack costs $20. To get the high resolution of GeeThree's SlickMotion, you'll have to shell out $50, but you also get the full Volume 4 package of "Hollywood" effects, including picture-in-picture and matte effects -- more must-haves for the serious iMovie mogul.
Whichever package you decide is right for the way you use iMovie, it's hard to imagine a better time to be an amateur videographer, and harder to imagine anything that's impossible to do in iMovie -- with enterprising developers like GeeThree on the job.
More information is available on GeeThree's website.
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