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While KU officially starts classes tomorrow, and all of the noobs around town are driving me nuts, my favorite KU basketball player of all time has returned as an assistant. Welcome home Michael Lee, and good luck with your masters program.

Via: PhogBlog

I’ve gotta give Apple’s iLife team some credit when it comes iMovie ‘08. Now I pay the bills as a video editor and compositor using a ton of Apple tools and I’m very comfortable with the traditional 3-point non-linear editing as defined by Avid and refined by Final Cut. However, the average consumer is not….and Apple kept assuming that the way to improve iMovie was to add more “professional” features to the program. While that always made me a little happier when sitting down to help someone with their home iMovie, it meant that with every release of iLife, iMovie became more and more complicated.

Enter iMovie ‘08. This new release looks to be an entirely different way of working with home movies and it should make life easier for the causal/home video editor. There are some tools, namely Final Cut Server, on the pro side of things that are similar to the new iMovie workflow, but nothing in the true consumer market. Gone is the standard timeline with tracks of video and audio, and now there is a project workspace where you just piece your movie together.

The new release is really exciting but I noticed a menu item in the new iMovie that could really change the game in rough cuts. Check out the photo above. There is now an option to export your project to FCP with the “Export Final Cut XML” command. What this does is allow you to export your project into a format that Final Cut can understand and have your movie instantly setup and ready for further refinement in FCP.

I’m dying to give this to some of the producers at my office as Final Cut tends to be way to bloated for the simple rough cuts they are preparing. Also, with iMovie ‘08 there is nothing to stop schools from teaching simple editing with iMovie and then taking that project into FCP to teach the kids the essential finishing and audio editing techniques.

I usually yawn at every new version of iMovie as it means more work for me when I sit down to help users at the LAUG meetings, but with this version I’m actually excited to show people a new way of thinking about their home movies. Again, where’s that (office) credit card!?

Apple released a ton of new products today, but this quote from Steve Jobs really stood out in the midst of it all. When asked by a member of the media how Apple will market their amazing new technologies he answered:

“We’ve got a phenomenal customer base, they show their friends and their friends get jealous.” -Steve Jobs

I can’t count the number of jealous friends and family I have converted. :)

Via: Engadget