Apple iMovie Review | PCMag

The video editing software included with Apple devices hasn’t changed a lot recently, but iMovie shines for its ease of use along with tools for media organization, color grading, speed changing, and audio editing. It also includes unique support for iPhone footage. For entry-level video editing on Apple devices, iMovie is our Editors’ Choice winner. When you’re ready to move up to more powerful tools, check out CyberLink’s PowerDirector, our Editors’ Choice for enthusiasts, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro, our top pick for professionals.

What’s Different About iMovie?

Apple’s iMovie doesn’t offer the 100-track timelines, multicam support, customizable transitions, and motion-tracking options that PC consumer video editing software like Corel VideoStudio and PowerDirector have. iMovie also lacks nifty AI tools like the auto-captioning you get in Premiere Pro and even Microsoft Clipchamp.

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What sets iMovie apart is its unique support for special iPhone features like Cinematic mode and its brilliant Storyboards and Magic Movies features (mobile-only). They take the wonderful template-based Trailers feature several steps forward. The interface is also much simpler than those of most video editors, with its “trackless” timeline that lets you drag video clips anywhere—more on that later.

If, however, you get more serious with video editing and want more effects, lots of tracks, 360-degree footage, motion tracking, or multicam, you should move up to Final Cut Pro, which will feel familiar to iMovie users despite its vastly greater video editing power and feature set. You have to drop $300 to purchase it, though, whereas iMovie comes free with Macs. A more affordable but still powerful and intuitive upgrade option is CyberLink’s powerful PowerDirector, now available for macOS, which retails for $139 or as a $74.95-per-year subscription.

What’s New in iMovie?

iMovie hasn’t received a major update since 2022. The latest minor version for macOS (10.4) speeds up the export of HEVC and H.264 files on Macs with Apple Silicon processors. Prior to that, in version 10.3 we saw added support for new iPhone features like Cinematic Mode (iPhone 13 and later) and log-encoded video shot on iPhone 15 Pro. Note that the current version number of the iOS app is 3.0.2 and includes the iPhone-specific updates mentioned above.

System Requirements

If you purchased a Mac on or after October 20, 2010, you get iMovie for free from the Mac App Store. Essentially, that means the app is free on nearly all Macs in use. The latest version requires macOS 13.5 or later and 3.2GB of storage. To test iMovie, I installed it on a MacBook Air with an Apple Silicon M1 CPU and 8GB RAM.

On iOS and iPadOS, iMovie is preinstalled by default, though you can remove it and reinstall it from the App Store. It requires iOS 16 or later. I tested this version of iMovie on an iPhone 12 mini and an iPad Pro. Though Apple has tried to keep the desktop and mobile versions in sync, there are feature differences, discussed below in the mobile section.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Interface

iMovie’s interface shows you only the tools you need at the moment and doesn’t clutter the screen with all available tools. The application has a dark interface, even if you aren’t using Dark Mode, that starts out with two tabs at the top center for Media and Projects. On the left side of the Projects view window is a single huge button with a plus sign. When you click it, you get two choices: New Movie and New Trailer. You import content by tapping the down arrow icon.

The standard three-pane video-editing interface shows up in iMovie, with source content at the top left, preview top right, and the timeline spanning the bottom of the screen. But that’s about all that’s standard. You don’t see any track divisions as you do in other editors. Instead, you drag clips down to the timeline, where they extend to represent their running times. You only get two video tracks, which is a far cry from the 100-plus allowed by several enthusiast applications. Note that your project’s resolution is determined by the first clip in the movie—you can’t set it to your preference as you can in most video editors.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

A neat interface touch is that you can scrub through any clip in the Media view simply by swiping the cursor across it. In an improvement from earlier versions of iMovie, when you click on a clip, the whole thing is selected rather than a range within the clip; the old way could make adding full clips to your timeline dicey. A plus sign button lets you send the clip to the timeline with no dragging required. Another helpful facet of the interface is that clips in the source panel show an orange line along the bottom to indicate that you’ve used them in your project.

I had no trouble importing any video content I threw at the program—GoPro, phone, and even 4K. HEVC videos and HEIC photos from my iPhone X displayed without a hitch, which is more than you can say for some video editing apps for Windows. You can even import 360-degree content, but the app can’t edit the point of view; it simply shows their dual fisheye or equirectangular view. You can also import projects you’ve started in iMovie on iOS and finish them on the desktop.

For organization, you can mark clips or even clip sections as Favorites or Rejects, but not with ratings, keyword tags, or face or geographical categorization like you get in Adobe Premiere Elements. Content that’s used in your project shows up in the separate Project Media section of the source panel. The Projects page makes finding what you’re working on a snap, and it’s always accessible from a button at the top left. It’s less fussy, though less powerful as an organizer than Premiere Elements’ separate Organizer program.

Assistive Editing

Dragging inserted clips around in the timeline is easy, and they automatically cling to the adjacent clips in what’s often termed a magnetic timeline. This action also creates Clip Connection lines, just like in Final Cut Pro, which helpfully keeps media together when you move one of the clips. You can’t turn off this magnetic behavior as you can in most if not all enthusiast-level software, but you could use a workaround like adding a black background clip.

You can trim clips in the source panel before entering them into the project, or simply drag the end handles to change the in and out points.

For more control when working with a transition between two clips, the Precision Editor expands the view to show you the parts of the clips before and after the edit. It also indicates how many seconds (but not frames) are in the clips and transitions.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

In addition to trimming, you can crop and rotate video clips or photos. Photos automatically get the Ken Burns pan-and-zoom effect, which makes them engage the eye rather than being static.

The magic wand Autocorrect button did a good job enhancing the lighting and color on many of my test clips, especially those shot on an iPhone. If the magic wand isn’t enough, you can have the program match color between clips (a pro-level tool), set the white balance from a point in the frame, or enhance skin tones with a dropper tool.

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If you want the program to make some informed artistic choices for you rather than go it completely on your own, you can apply a Theme. This option hides in the Settings panel that you open from a link below the movie preview. You have 14 themes to choose from, and they apply titles and transitions for a unified viewing experience. Newscast and Travel are two of the more engaging options. The latter shows your movie’s location on a map.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

The same is true for the wonderful Trailers feature, which boasts stirring orchestral background music. But the real beauty of Trailers is that it teaches you professional movie production processes by using an outline, storyboard, and shot list, telling you exactly what type of shots to include and when, as well as how long they should last.

On the mobile video editor version, you don’t see Trailers anymore as a separate option, but instead you get a lot more: Storyboards (which includes Trailers as one of its template choices) and Magic Movie. See the Mobile section below for details.

Special Effects, Including Green-Screening

The two video tracks are enough for one of iMovie’s strongest features: its green-screen (aka chroma-key) tool, which is automatic and extremely effective. You find it from the overlay button above the video preview window. It also accesses the picture-in-picture (PiP) feature, which is limited to one embedded picture. PC editors such as Cyberlink PowerDirector can include many PiP images and even animate them around the screen. iMovie also offers a split-screen effect, but it’s only two exact halves, with no resizing possible.

Time effects are simple and powerful, too. Freeze-frame is applied with a simple click, and you can then adjust the time of the freeze. You can choose Fast or Slow, or you can enter a speed percent for slowdowns and speedups. Selecting Reverse doesn’t stop you from using those timing changes, which is handy.

What other programs call effects, iMovie calls Clip Filters, and you get at them not from the menu section that includes Transitions and Titles, but from the eighth button (out of nine) above the preview window. The app includes some nifty filters here, including X-ray, Duo-Tone, and Sci-Fi, along with several black-and-white and retro looks.

You won’t find anywhere near as many transitions available as you get in PowerDirector, Premiere Elements, or the other enthusiast-level editors, but there are some fun ones, nevertheless, including page peel, cube spin, and mosaic.

Titles and Audio in iMovie

Titling and text in iMovie is nicely done. After choosing from a selection of well-designed title styles you can enter text and edit right in the preview window. Many of the title options animate in and out. You can change the font, size, and alignment. You even get the good old Star Wars scrolling text effect if you want.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

For audio functions, the iMovie editor ties in with iTunes and GarageBand for background music, and you can add from a decent selection of background soundtrack and sound effects, including four levels of pitch up and down, cosmic, and robot. Controls for equalizing, hum reduction, voice enhance, and bass and treble reduction are one-click affairs that aren’t adjustable as they are in VideoStudio. The Reduce Background Noise setting, however, is adjustable with a slider control.

Simple Sharing

You can easily share your creation via email, to your iTunes Library, and to YouTube or Vimeo. You can no longer share directly to Facebook, but a Prepare for Facebook option creates an output file formatted to work on the social network. (The Theater feature for sharing and viewing among Apple devices has been discontinued.) You can also just save it to a video file, but options are limited. You can’t choose the file type or resolution as competing consumer video editors let you. The saved MP4 format is nearly universally supported, however.

As with everything Apple, iMovie ties in beautifully with the rest of the company’s ecosystem: It closely mirrors iMovie on iOS (see below) and makes the path to the pro level Final Cut Pro quite smooth.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Rendering Performance

For render speed testing, I have each program join seven clips of various resolutions ranging from 720p all the way up to 8K. I then apply cross-dissolve transitions between them. I note the time it takes to render the project to 1080p30 with H.264 and 192Kbps audio at a bitrate of 20Mbps. The output movie is just over five minutes in length. I run multiple test runs and take the harmonic mean (which minimizes the effect of outliers) on a 2020 MacBook Air with M1 processor and 8GB RAM with macOS Sonoma 14.4.1.

Though Apple claims that the latest update of iMovie improves export performance, I did not find that to be the case. The Apple and Adobe products trail the Wondershare and CyberLink products significantly in this test, as you can see in the chart below:

iMovie on Mobile

More people are likely to be using iMovie on an iPhone or iPad than on a Mac, simply because more of those devices are in use. Apple has gone to great pains to make the macOS and iOS versions of iMovie consistent, so I expect the new mobile-only Storyboard and Magic Movie features will come to the desktop at some point.

The timeline is brilliantly done for the small mobile screen. Instead of moving the insertion point, you swipe on the clip thumbnail itself to move in the timeline.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

The app supports HDR (the Dolby Vision version, which newer iPhones support), includes lots of title customizations, imports and shares 4K 60fps content, and lets you use solid, gradient, and patterned backgrounds.

Transitions are clearly indicated with arrows in small boxes between the clips. Clicking on them lets you change the transition type. You can add more media to your movie by tapping a plus sign, and reordering content is a simple matter of tap-hold-drag-and-drop—like moving app icons around your iPhone home screen. You can also intuitively pinch-zoom the whole timeline. If any interface element is unclear, tapping the question mark icon reveals tooltips that tell you what each control does.

To create a new movie on mobile, you click the plus sign. Just as on desktop, you then see a choice of Movie or Trailer. Both options offer templates, with Trailers going further in guiding you as to what type of scenes to include. The Movie option includes default transitions and titles, optional background music, and applies motion to any still images you’ve included.

Dozens of fonts keep the movie-making experience fresh, and you can change the color picker or eyedropper, and edit the title’s size and location with pinch-and-drag touch gestures.

When you tap on a clip, you can split it, detach its audio track, duplicate it, or delete it. Time-stretching options include freeze-frame, speedup, and slowdown. Adobe Rush (which requires a Premiere Pro subscription) has similar tools, with an option to maintain audio pitch and other advanced options. Outputting movies on the iPhone or iPad is like sharing from any other iOS app.

The mobile version of iMovie extends the concept of Trailers, those storyboard templates that tell you exactly what kind of shot to add to create a compelling mini-movie, with the new Storyboards feature. It offers 20 template types, of which Trailers is just one. Among the templates are those suited to cooking tutorials, video gaming, makeovers, product reviews, and news reports. It’s a healthy selection.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Once you’ve settled on a Storyboard type, you choose a Style, which you can change at any point. The Storyboard templates offer a great starting point for YouTubers to deliver polished uploads for their subscribers. The templates aren’t rigid, either. You can add, remove, and reorder shots to taste, or apply Instagram-like filters. You can also change the look and feel of the productions, choosing a different style later.

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Also new for iMovie on mobile is Magic Movies. It makes digital movie-making as simple as it gets. You select videos from your camera roll, and the tool trims them and joins them into a mini-movie with a title and background music. As with Storyboard movies, you can adjust the relative volumes of your clip audio and the background music, and you can go into the full editor and change clip lengths and make other edits by tapping the pencil icon next to a thumbnail and choosing Edit Clip. Doing so opens the full editing view and lets you edit any clips in the Magic Movie.

Making Movies the Apple Way

If you’re a video hobbyist in the Apple ecosystem, using iMovie is a no-brainer. The app’s slick interface and powerful tools make it our top pick for entry-level video editing software on the Mac. iMovie can also serve as a bridge to Apple’s pro video editor, Final Cut Pro, with which it shares many interface and functional characteristics. If you want to do some radical video editing that isn’t possible in iMovie and you don’t want to spend $300 on Final Cut Pro, check out CyberLink PowerDirector.