iLife 09 has been announced at the Macworld 2009 event. The renewal of the iLife package can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned! The updates to iMovie alone make this package worth while. Let’s have a look at some of the features of the new iLife 09.....



So here’s some of the features of iLife 09. I won’t list all of the updates because some of them don’t interest me. Here are the ones that do:

iPhoto 09

iPhoto 08 was the first version of iPhoto that I used as I only swapped to being a Macalite just over a year ago. iPhoto, for me, is a revelation. The ability to store your pictures in a nice easy database and then show them via events, which are skimmable, is just fantastic. Here’s a couple of nice things in the latest version.

Faces

‘Faces’ is the name of the new feature that allows you to organise photo’s by whose in them. You simply select somebody’s face in a couple of photo’s and assign a name to them and iPhoto then uses it’s face recognition tech to show you pictures with that person in. Neat huh? It sounds pretty good and it looks nice, especially the cork-board of tagged people. But I’ve already read reports on the internet from people who got a chance to play with this at Macworld and apparently it’s doesn’t quite live up to it’s claim. It is reported that it doesn’t detect people properly and often detects a tagged face as somebody completely different! I suppose we don’t know for sure about all this until we can test it with our own photos. I’m sure it’s quite useful even if it’s not 100% accurate. Thinking about it, how can it be? It’s only a program!

Themed Slideshows

New slideshows with whizzy new templates. Hurrah! Everybody loves a good slideshow. I love creating photo slideshows especially when they look this good! These can be shared with your AppleTV, iPod or iPhone.

Travel Maps

Well. Just look at it. Lovely, isn’t it? iPhoto 09 will use your location data from your camera (or you can type that place names if you’ve got a normal camera that just takes pictures...) and it will create a beautiful map of your journey and the places you visited. I can’t wait to use this. I’ve only ordered one photo book from Apple so far, but this kind of thing will make my future orders so much nicer. Imagine sitting down with your family and showing them this!

iMovie 09

I like iMovie 08. I know that a lot of people hate it and although I’ve had problems, I like it. The main problem for me is the fact that you can no longer share videos directly with iDVD and that the export of video discards frames if you are using interlaced footage. This is because Steve Jobs doesn’t think people should be creating home movie DVD’s any more as the internet is the future. Huh. I doubt this will be changed in this version, but there are some things that MANY people have been screaming about.

Advanced Drag and Drop

This is a simple change but should make all the difference. You can now select a clip and drag it into the middle of another clip. It will bring up a context menu asking you what you want to do with the clip ie, insert, replace.

Precision Editor

This feature displays a magnified filmstrip for advanced, precision editing. OCD sufferers - rejoice!

Dynamic Themes

Now this really is something good. I never used themes in iMovie HD but I know that a lot of people were upset that they were removed from iMovie 08. Well, they’re back.... with a vengeance! It inserts the theme, animated titles and intelligent transitions and, I can tell you now, it looks absolutely fab. They can be swapped in real time and it only changes the theme if you do this so that your titles and what-not stay untouched. These should really spruce up those home made movies!

Animated Travel Maps

This is similar to the Travel Maps feature in iPhoto but is animated and is very reminiscent of the old Indiana Jones travel clips. There are 4 different globes and flat maps included. I can’t wait to start using this in my holiday videos. What a great idea!

Video Stabilisation

Now this is clever. Very clever. Especially considering the intended audience using iMovie - amateurs. This feature will analyse on a clip-by-clip basis or your entire video. The only downside to this is that it takes a while to analyse the video. I recommend a nice cup of tea and an episode of ‘Come Dine with Me’ while you wait. Once it’s finished it promises that your footage will be smooooooooooth and you can edit the settings as you wish to lessen or add more smooooooooooothness. If you’ve been filming while on the back of a camel racing across the cobbles in Coronation Street then the likelihood is that your footage is beyond help. If so, iMovie will highlight it with a red squiggly line and you can choose to remove this footage if you so wish. Nice!

New Titiles, Transitions and Effects

Here are some more features that have been re-inserted after their omission from iMovie 08. You get 18 new animated titles to play with and each one is preview-able before you apply it. There are 8 new transitions and these are preview-able by skimming over them and are applied with a single click, apparently. Sounds too easy to be true to me, as all these things look easy when you see them demonstrated but I usually end up in a mess, thumping the keyboard in the vain hope that something good will happen. Here’s hoping that it is as easy as claimed.
There are 19 video effects too such as ‘Aged Film’, ‘Cartoon’, ‘Dream’, etc and footage can be slowed down, sped up or reversed with such simplicity it seems almost frightening.
I think a lot of people will be happy with these changes as iMovie 09 seems to be a finished product whereas iMovie 08 felt like a beta.

GarageBand 09

Basic Music Lessons and Artist Lessons

This is interesting. GarageBand 09 introduces music lessons to each and every user! You can learn to play basic piano and guitar and also run through the Artist Lessons with the ‘stars’ showing you how to do it. These come in the shaped of Sting, Ben Folds etc. This is something very new and quite exciting for music lovers. I’ve also heard that you’ll be able to buy more advanced lessons later on down the road.

iWeb 09

Widgets

Remember that HTML widget from the previous iWeb? This goes one better and gives you nice drag and drop widgets such as YouTube video, Countdown, RSS feeds etc. The best feature of iWeb 09, in my opinion, is the fact that you can now manage multiple sites and publish them independently via FTP to any hosting service you like. It’s about time. This is actually the thing that made me migrate from iWeb to Rapidweaver as it was so painful to manually upload everything after a change. Hurrah for this, but also tut-tut for taking so long.


So there you go. Exciting eh? The only thing that I haven’t mentioned is iDVD and that is because it appears to have been left untouched. This is a real shame. iDVD could have done with some new templates as well as the ability to burn HD-DVD or Blu-Ray compatible video onto a DVD. What’s the point in having a HD Camcorder if you have to burn it to DVD resolution? (Users - get Toast to burn HD footage to DVD)

To check out the online tutorials, guided tours and full feature set, visit Apple here: iLife 09 Info

It’s out late January and can be pre-ordered from Apple for £69 here: Purchase iLife 09