Some Things Are Just Easier on a Mac

Some Things Are Just Easier on a Mac
ARTICLE DATE: 07.09.10
By Lance Ulanoff

If I can help it, I'm done using a Windows 7 PC to edit and upload YouTube videos.

I've been cheating on my Windows 7 PC. You see, when I need to edit and upload videos to YouTube, I use a Mac. My indiscretion began casually, but it's evolved into a bit of an obsession: This is an affair that I do not intend to end. The simple, painful truth is that video editing and YouTube uploading is much smoother when I use iMovie on a MacBook Pro.

I've been taking a lot of video lately and, if you've seen any of my YouTube uploads, you know I've met with varying degrees of success. I've posted pixelated videos, videos that look a tad blurry, and even videos that are too small for the now-standard 16:9 YouTube playback window. Each and every one of these clips was edited and uploaded via Windows. Contrast that with the results using my Mac: Every video looks better and all properly fill the YouTube playback window. In each instance, producing the video on the Mac was easier than a similar project with Windows.

I'm not blaming Windows 7, per se. Instead, I'll point a bony finger at the apps. As I've said before, this is the best version of Windows in over a decade. For years, I've used Adobe Premiere Elements to edit and upload videos on my Windows XP, Vista, and, now, Windows 7 systems. When I was shooting 640-by-480 video, with either a Canon point-and-shoot digital camera or a Creative Vado Pocket Video Cam, things went pretty smoothly. I'm actually a big fan of the remarkable level of control afforded me by Premiere Elements and have stuck with the app from version 1 through 8. However, when I switched to an HD pocket camcorder, things got dicey.

These days, I'm using a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera to shoot most of my video. It takes crystal clear clips and stores them on removable media—a feature I love. Naturally, the files are larger than VGA-quality files, but not so large that a mid-range, decently-equipped PC shouldn't be able to handle them. Though the Zi8 can shoot all the way up to 1080p, I usually keep the settings at 720 or even WVGA to reduce the file size and burden on the system. That system, by the way, is often a laptop, since I usually post video from the road (from CES, E3, Apple launch events, etc.).

Unfortunately, even at WVGA resolution, Adobe Premiere 8 seems to choke on some of my files, struggling to catch up (it's forever grinding through background processes). In order to grease the wheels, I make sure my scratch discs are on drives with the most space. This doesn't really help. Even so, I can live with this when it's on my laptop, but I am frustrated when I see similar performance on my Windows 7 desktop, which has Nvidia graphics and 6GB of memory. What really drives me nuts, however, is what happens to my output. Adobe Premiere Elements is at a complete loss when it comes to guiding me to the best output settings for my video. It doesn't appear to auto sense the size or resolution, and it doesn't stop me when I select something that will make the video look like garbage. In fact, the more I dig into the program, the worse it becomes. If it only took a few minutes to convert and then upload the video I might not care. Too bad it can take well over an hour to compress and upload a 9-minute video (longer if I choose the wrong settings).I have tried both local and online help, but there is nothing that addresses my specific problem.

Part of Premiere's trouble is, in my opinion, an issue that exists with almost all Windows apps. Things appear easy, even inviting, at first, but a little digging always reveals the somewhat industrial underpinnings. For example, Premiere Elements offers up a brightly-colored "r" button and then shows you a handful of simple options that include Online, Disc, Personal Computer, Mobile Phones, Players, and Tape. I almost always select Online and then choose YouTube. The default YouTube settings would naturally degrade the video to an unwatchable mess, but the highest resolution option is based on what YouTube will accept and not your video's actual resolution. When I chose the highest resolution, I ended up with mini-videos of decent resolution that do not fill the screen. One co-worker suggested I select "Share" to the PC, save the video as a Flash FLV file, and then upload that to YouTube. This works sometimes, but not consistently, and if I choose a high bit rate, my files take forever to convert and end up being humongous.

I tried switching to a simpler app—the very usable Windows Movie Maker. It's super-friendly, but, ultimately, a bit too simplistic for my needs. Plus, it offered no more advice regarding proper video uploading settings than Premiere. One time, it managed to desynchronize my audio and video, and I didn't notice until after I'd posted the video to YouTube. YouTube, by the way, isn't especially helpful either. Since you can't overwrite a bad video with a good one, I typically have to alter the original video slightly and upload it as a brand new clip and then delete the bad video. YouTube, please fix this.

I could go on about my frustrations, but why bother? I finally decided to switch to the 15-inch MacBook Pro with iMovie (part of iLife 9) that I have sitting in my office.

I discovered that iMovie on the Mac is better in almost every way than any video editing software I have ever tried. As is my way, I never read a manual; I simply booted the software, created a new project (my biggest decision was selecting a 4:3 or 16:9 ratio), and then imported my video. None of this was hard. The interface seems to understand something that none of the Windows-based apps I tried did—that you're working with video. Wherever I moved my mouse, video would start playing. It wasn't random, mind you. It was as if I was always scrubbing through video in real time. As opposed to staring at static thumbnails and having to grab something to start scrubbing through video, this always-live strategy makes it easy to find the video or video segment you want to use or discard.

All video apps I've tried use drag and drop, but iMovie lets you dispense with virtually everything else. Most of the work involved clicking, double-clicking, and dragging and dropping. I could preview portions of the video and my full video at any time. You can do this with Premiere and other Windows apps, too, but it was easier to do so in iMovie.

Most video-editing products make you choose between a timeline interface and a storyboard. The timeline is more powerful, letting you zoom all the way down to frame level. The video thumbnails are tiny and you have to rely on the preview window to know what you're doing. Storyboard offers much larger video images, but also leaves you with much rougher controls. It's virtually impossible to know where you are in a scene, which is frustrating if you want to make specific edits. In Premiere Elements, I always work in timeline mode because I need a relatively high degree of control.

Perhaps the only video editor on the market to split the difference is iMovie. The video-editing window is utterly unique. It gives you video-scene thumbnails nearly as large as you'd find in a storyboard editor, but with the near-frame-level control you'd find in a timeline. Cutting and trimming clips is easier, too. In Premiere and other editors, I have to cut up a clip or scene before I can move or delete anything. In iMovie, I just drag around a yellow bounding box until it encompasses what I want to edit and then I drag and drop the video clip, delete it with a keystroke, or move it. Even if you've never edited video, I think you could figure this out.

Adobe Premiere Elements is a shockingly powerful video-editing app for average people, but it can also be overwhelming, especially as you layer on more and more effects. Plus, to be honest, I haven't always achieved the best results with Premiere. On the surface, iMovie appears to offer far less control; yet, what it does offer usually results in highly professional output. The transitions, for example, which are easy to drag and drop between scenes, look better than most of what I tried in Elements and other video competitors.

Leaving aside the pitch-perfect editing interface, iMovie gets the single most important thing right: It defaults to the best YouTube output option. Virtually every iMovie video I've uploaded to YouTube looks better than what I posted via Premiere Elements and Windows Movie Maker.

For lower-resolution videos, Windows-based tools may suffice, but for videos of any resolution above 480i, I'm going with a Mac and iMovie whenever possible. Please do not tell my Windows 7 PC.