iMovie
Also known as: Apple iMovie
Apple's free basic editor for Mac and iPhone, the first application most people cut footage in and the one they outgrow fastest.
Updated
What it means
iMovie is deliberately small. Two video tracks, a handful of transitions, preset titles and a simple timeline, which covers a straightforward holiday or session edit. Nothing in it needs explaining.
Its value is that it is already installed and immediately usable. A first edit exists in an evening, which matters more than any feature it lacks. The alternative is usually no edit at all.
It is also the on-ramp to Final Cut Pro, since projects move across and the timeline model is a simplified version of the same ideas, so nothing learned here is wasted.
How it works in practice
Trailers and templates get people started. A preset structure with placeholder slots teaches that an edit has a shape rather than a length, which is the useful half of Template-based editing.
It handles short material well. A dozen clips, a music bed and titles is comfortable, and that describes most of what people actually want to make. Ambition arrives later than capability runs out.
Long action footage needs trimming first. Cutting candidates out of an hour of riding is painful here, so the card is reduced before the project is started. Selection happens elsewhere and assembly happens here.
What to watch out for
Capability runs out quickly and visibly. No real grading, limited audio control, and nothing like Curves or per-clip colour work, so anything beyond a simple look is out of reach. The ceiling is clearly marked.
Export options are narrow. Frame rate and Bitrate choices are mostly made for you, which matters when a platform or a Rendering and export target needs something specific.
Projects are hard to move anywhere else. Nothing like an Edit decision list comes out of it, so an edit that outgrows the application is usually rebuilt rather than migrated.
How RawClip handles it
An automatic highlight removes the step iMovie is worst at, which is getting through a long card. What comes back is a short finished sequence, and iMovie remains perfectly adequate for adding a title, trimming an ending or dropping in one extra clip afterwards. The work it is good at is still there to do.