[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by Vesperae
on May 14, 2011, 5:25 am, in reply to "Re: Office Suite Software...After Hours :)"
Message modified by board administrator May 14, 2011, 12:34 pm
Thanks SpyPlane! 
Great question about iMovie; there are two answers:
1) My piece for Smoke Signals Online was intended to suggest as low a cost option as possible for cross–platform users interested in experimenting with multimedia (at least given my limited awareness of the PC world), especially in light of the ubiquity of, and familiarity with, office suite slideshow / presentation software.
2) I've played around with iMovie, and am very impressed with it as an editing tool, and definitely see endless nuanced possibilities for creating all sorts of interesting things with it. And I'm also sure that there are lots of powerful video editors available for PC users.
However... 
...advanced video editors like iMovie, or even QT Pro, or those for PC, end up providing you with a relatively labor intensive one of a kind clip, whereas juxtaposing several looped clips at once in slideshow / presentation software can be done with a modicum of effort, but much more importantly, spontaneously, and with infinite flexibility. It's like the difference between engineering and mastering one specific song, vs. what a DJ can do by mixing samples and loops and existing music tracks at any given moment during a live show. The iMovie approach is discreet and time specific, whereas the slideshow / presentation software approach is variable, blends conceptually in novel and random ways, and runs continuously until stopped by the user.
I should probably explain that the "GeorgiaLayeredMix.m4v" clip at the end of my Smoke Signals piece was just a snippet of what you'd experience with slideshow / presentation software running the full length version of the Smoking Fetish Video Georgia clip (not supplied), the full music track (not supplied), and the graphic text track (the full track was supplied) all looped together in a slideshow / presentation application beyond a single "cycle" of the graphic text track, which is all that the "GeorgiaLayeredMix.m4v" clip shows.
On the one hand, I might spend a considerable amount of time working up a given loop clip of audio and / or video (narration, smoking commentary, graphic text sequences, image sequences, etc.), but that relatively modest investment of effort becomes endlessly fresh and different when juxtaposed with whatever other clips I choose to play / blend it with in my personal library, and thus provides a much greater return on the investment of time than if those elements were only attached to a specific set of imagery and sounds.
Said another way, mixing multiple loop clips within a slideshow / presentation application is like mixing a fresh salad that features whatever elements you're craving at any given time, and in whatever proportion you're craving them, rather than eating the exact same combination of vegetables in exactly the same order and proportion every time, which is what you get with a more elaborate creative edit / mash up via video editing software like iMove.
But both definitely have their advantages and disadvantages!
Thanks again,
V
V notes: Just fixed a bunch of typos. I was very tired and a little tipsy when I composed my initial reply...
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