So, I'm playing about with some video footage on my Mac. I've been using iMovie '08 ever since it came out and I really like it. The thing is I've only ever made short little clips out of video shot on my (photo) camera - an Canon IXUS. For tasks like this I've found iMovie '08 to be perfectly fine. It's even quicker to use that the old iMovie 6 HD.

Recently however I've been editing a little trailer together for somebody from higher quality clips shot on a camcorder. iMovie '08 seems to be really struggling here. I don't know if it's just my machine (a 1.83 GHz Intel MacBook with 1GB memory - plenty of free hard drive space) or if it's a problem with iMovie '08 generally. It seems incapable of smooth playback of the clips - it's like it can't keep up. So it plays things back in fits and starts, which makes it impossible to do fine editing and the whole program pretty much unusable.

I've given up and gone back to iMovie 6 HD for this project (which, incidentally, any iLife '08 owner can download for free from the Apple website here). iMovie 6 seems rock solid in comparison.

Has anybody else found the same thing, or is it just me? I'd like to explore this further in the magazine, so please email me your comments, or post them below. Thanks.