I want to like iMovie '08. The cataloging feature looks useful, and the "skimming" feature is clever. But every time I play with it, it drives me nuts. I tried using it for a real project last weekend and within a couple of minutes went back to iMovie HD.

Most of my iMovie projects involve editing together excerpts from a long video that I've imported from DV or VHS. Last weekend I had about an hour and a half of video from a judo tournament that some of my friends competed in. As I usually do for these tournaments, I wanted to create (1) a "highlights reel" and (2) individual videos of complete matches. I found iMovie '08 somewhere between cumbersome and useless for these purposes. It seems like it should have been fine, even fun; but I hated it.

Here's just one complaint: as far as I know, I can't name clips in iMovie '08. In iMovie HD I can type a short name under each clip, which is helpful for seeing at a glance which of my friends is fighting in which clip: "Nina 1," "Germain 1," "Nina 2," "Paul 1," and so on. What I do is, I import the whole thing from my camcorder, then work my way through the video finding where each of my friends' matches begins and ends, and I fill in names accordingly.

In iMovie '08 I have to look at the thumbnail for each clip to see who's in it, which is a pain because most clips look similar (two people in judo uniforms), and I have to squint (or skim over the clip) to recognize faces. This drives me nuts, even with the thumbnails at maximum size.

I'll be shooting video at another tournament tomorrow. I'm going to watch some iMovie '08 tutorials and see if they persuade me to try it again. I doubt they will.