iMovie for iPhone & iPad updates for green screens, ClassKit, new soundtracks

Apple on Tuesday updated iMovie for iOS with several enhancements, most notably a green screen effect for stripping out backgrounds.

Despite its name, the effect will work with material shot in front of both blue and green screens, Apple explained. Controls include a four-point mask and a strength slider.

Other features include 80 new soundtracks in genres such as pop, "chill," and "sentimental," plus the ability to use photos as overlays for picture-in-picture and split-screen effects. Borders can be hidden for either.

Still images can be dropped in with transparent backgrounds for the creation of logos and other custom overlay graphics. Apple has meanwhile added ClassKit support for submitting video assignments via Schoolwork, but simultaneously disabled sharing to iMovie Theater in favor of iCloud Photos.

iMovie is a free download for any compatible iPhone and iPad. The latest version requires iOS 11.4 or later.

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7 Comments

radarthekat 3901 comments · 12 Years

About 5 years ago

Looking forward to checking out the updates. I use iMovie for my nascent Youtube channel. It works fairly well.

ihatescreennames 1971 comments · 19 Years

About 5 years ago

AppleInsider said:

Apple has meanwhile added ClassKit support for submitting video assignments via Schoolwork, but simultaneously disabled sharing to iMovie Theater in favor of iCloud Photos.

This is disappointing. Apple has been slowly dropping support for iMovie Theater. I chatted with someone at Apple Support about it a while back and was told sharing to iCloud Photos was temporary as a new offering was coming. So far nothing.

There are a few reasons I’m disappointed in the iCloud Photo option. Currently all my iMovie Theater videos fade in from black. In iMovie Theater each video shows an image preview of the video, in Photos there is just a black rectangle. In iMovie Theater each video has its name underneath the preview image, in Photos there are no names shown. iMovie Theater is specifically set up to show videos so they’re relatively easy to find. In photos I have to search through years of photos to find the correct no name black rectangle to find the video I’m looking for. And most of the time I want to see the videos on my Apple TV, which was the first thing to lose support. This is just stupid on so many levels.

I’m curious to know how many resources go into supporting iMovie Theater where Apple has determined that it’s just too much.

CheeseFreeze 1333 comments · 7 Years

About 5 years ago

It's about time they give FCPX a serious upgrade

DAalseth 3025 comments · 6 Years

About 5 years ago

radarthekat said:

Looking forward to checking out the updates. I use iMovie for my nascent Youtube channel. It works fairly well.

I kept trying to use iMovie in my iPad and it was so kludgy, limited, and awful, I finally gave up. For the last year or so I've been using LumaTouch. I find it far easier to use, it connects smoothly with my YouTube account, and it has far more fine functions than iMovie. That it until this update. I'm tempted to take another look to see if they fixed all the annoying things that drove me away. OTOH I like what I have so why switch.