Move from MAC to PC - need iMovie/Garage Band equivalents

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Permalink Reply by Karl Pointer on January 29, 2010 at 7:57am

If you are moving to pc's, all windows machines will have movie maker loaded on them. It is a basic movie editing system. The version of Windows you are running will dictate what version of movie maker you will have. The best version available is 6.0 but it is only available on Windows Vista. I believe if you are running XP the highest version available is 2.6.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on January 29, 2010 at 5:19pm

You can look at photostory as well depending on what you're doing. As far as a Garage Band replacement, there isn't a free one I've found. Audacity is a great free audio editor but it doesn't come with loops.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Remien on February 3, 2010 at 7:51am

Thank you for the reply. The district is still debating which machines to purchase, but it will likely be the cheapest netbook. I'm assuming new purchases will offer Vista, XP or 7 - which means I should be able to download version 6.0.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Remien on February 3, 2010 at 7:47am

cprofitt,

We're running MAC OS X 10.5.8 at the moment. The plan is to pick up Netbooks for next year. I'm unclear what comes standard on a netbook, but we'll likely go with lowest bidder, so whatever is cheapest is what we'll likely receive.

Thank you for the comprehensive list of links - it's exactly what I am looking for at the moment! I don't own a PC anymore, so what can you tell me about the ease of use with MovieMaker? Simple for 10 year-olds to navigate?

I appreciate the thoughtful and comprehensive response!
Ryan

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Permalink Reply by Allison Hart on February 3, 2010 at 8:01pm

Agreed - movie editing will not be easy on a netbook - can you maintain a lab full of macs, or at least a set of MacBooks for movie specific needs? Generally not every single kid needs a high powered machine all at the same time - movies can be done in groups, right? The netbooks would still meet your "general computing" needs 80% of the time and I would pick more machines over less any day!

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Remien on February 4, 2010 at 8:24am

We have a full cart of MacBooks, but the district will not pay to have them fixed once they breakdown since we're shifting over to Netbooks. It is certainly my intent to use them till they break, but I want to be prepared for that eventuality.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Remien on February 9, 2010 at 11:10am

Fiddlehead looks interesting. Do you know of anybody using it successfully? I'm assuming it can work wirelessly, too? I'm definitely passing this on. Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by suehellman on February 3, 2010 at 9:24pm

About 2 years ago I went looking for the PC equivalent if iMovie -- it's Adobe Premier Elements. You'll see if you use the trial version that the interface is quite familiar. There is also a podcasting option if you just want to export sound files. It's not free, but I don't buy many tools and that is one I purchased.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Remien on February 4, 2010 at 8:27am

Thanks, Sue. I looked on Adobe's site and found this:

http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/adsc/netbooks.html

The page was entitled: Photoshop Elements 8 teacher resources for netbook

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Permalink Reply by David Kapuler on February 9, 2010 at 11:49am

Two sites I recommend checking out similar to Garageband are Myna and Jam Studio. I think in Myna you can record your own audio, so can do an Audio Podcast, not sure about adding pics.

Myna - http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/09/myna.html

Jam Studio - http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2009/10/jam-studio.html

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