Apple puts home video on the Web in sharp focus

Apple is betting that 'the next big thing' for consumers will be editing their own home movies and posting them on the Web.

Along with a new range of iMacs and a new desktop operating system, the company also this week announced home video editing software.

Apple dealers are already putting together juicy bundles for consumers keen to put video on their home computer.The new £799 entry level iMac represents a relatively straightforward improvement on the original range which has sold over two million units worldwide since being launched 13 months ago.

It is the cheapest ever newly launched Mac and it addresses several complaints with the old iMac: it comes with a 6Gb hard drive and 64Mb of memory as standard. The 100MHz system bus, ATi 128 VR graphics chip and AGP 2X graphics port makes the iMac a viable platform for serious gamers.

The flimsy CD-Rom drive has been replaced by a more robust slot loader, and the rather tinny speakers have been replaced by top notch Odyssey speakers designed by audio specialists Harman Kardon.

The £999 iMac DV is configured with a 4X DVD-Rom drive so that it can function as a DVD movie player, and it can output to a TV monitor or large screen.

More impressive still is the inclusion of two 400Mbps Firewire serial ports to directly connect the iMac DV to most brands of DV camcorder and edit broadcast quality digital video.

Digital editing video software called iMovie, a cut down version of Apple's Final Cut Pro, is included.

Christmas cracker

Jonathon Cole, managing director of Mac reseller Computer Warehouse predicted that home video editing systems will be a hot Christmas item, because so many people already have DV cameras equipped with Firewire (IEEE1394) ports.

"Sony, Canon and Matsushita have been putting Firewire connectors on all their camcorders for the past year," said Cole.

Cole said that his company and many other dealers would be putting together complete home video editing bundles together that would include the iMac DV and "something like a Sony PD1 camera. We might even be able to get the price under £2000 [inc Vat]," he added.

However, even with a 10Gb hard disk, the heavy storage demands of digital video would prohibit the creation of anything more than a 10 minute high quality video without the purchase of an external hard drive.

Depending upon resolution, digital video requires between 220Mb and 1Gb per minute hard drive space. The demands of digital video can also fragment a hard drive quite quickly and slow its performance.

Family viewing

The iMac DV Special Edition (£1119 inc VAT) might be more suited to more ambitious video editing, as it comes with a larger 13Gb hard disk and 128Mb of memory as standard.

"I envisage many people doing short little video pieces of, say, their family at Christmas at a lower resolution, editing them and sending them over the Web as little movies to loved ones, for example," said an Apple UK spokesman.

All the new iMac range includes support for AirPort, Apple's revolutionary wireless networking system first introduced with the company's consumer portable iBook.

Apple said that it had greatly simplified connecting iMacs to the Internet thanks to an enhanced Internet Setup Assistant which guides new users through the complexities of registering with an ISP. In spite of industry predictions to the contrary, Apple did not in fact launch its own Mac friendly ISP service for iMac customers.

The new machines will be available in the UK by the end of October.