iMovie is an excellent video editing application that is easy and fun to use, but are the new trailers really enough to take the spot as the best video editing app for the iPhone and iPad?

iMovie is part of the Apple's iLife suite for iPhone and iPad. While iPhoto allows you to re-touch and sort your photos and GarageBand aims to give users the ability to edit audio and create music on their devices, iMovie completes the series with tools to help you create, edit, and share beautiful movies and trailers without ever having to touch a computer.

Editing

The editing screen is set up similar to iMovie on the Mac and split into 3 different screens. On the bottom of the screen, you find the timeline for your movie, on the top left, you find available media, and video preview is located in the top right. The “My Projects” screen is beautifully designed to look like a vintage movie theater.

The types of media that you can add to your movie are videos, photos, and music. However, the videos must be what's available in the Photos app, so if you have homemade videos that you imported into the Videos app of your iPad with iTunes, you cannot access them from iMovie.

Editing movies is very easy with iMovie. You can preview clips by simply dragging your finger across them. You can then trim the edges before adding them to your project. To move clips around in your timeline, simply drag it to where you want. If you want to split a clip, position the cursor, select the clip, and swipe down along the cursor. To adjust the length of time that a video clip (or photo) appears in your movie, just drag the ends of the clip appropriately. You can also easily record audio and video directly into the timeline.

A recently added feature of iMovie is the ability freeze a frame. You do it exactly like splitting a clip, just instead of swiping down, you swipe up.

Music audio tracks are limiting in that you cannot add more than one song to your movie unless your movie is long enough to play an entire song. You can then have a new song start after the first one is finished, but you cannot control the length of the clip nor choose when you want the song to start. Your song must start at the beginning of the movie and it must play until the song or movie is over, whichever comes first.

iMovie comes with a lot of sound effects pre-installed. The good news is that these effects are stackable and you can have up to 3 audio tracks playing at a time (including background music). Choosing when they play in your movie is as simple as dragging them along the timeline. Double tapping any audio clip with give you option to adjust the volume or delete the clip.

Inserting photos is achieved in the same manner as adding videos and audio. Double tapping an inserted photo gives you options to give the photo a title style (opening, middle, ending) and to add a location.

iMovie will automatically add transitions between clips and photos. Tapping on the transition icon will allow you to specify the length of the transition (0.5s, 1.0s, 1.5s, 2.0s) and select between your theme's special transition - a tradition cross dissolve, or no transition at all.

iMovie is stocked with 8 different themes, each of which comes with its own title screen format, transitions, and theme music.

Trailers

The newest and biggest addition to iMove for iPhone and iPad is the ability to make trailers -- credits and all! iMovie comes with 9 different themes: Bollywood, Expedition, Fairy Tale, Narrative, Retro, Romance, Scary, Superhero, and Swashbuckler. Each template comes with a nice example of what it will look like.

Once you select a theme you're ready to jump right into editing your trailer. On the Outline tab, you can edit your name, studio, and credit info. Although a little boring to fill out, it's this information that gives your project the appearance of a real movie trailer.

The Storyboard tab is where the real creation happens. The template will have phrases filled out for you but you need to tap them to edit them to say whatever you want. iMovie also provides thumbnails for each part of the trailer. These thumbnails actually contain recommendations regarding the type of video clip you want (closeup, medium, action, wide, group, etc).

Inserting a clip is very easy to do yet hard to be precise. The length of each clip has been predetermined by iMovie so dragging your finger along a potential clip shows a yellow frame around the area of the clip that will actually be inserted into the movie. What's frustrating about this is that there isn't a way to preview that little chunk of video all by itself which makes being precise difficult.

Sharing

Sharing your movies is a breeze and iMovie is equipped the the ability to send directly to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and CNN iReport. Just tap the familiar sharing arrow from the projects screen and make your selection.

It's not unreasonable to suspect iMovie on the iPhone and iPad to sync, ideally through iCloud, with iMovie on the Mac or other iOS devices. Well, it doesn't. Not even over a cable. This is a shame because it would be very nice if you could start a project on your iPhone or iPad, then finish it up with on your Mac. Maybe next year?

The Good

• Very easy to use due to the great user interface
• Themes are well designed, simple, and fun
• Trailers are easy to edit and fun to create -- a great addition
• Ability to freeze frames and split clips
• Lots of preinstalled sound effects

The Bad

• Song clips must be played in the background of your entire movie and the length of the song cannot be adjusted
• No way to sync with iMovie on another iOS device or Mac
• Cannot use movies that were imported onto the iPhone or iPad with iTunes. All video clips must come from the albums that appear in the Photos app.
• Choosing small chunks of video for trailers is not very precise

The Conclusion

iMovie is a great application for making movies and trailers on your iPhone and iPad. It has plenty of features that will please most users. The themes and trailers set it apart from other video editing apps. However, even since the most recent update, Avid Studio is still a more powerful video editing app. I was hoping that Apple was going to wow us with an amazing update, but they didn't quite deliver this time around.

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On a Mac and wondering how to get free ringtones for your iPhone? We all know you can purchase or create ringtones in iTunes but... they can be limited in functionality or selection. Luckily GarageBand, which is part of the the iLife suite, has the ability to create ringtones built right in.

The process isn't too difficult and you can fine tune them however you like; including fade ins, fade outs, splicing sections together, and more.

After you choose the song you want to use, you'll need to drag it into GarageBand. For iLife 11 users, you'll need to do these steps first. If you're using an older version of iLife, you can simply skip to the next section.

iLife 11 users, do this first

If you want to use a song that was purchased from iTunes (a .m4r file), GarageBand is picky about you dragging those in as of iLife 11, so you'll need to change the format from .m4r to .mp3 before dragging it in.

1. Drag the file from iTunes you'd like to use for your ringtone to your desktop.
2. Change the extension from .m4r to .mp3
3. Finder will prompt you asking if you're sure you want to change it. Click use .mp3
4. Now move on to the next section.

Making a ringtone

1. Drag your song into GarageBand, you should see something similar to above (if GarageBand opened a virtual keyboard, just x it out). I also go to the counter and change it to time instead of measures (located on the bottom). That's up to you. It's just personal preference.

2. Now expand the view by clicking the tiny scissor icon in the bottom left hand corner of GarageBand (it's the third icon from the left in most versions of GarageBand.

3. The expanded view should look like the screen above. This view allows you to highlight and cut sections out as well as finer tune your selection.

4. Now comes the Apple loop part, next to your play/pause/forward controls to the right, you should see the button above. Click it and you will now see a yellow bar that you can adjust appear above your song in the top section of GarageBand.

5. Simply slide this bar back and forth to select the portion of the song you'd like to make a ringtone out of. You can increase and decrease the length by dragging it at the beginning or end as well. Just make sure it's under 30 seconds total.

Those are all the steps to create your ringtone, the video also explains a few more options as far as fading in and out as well as cutting and splicing so be sure to check that out as well.

Import your ringtone into iTunes

Now all that's left to do is to send the ringtone to iTunes.

1. At the top of GarageBand click Share.
2. Next select Send ringtone to iTunes
3. iTunes should pop open and import your ringtone automatically.
4. Now just sync your iPhone and the new ringtone and you're done!

That's all there is to it! You can create as many ringtones as you want this way without paying any additional money. If you run into issues, check out our TiPb forums for more help and suggestions!

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Apple generally holds an iPod and iTunes event, where they announce the new iPod family, every September. However, the rumors are pointing towards a mid-August event this year instead.

The MacMagazine today received information from a reliable source within Apple about a new event to the press that the company was planning to soon. Although the schedule cite the source as somewhere around 14 and 16, we bet our chips on a Monday or Tuesday - that is, 16 or August 17.

We've already seen evidence of a new iPod touch with a front facing camera for FaceTime and a new rear camera with flash. In addition to these expectations, the source claims that Apple will deliver information about iOS 4 for the iPad as well as release iLife '11.

Apple has never discussed iLife during their fall iPod event, so why would they this year? Perhaps they will introduce a new music application to the suite that integrates with the iPod and iOS 4.

What do you think? Will we actually see an event in just a matter of weeks and what will be discussed? Sound off in the comments below!

[MacRumors]

Boy Genius has an unconfirmed source claiming that, as part of Apple's rumored iLife 2010, long-ignored iDVD will finally see an update -- and that update will be support for iTunes LP (and we're assuming iTunes Extras) creation/authoring.

It certainly makes sense, not only to keep iDVD relevant (though would it need a name refresh as well?), but also since Apple recently made iTunes LP and iTunes Extra (and TuneKit) resources available to developers. A consumer/prosumer-friendly development environment, similar to GarageBand or iMovie, makes the kind of sense that does.

The Apple Stores have been nothing less than modern retail marvels. Picking the brains (and talent) of the best of the best behind the GAP and Target by Design, Apple has out-performed even Tiffany's in revenue per square foot with their focus on customer service and lifestyle product layout.

But is all that about to change? Maybe, according to rumors. Not only will they be shifting focus to promote key Mac software like iLife 09 in an effort to lure in more and more "switchers", Apple Insider says:

Apple has also changed its iPhone 3G and iPod touch displays to reflect the emphasis on software. The tables are arranged into categories of applications; including games, pleasure and travel, and others, with new acrylic information stands for each.

Apple's never been shy to mess with past success if they think they can do better going forward. And, hey, anything good for the iPhone is fine by us, but what do you think?

Not only did Apple introduce a new version of their flagship iLife 09 (see our MASSIVE Live Blog!), Phil Schiller demonstrated an awesome new feature for iPhone and iPod touch users: direct export of slide shows to iTunes!

Along with some truly gorgeous templates and amazing transitions, the ability to make them mobile -- so you can easily take them to show family and friends -- is killer for iPhone and iPod touch owners.

iPhoto 09, and the rest of iLife including the equally tremendous upgrade to iMovie, ships in late January free on new Macs, $79 for a single user, $99 for a family pack.

MUST HAVE IT NOW!