iMovie 3.0.2 Update -- Apple's pest control department also released a maintenance update to iMovie 3, incorporating unspecified bug fixes into the promising, but troubled, video-editing application (see "iMovie, Take 3" in TidBITS-665). Although Apple has not released details of what has changed in version 3.0.2, playback performance has improved and the application feels a little snappier than earlier versions (though nowhere near the performance of iMovie 2). Online reports indicate that iMovie 3.0.2 continues to suffer audio synchronization problems and has issues with exporting movies back to tape. It's also worth noting that the Ken Burns Effect (pan and zoom) is still applied to every imported still photo by default, something which may be a feature but which acts like a bug. However, in iMovie 3.0.2 you can set the Zoom level for the Start and Finish points to 1.00 (the minimum value) before dragging an image from the Photos pane, and iMovie will treat the image as a still instead of a rendered movie clip.

The iMovie 3.0.2 update is available via Software Update or as a separate 1.9 MB download. Note that the updater looks for the application "iMovie" in the Applications folder; if you've moved or renamed the program, the updater will not work. I highly recommend copying your existing iMovie application to a separate drive before running the update, and it's also a good idea to use Apple's Disk Utility to repair privileges on your startup disk after the update is applied. [JLC]

<http://www.apple.com/imovie/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/07059>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html? artnum=120187>