iMovie ’11 Exports 1080p

iMovie ’11 gained a feature that didn’t get a mention during Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event, but is a pretty great addition to the software. It is listed on Apple’s “What’s new in iMovie?” webpage:

iMovie ’11 lets you publish your movies in more ways to more places. You can export movies to iTunes and watch them on your iPhone, iPad, iPod, or Apple TV. Share them with your friends on Facebook. Premiere them with a YouTube or Vimeo audience. Publish newsworthy content to CNN iReport. And you can create a video podcast in iMovie and send it directly to Apple Podcast Producer. When you export HD video at full 1920-by-1080p resolution, whatever you share will stun everyone.

While the addition of export options for CNN iReport and Vimeo are pretty cool — and overdue, in my opinion, at least in Vimeo’s case — the real news here is that iMovie will export full-blown 1080p.

While 1080p isn’t widely supported (even by Apple devices), it is the future of video content, even though 720p is far more common at this time.  YouTube added 1080p capabilities almost a full year ago, and of course, Blu-ray is 1080p. The additional data packed into 1080p files is simply stunning.

Blu-ray may be the most interesting possibility here. While it won the recent format war with HD DVD, it still has not shown up in many computers. Apple backed Blu-ray several years ago, but hasn’t added it to the Mac line yet. Maybe this is a step in that direction, even though two years ago, Steve Jobs called Blu-ray “A Bag of Hurt.”

Article Via 9 to 5 Mac

Stephen Hackett, formerly a Lead Mac Genius at Apple, now spends his days running the IT department of a large non-profit in Memphis, TN. He writes about Apple, design and journalism at forkbombr.net. Like all twenty-somethings, you can find him on Twitter. Oh, and he has a dogcow tattoo.