iMovie vs. JW Player

iMovie is a great editing tool for beginners and users with little to no experience. If you are looking for a simple, straight forward way to edit your videos without having any training, this is the tool for you. If you are looking for a robust and very advanced editing platform, you may wish to look elsewhere.

Incentivized

JW Player has flexible plans that won't cost you a lot of money. If you are a startup, JW offers a variety of plans that will suit your specific needs and grow with you as your company grows. You do not need to be a video expert to understand how to upload a video, which allows nearly anyone in the office to do it.

Incentivized

• iMovie allows users to upload their own clips and edit them together. You're able to add in more clips as you're working on your project which is great as some film editing software don't allow add ons of video clips once you've begun the editing process.
• iMovie continually saves as you're working on your project and syncs with your devices so you can work on your project from other like computers.
• iMovie is quick to update changes which allows time to be saved during the editing process. It's very helpful when you need to adjust 1-2 things and don't want to spend hours waiting for the changes to go through.

Incentivized

• Responsive HTML5
• Provides share functionality built into the player
• Platform use enables playlist functionality and playlist players which can be customized or versioned for specific uses
• Videos uploaded to the JW Platform automatically provide multiple image frame options for selecting video thumbnail

Incentivized

• Audio for video editing is a bit limiting. A pro user would feel limited, but the average person can pretty well do what they need in iMovie and that's what matters for this platform.
• The design of the UI could use some updating so it doesn't feel so bubbly. This may purely be an aesthetic concern, and maybe the old style makes it more approachable, but i'd prefer to see a more slick design so you don't feel like you are using a kids program.
• If you ever want to share the project or manually manage files, it can be a bit difficult to figure out. Fortunately Apple allows you to import a project from iMovie into FCPX if you ever want to be upwardly mobile.

Incentivized

• Definitely missing the ability (in and easy way) to have clickable links in the video.
• Analytics is a little cumbersome and not very user-friendly.

Incentivized

Just made the decision to renew given demonstrated improvements being made to the platform to expand compatibility for its player use on devices such as Apple TV, as well as improvements made recently to its JW Platform Dashboard

Incentivized

Once again, iMovie is a fast application. It's easy to use and navigate through. It has never frozen or glitched. There is an auto-save feature which helps you to easily close and re-open the software and continue from where you left off. Being an Apple product I do believe there is a level of superiority that surpasses Windows as well.

Reliability and compatibility on a majority of platforms. Would have received a 10 except recent versions of browsers such as Firefox are now defaulting against Flash components and thus prompting approval from users BEFORE loading which is a HUGE obstacle to an effective user experience thus creating concerns by end-users unnecessarily and risking that they will NOT accept the prompts, thus leaving unable to view video content hosted using the JW Player. Assurances by JW support suggest they will resolve this, so we'll see...

Incentivized

Apple does a great job supporting its products. I have never encountered trouble that could not be solved through chat or email. The knowledgebase section of the website, video tutorials online and various user forums also help with most issues. If after using all of these avenues you still have an issue, it may be time for you to outsource your project to a professional!

Incentivized

Support is reasonable. I from time to time have made suggestions on improvements that would be nice to see (like the ability to have a clickable link within the video - that is easy to create, without tons of coding) and it seems as though I never see it happen or get much response to "suggestions" to upgrade the software. The good news, other than a few things as I mentioned above, overall, I don't have many "technical issues" in the platform, which is a good thing. On occasion, I have seen some "issues" with the delivery of the video, but it has been pretty scarce. So it is dependable.

Incentivized

One of the primary features promoted by JW Platform is its SEO definition. However, there did not seem to be a way to integrate that data to our platform if selected thus only leaving the benefits of that data to be established on the individual video page hosted by JW Platform, which isn't useful in the end to the client value we are trying to deliver for our VideoproFile.net solution

Incentivized

Not as easy to use as iMovie, and a similar cost structure. iMovie is easier for Apple users / and MS users, to both get proficient at. Movie Maker isn't bad, it just isn't as slick as iMovie. We actually used MovieMaker for a couple of years before migrating most users over to iMovie. We have not regretted the move.

Incentivized

JW had more player options, a better/more intuitive user interface, was altogether faster both in rendering the uploaded videos and in time to load on the web page. The integration with OpenX for pre-roll was faster and easier than with Brightcove, and lastly, they offered a great price for service.

Incentivized

• iMovie is a very inexpensive alternative to other video editing software.
• It's very easy to train new users on iMovie, so time is saved there.
• We started a project where we were tasked to create a new 5 minute video every week. We started with little to no knowledge of video editing, but iMovie was so easy to pick up and use that we were able to start filming and putting together videos right away. If we had to learn a more complex program, like Premiere Pro, it would have pushed our timeline back considerably.

Incentivized

• JW Player has was less expensive (without sacrificing quality) than our previous video platform so the ROI was instant.
• We were easily able to add a variety of video advertising options including pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll.
• The quality and consistancy of the look of the video has enabled us to grow our video views by well over 100% since starting with JW.

Incentivized