Imovie is a very good editor. I used imovie for several years. It provides a very easy to use interface and lets you make quality, professional looking, content quickly and easily. Just because people use the more professional level software packages out there, that doesn't make imovie rubbish at all!
As I said, I used imovie for quite a while, and have seen it mature over the years. Although I finally reached a point where I was bothered too much by one simple factor - output - and it all depends on the type of videos you are creating.
Creating projects using raw footage from good lighting conditions - like your holiday, or outdoor footage etc - is great. Imovie works great and produces good quality HD output.
The problem is with low light footage, or shadows. Imovie works with the AIC codec - so when you import raw video it will transcode it to AIC. This works great when editing, but affects output, especially dark areas. I started to notice darker areas of my videos suffered from extreme pixelation and colour banding. It looked really bad in some of my videos. Take a look at my Canon 650D unboxing video in my channel for example, and you'll see the poor quality banding in darker areas etc.
This is the ONLY problem I had with imovie, and there is no fix for it. Check the Apple forums and you'll see its a common issue with hundreds upon hundreds of people complaining about it.
I finally got to a point where I wanted higher quality output. I also wanted a larger range of options, effects, and flexibility. Imovie, for example lets you do picture in picture only once in the timeline. So you can have only 1 PIP effect at any one time. If you wanted more you would have to add the first PIP, export the file then reimport and repeat etc. This means the clip took a quality hit every time you exported and reimported.
Hence I moved to Final Cut Pro X.
Since I was so used to imovie, I found the newer version of Final Cut very easy to get used to as it was the next logical step. I know most people complained about the latest version, not liking the new layout etc, but I love it. Its very easy to work with, and the ProRes422 codec is MUCh better. Output quality is spot on and I can add as many effects and PIPs etc as I want at any one time.
Imovie is a fantastic starting point to get used to before you move on though. I would advise you get used to it inside out before moving on. Depending on the projects you create, the AIC codec may work fine for you. Once you know it well, you will find it easier to move onto something more professional if need be. When you do though, make sure you have a bigger HDD as imovie created smaller files, the more professional level editors create huge uncompressed files in comparison!
For a very low cost editor though, imovie is great.
I use iMovie and have been wondering about upgrading and this is awesome info to have.
