iMovie app destined to be a big hit on iPad 2 (video)

As consumers buy their iPad 2 tablets and take them home this weekend, one of the apps worth trying out is a familiar one. Just as Apple migrated GarageBand from the Mac to the iPad, it has migrated iMovie to the iPad as well.

iMovie is likely to be another hot app for the iPad 2 (and the original iPad) that could keep Apple die-hard fans happy, even as the Android tablet competitors come out of the woodwork this year. The iMovie app is something only Apple will have.

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Update: Majek Pictures decided to create and edit a movie solely by using an iPad 2 and iMovie. Check it out here.

As you can see in the video demo below by Randy Ubillos, chief architect of video applications at Apple, it’s a pretty elegant app that is optimized for the iPad 2’s touchscreen.

The iPad 2 comes with a video camera on either side of the screen. The rear-facing camera can shoot high-definition video and record it onto your iPad. You can then use iMovie to turn that video into a movie within minutes. The movie automatically appears inside the iMovie app. You don’t have to transcode it from one video format to another.

You can view different video projects easily by swiping across the screen. The videos scroll from side to side as if you were viewing them on a carousel, in portrait mode or landscape.

When you open a video, you see the video at the top, thumbnails of different scenes on the left, and a timeline at the bottom. You can tap a video and skim through it with your finger. You can zoom in by pinching your fingers or zoom out. You can quickly patch videos together or go into a more precise editing mode. You can then merge two videos and create a transition between them as part of your movie. To see what you’ve created, you just press play.

You can tap the screen to add video segments or photos. You can take a still photo and add a panning effect (dubbed the Ken Burns effect after the style of the famous documentary maker). Using face detection technology, the camera will zoom in on faces in the photos to get a nice sense of motion with the still photos embedded in your movie. You can use your fingers to trim the length of a clip and then preview your project. As with the Mac, you can add eight different themes that give your video a unique look, such as Neon (a bold colorful theme), Simple or CNN iReport. Each theme has a different kind of graphic effect. You can easily add titles to clips, add transitions, or soundtracks.

With the iMovie Precision Editor, you can make edits right in the timeline of the video without having to worry about whether you’ve got the exact section you want. You can drag and drop to add or delete audio clips, add background songs, or loop a musical segment. You can edit the audio wave forms to make the sound softer or louder. You can also add voice-over narration to the soundtrack by recording audio using the iPad’s microphone. There are 50 different sound effects to add.

Once you’re done, you can publish the iMovie film directly from the iPad 2 to YouTube over a Wi-Fi connection. You can also post it to Facebook, Vimeo, or CNN iReport. You can set the viewing access restrictions and also publish it to your MobileMe gallery, attach it to an email, or send it via MMS messaging via an iPhone 4.

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You can also use AirPlay to stream the movie directly from your iPad 2 to your Apple TV, which can then play it on a big-screen TV in high-definition. You can export movies to Apple’s Camera Roll and then sync them back to a Mac or PC. You can also use Apple’s Digital AV Adapter (sold separately) to play a movie from the iPad 2 to the HDTV. And you can transfer the movie from one Apple device to another.

iMovie for the iPad costs $4.99 in the Apple App Store. See Ubillos’ video demo below. Check out our GarageBand for iPad 2 story here.