I've been editing some old movies that my father transferred from 8mm to DVD long ago. I've ripped them from DVD and have been editing them down in Adobe Premiere Pro to better resemble something watchable. It takes a little while to learn, but it hasn't been terribly difficult. If you're interested in precision editing it's easier to just learn how to do it in Premiere Pro than to wish you had better tools in iMovie. For all of iMovie's supposed user friendliness I find the user interface a tad baffling. It feel like the Fisher Price version to me and it is essentially the Fisher Price version of Apple's Final Cut Pro.
That said, Premiere Pro is certainly more expensive and you can't really 'buy' it anymore. It's a $15/mo subscription. I get mine free through work as we all get Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions because our head of IT is awesome (he's also me). There is a 'light' version called Premiere Elements which looks to be about $60. I haven't used that though.
Here's an example of one of edited films. I don't think I could have done this with iMovie.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8sJ12c2awG1SS1XQnI3Qkg1U3c/view?usp=sharing
Thanks! Good suggestion. I think Premiere Elements might be right for me - more features than iMovie, but not the kitchen sink.
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I'm looking for easy to use, basic video editing software for the Mac. Is iMovie the best option? Any other suggestions? Thanks!