Apple Final Cut Express HD (Mac)
by Apple Computer
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List Price: Category: Software See more product details and other editions |
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Software Reviews of Apple Final Cut Express HD (Mac)
Customer Review: Final Cut Express could be FC Impress
Summary: 4 Stars
Years ago had the chance to try FCPro. Having Experienced the greatness of Media 100, I was not impressed. Cheap NLEs don't offer much flexibility so when I saw how inexpensively I could have my own copy of FCE and after reading other's praises, I gave it a try. It's very close to being a poor man's FCP. The learning curve is fairly steep but the capabilities are worth the study. I'm very happy with everything about my purchase.Customer Review: Mixed emotions.....
Summary: 3 Stars
This version is deficient of many important abilities that decent video would need in the same way as FC 2 suite is packed with some programs and utilities majority of video don't need at all. Unfortunately there's no normality, no firm middle ground. I think Apple has to determine who is dedicated audience for the product.
Customer Review: great program
Summary: 5 Stars
i am a beginning film student at a school in santa monica, ca. let me tell you, as one as computer ILLITERATE as i am, final cut pro was so easy to learn. i was amazed at all the stuff it has--color correcting, sound/audio level adusting, effects, etc. i am now gioing intio my 3rd quarter and am looking forward to working with this again. i would not use any other post production software. Customer Review: Just as good as FC HD and better than iMovie
Summary: 4 Stars
I've actually downgraded from Final Cut HD because when I bought that software it didn't work with my computer and then Apple couldn't fix so I was out $300. I needed to buy another software package but didn't want to spend another $300 so I went with FC Express. Because I'm a student it only cost me $99. To tell you the truth it's not that much different than the full version of FC. Most people that use FC are doing features which I'm not doing, and other people use it for the title generator and sound editing. I have other softwares for that.
If you are looking into upgrading from iMovie and want FC go with FC Express. It's cheaper and there is not much difference in the two. If you are taking a video course at a college or other schools, check out the student discount price, it's great.
Customer Review: TOTALLY loving it (but am prepared for learning curve).
Summary: 5 Stars
I had read a lot of reviews (here and elsewhere) warning of Final Cut's massive learning curve, and I do believe that helped soften the blow when I first tried this program. Because there definitely is a learning curve--this is far more complex than iMovie. But, the good news is, it's not beyond the newbie's reach!
I'm such a newbie with anything video, it's pitiful. I have only made two or three small movies in iMovie, and they weren't very sophisticated. I mostly just tinkered around. But, being the fool that I am, I decided that I wanted to get Final Cut Express to go along with the new camcorder I had just purchased.
Because I was prepared to have to re-learn (or struggle) at first with Final Cut, I had purchased a book (for version 2 of FCE, which was perfectly suitable). Armed with my book and limited expectations, I set about trying to make a fun little "music video" (using video clips and still pictures). Amazingly enough, I learned how to do the "Ken Burns Effect" with the pictures, make transitions from one clip to the next, edit the sound so that one track would predominate for part of the video, then fade out for other parts. And I was able to fix the video clips (zoom in, lighten, change aspect ratio). And then I added titles with LiveText. All this in the first two days of using Final Cut! Sure, the little video I made was no award-winner, but it was actually a servicable, fun little project that I wasn't too ashamed to show my friends.
(Another thing about fixing the aspect ratio of one of the video clips--there was this one clip that seemed resistent to any tweaking or adjusting that I tried with it. I had used multiple programs to try to resize it to the correct dimensions, but something always went wrong. Either the picture quality degraded terribly, or else the corrected dimensions didn't "stick" and it bounced back to being distorted. Nothing worked--until Final Cut. I'm sure that other programs could have done the same thing, but I tried so many, and failed. So that was another thing that impressed me!)
I know there's a whole lot more to learn about Final Cut, and I certainly don't anticipate that I'll become a master at it. But it does offer *a lot* more flexibility than iMovie, and it is definitely a lot of fun.
The right way to approach it is, I believe, to start small, expect baby steps at first, have fun, and GET A BOOK! A book is absolutely essential. If you are an impatient soul who expects perfection the first day, this is not the application for you. Because you learn to "do it manually," you have much more control--but it takes time to learn it all.
Oh, a note about hardware: I made my first little video on a 1.25 GHz G4 Mac Mini with 512 megs of RAM. It wasn't a speed demon by any means, but because my video was short (about 2 minutes), it really wasn't too painfully slow most of the time (except for rendering, but I guess that was going to be slow anyway). I have since upgraded the Mini to 1 GB of RAM, and *everything* is snappier, so I highly recommend it. But it's good to know that even a little Mac Mini with less-than-impressive RAM can work in FCE.