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Fce

bennetsaysargh

bennetsaysargh

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 20, 2003
2,367
1
New York
after about 5 years with my family's CRT DV iMac G3, we're getting a new computer! we're getting a new iMac form club ma
17" iMac with superdrive, 1 Ghz G4, for $1599
i know these aren't the latest, but with the 200 dollars we save we're buying another 512MB of RAM, and final cut express.

yay! final cut express! now, are these good specs to run FCE? anyone think FCE is really good? i plan on making movies and stuff, so i am wondering some stuff also. can you superimpose stuff? this might be helpful to me. what are the limits of FCE? is it easy to export it to iDVD? i know iMovie can, but since i'm getting final cut express, i don't think iMovie will be a concern of mine.

thakns:)

-Bennet
 
-bennetsaysargh

FCE is quite robust in it's own right. You can do color correction, compositing, and yes, edit for iDVD. And that last part is easy.
 
WAIT! does anybody here actually OWN final cut express? I think my family is the only one in the world who bought it! Why? Because apple has not released a single update for it! They probably never will. I personally have found the program to be somewhat buggy (on an imac 17"), and it crashes when we try to do even some basic compositing. I have to throw away my preferences , then it works, but if i try to render it again the same thing happens.

I do not recommend this product until i see some updates for it. I'm convinced apple has ignored support for this product since its lackluster release.

It may work fine on other computers. But not on my 17" imac. And i'm an apple techinician, so i can tell when its software and not hardware! Shame on apple for not updating this product. Ser

Seriously, has apple ever released an app that was not immediately updated to .01 a month later?

/rant
 
I own it. I got the buy it with a new computer for $99 deal. It is an excellent piece of software that is less than a year old. That is not too long in my book for not being updated. I am currently using it on a Powerbook 800 DVI. In less than three weeks, I will be using it on a dual 2 Gig G5.

It is excellent. The dvd instruction video that comes with it is a tremendous help in getting started. I still will want to read the manual and wish they had a printed copy. I might look for an O'Reilly missing manual book if they have one.
 
I bought it, paid 299 when it first came out and its worth every penny. I love FCE, i've done wedding video's, school projects, you name it I've done with it, most of it on a 12" powerbook and some on my old 800DP powermac. Its fast on the powerbook, and does everything i could ever want. And yeah, 1.0.1 is out.
 
Final Cut Express is The Duck's Nuts

Final Cut Express should run great on any recent Mac. The fact that there are no updates for it shows how stable the application has been since it came out.

Like any video editing system you should set up the host computer with a second drive for the capture and playback of the footage. Get as much RAM as possible and learn the keyboard short-cuts.
 
Forget FCE and get the HD

Here is an idea: Spend the money on the external hard drive now and use Avid Free DV instead. In a lot of ways it is competing with FCE and in some ways it is better (eg. rendering speed).

Download the 25 MB file from the following link:
http://www.avid.com/freedv/index.asp
 
Bennett, you're gunna love FCE.

I bought FCE with a new computer so got it at their special price. (TiBook 1Ghz SD)

It seems to do everything you could need and has been very stable.

The first thing I did when I got it was to update it from 1.0 to 1.0.1 (released on 9th June, 03). Changes in this version are:
"Improves performance and stability, links keyframe parameters to the Motion tab and adds NTSC and PAL noncontrollable device presets."

There is a learning curve with FCE but once it clicks you'll be flying. One thing to to get used to is non-destructive editing. This means that everything on the time line is merely a reference to the original.

Therefore you can do cool things like adjust the start and end points just by sliding them back and forth. in a destructive editing app (which I think iMovie is) you would have to re-cut the clip from the original.

Have fun!

PS Just looked at the free Avid version's specs and there's no way it's a direct competitor for FCE. iMovie, yes. It lacks heaps of things you'd want (eg superimpose). Stick to FCE.
 
i heard bad things about Avid Free DV feezing up the whole computer and stuff like that. i think i'll use FCE, plus, for $99, i can't really get a big HD that i want.
 
-Gents

Before we get all bent out of shape on the suggestion of Avid Free DV, remember that's created to whet the appetite - to get you to eventually upgrade to a higher version.

Yes, it's in the league of iMovie and Movie Creator - though, Avid Free DV, is the undisputed champ among those.

About FCE, a friend put it to me this way: "It's like the house of FCP, with all the furniture removed." That's close, but I feel there are a few bedroom sets and couches in that house.
 
Originally posted by Schiffi
I got it for free. :) Traded Premiere for it.
Click to expand...

Me too, more or less. I bought an old version of Premiere on Ebay cheap and traded that in.

I like it, but I still use iMovie more. It's just the kind of stuff I do. Or I'll start in iMovie and finish in FCE. If you can get FCE inexpensively it's worthwhile to have because you will eventually outgrow iMovie.
 
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