189
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #176,645 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★☆
Upgrading from iMovie? Read this
Final Cut Express is a very powerful video editing package. If you are thinking about making the step up from iMovie (as I did), you need to understand that the level of sophistication and power in this package is exponentially greater than that of iMovie. If your video editng experience is limited to iMovie, don't expect to be able to install FCE and be off and running in an hour or two. You'll need to plan on investing some real time to learn the program.
This is in no way a criticism of FCE - it is as advertised, a "light" version of Final Cut Pro, which is used by professionals everywhere. I just want your expectations to be set properly. You'll need to invest in a third-party manual, as only soft copies of documentation are included, and they are for reference only, not for training. Just be CERTAIN that the manual you get is for the FCE 4 - there aren't many available as of this writing.
FCE is a very expansive and powerful program; just don't expect the type of plug-n-play results you got from iMovie. You'll need to spend time to understand the numerous differences in how iMovie and FCE operate.
April 2008 · Software