Thinking About Getting Final Cut Express...

MarkW19 · Feb 20, 2008

...because I'm finding iMovie a bit limiting.

I want to be able to use it to do composites - like a sort of "24" montage of a couple of videos at the side of eachother in the same clip, and also to do more flexible titles - moving a title round in the middle of a clip, more flexible transitions/title scrolls, etc.

Is it possible to do this in FCE?

kannonbal · Feb 20, 2008

Yes, you can do all of that and a ton more.

I consider the $200 FCE to be a tremendous value, you won't be disappointed.

cheers, chuck

MarkW19 · Feb 20, 2008

kannonbal said:
Yes, you can do all of that and a ton more.

I consider the $200 FCE to be a tremendous value, you won't be disappointed.

cheers, chuck

Awesome, thanks!

Basically, with end credits for instance, I want to be able to have a single line (copyright perhaps) at the bottom of the screen, stationary, which then scrolls up (at a certain speed) to the middle of the screen, and then stops there, then the whole thing fades out. Standard thing I guess, but iMovie can't do it

That possible?

I also read that there weren't many included LiveType fonts/animations with FCE, would you agree with that? They look really cool anyway

huntercr · Feb 20, 2008

MarkW19 said:
Awesome, thanks!

Basically, with end credits for instance, I want to be able to have a single line (copyright perhaps) at the bottom of the screen, stationary, which then scrolls up (at a certain speed) to the middle of the screen, and then stops there, then the whole thing fades out. Standard thing I guess, but iMovie can't do it That possible?

I also read that there weren't many included LiveType fonts/animations with FCE, would you agree with that? They look really cool anyway

AFAIK, the LiveType that comes with FCE is the full version. IIRC there's an entire separate DVD with extra animations. I have only recently learned how to use live type effectively, so I can't say if there's something missing really. It's really intuitive, but it take a little while to realize how much flexibility you have to make your own animations.

Warning: If you want a full "credits" vertical scroll, you are going to be SOL with Livetype. For whatever reason it is *terrible* at that.
What you describe as your needs above is easy done in livetype though.

MarkW19 · Feb 20, 2008

huntercr said:
AFAIK, the LiveType that comes with FCE is the full version. IIRC there's an entire separate DVD with extra animations. I have only recently learned how to use live type effectively, so I can't say if there's something missing really. It's really intuitive, but it take a little while to realize how much flexibility you have to make your own animations.

Warning: If you want a full "credits" vertical scroll, you are going to be SOL with Livetype. For whatever reason it is *terrible* at that.
What you describe as your needs above is easy done in livetype though.

I guess there's just a "normal" credits option that will do the flexible scrolling/stopping I want though, without using LiveType?

AviationFan · Feb 20, 2008

MarkW19 said:
I guess there's just a "normal" credits option that will do the flexible scrolling/stopping I want though, without using LiveType?

For what you described, I would suggest to treat the text (credits) as a regular graphics layer. You can then animate that layer by what's called "keyframing" certain parameters, such as its position and opacity. It's a very powerful concept, and you can easily do what you outlined in your previous post. [Edited to add: All this happens within Final Cut - no LiveType needed.]

I think you'll love FCE. There's going to be a learning curve, but you can do so much more with it than with iMovie.

- Martin

MarkW19 · Feb 20, 2008

AviationFan said:
For what you described, I would suggest to treat the text (credits) as a regular graphics layer. You can then animate that layer by what's called "keyframing" certain parameters, such as its position and opacity. It's a very powerful concept, and you can easily do what you outlined in your previous post. [Edited to add: All this happens within Final Cut - no LiveType needed.]

I think you'll love FCE. There's going to be a learning curve, but you can do so much more with it than with iMovie.

- Martin

Cool, thanks! Do you have to "render" the text to a graphic or anything to do that? And if so, will the text lose any sharpness in the process?

From my understanding of keyframing, you select a start and end point (position or specific parameter eg. colour if you wanted to change colours), and FC will smoothly transist between the 2 points, at a suitable speed to get from one to the other within the given time. Is that right?

147798 · Feb 22, 2008

MarkW19 said:
...because I'm finding iMovie a bit limiting.

I want to be able to use it to do composites - like a sort of "24" montage of a couple of videos at the side of eachother in the same clip, and also to do more flexible titles - moving a title round in the middle of a clip, more flexible transitions/title scrolls, etc.

Is it possible to do this in FCE?

One quick note: if you are using iMovie08, try downloading iMovieHD for free from Apple (search on apple.com for iMovie HD download). That's the last iMovie version and can do more than iMovie08 (though 08's a quick little beast for what it does). If you already knew all this, then just ignore this post.

-peace

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