Final Cut Express v1 versus v2

[yellow]

Last year my (then girlfriend) wife and I purchased a Sony MiniDV camera. It didn't take me very long to hit the ceiling with iMovie. I made some pretty great stuff, but I was constantly annoyed at the limitations I came up against.

I had the opportunity to pick up a cheap copy of FCEv1. The learning curve is quite a bit more steep then that of iMovie (I found iMovie to great to play with and figure out, FCE is a little more complicated), but I've made some progress this last weekend.

Now, I was curious if anyone out there had used (and abused) Final Cut Express v1, then purchased and used (and abused) v2, and could enumerate some of the important differences between the two. I don't really want to spend $100 for no particular reason. My accountant/wife will give me the evil eye.. Mainly I'm looking for practical reasons for purchase/not worth purchasing.

Thanks!

 

[zaphoyd]

the signifigant differences are in UI/usability 2.0 is a much more refined product. it crashes less, as many more realtime options (including RT-Extreme). However unlike final cut pro the realtime options do not work when connected to a firewire monitor or tv via your camera.

It has better integration with audio units, dvd studio pro and iDVD (chapter marker stuff)

The vast majority is little convenience features. I personally do not believe it was worth $100. Especially considering I jumped to full Final Cut Pro HD a few months after buying.

I am a final cut power user, and the features were very nice to have.. If it is more of a better than iMovie hobby thing you may not notice as much, as the concrete 'new features' are nearly non-existant.

The one worth mentioning is the video keyframing. Something I use to do advanced compositing and special effects shots. may not be useful to you, but it lets you move video around in more than a straight line or plain scale.

it says it can capture over timecode breaks, but it lies... it wont log over timecode breaks so its next to useless. Do not buy it for that.

It was always annoying though to not have the latest version number though....

-Peter Thorson

 

[evil_santa]

I would stick with FCE1, I dont recall there being a huge difference between 1 & 2. If you are making simple movies any version of final cut will work for you. If you want to do more fancy graphic work you might want to look at motion. I went from FCE1 to FCP4 mainly so i could work in other formats than DV & also to get soundtracks.

 

[yellow]

Thanks for the replies. I'm finding that FCE doesn't do some things the way I expect them too (transitions, for example), but I'm sure it's more my failing then the software's failing. I guess I'm considering a book, as the DVD only takes you so far.. Got any suggestions?

Thanks again!

 

[zaphoyd]

transitions are very different, and very annoying in final cut. Fortunately, or unfortunately as it may be, the way final cut handles them is the correct way.

Final Cut is a non-destructive system. It is even non distructive to the point of not event changing your edit points and in/out points when you add transitions.

iMovie will devide the length of the transition in half, and chop that much off of each clip and blend it. Final Cut does the same thing, but it chops AFTER the edit point rather than BEFORE so it does not disturb your edit points.

HOWEVER this means that if you edit point is at the very end of the clip and there is not enough space after to do the transition, you are kind of screwed. Always remember to shoot video beyond what you want to transition.

You can also change your edit point to create more space after the edit point with which to work on, or choose a different transition method that uses more of one clip than another.

Hope that helps!

-Peter Thorson
www.zaphoyd.com
Zaphoyd Studios