I've dabbled a bit with FCP in the past and later with Final Cut Express. I'm a journalist, I'm intrigued by video and think I should know more about it, but I don't need it in my daily work.
I've always had trouble with the rather steep learning curve that FCP demanded. Now that the new version is a complete remake, would this be a good time to try it out again or is the experience really the same as before (i.e. steep learning curve before you produce anything that's worthwhile)?
Thanks.
My personal experience is the following:
I used to own FCS 3.5 and at the time, shelled out nearly $1,800 for it but most of the programs went to waste because I didn't need something that powerful. Years later and my transition to Intel Macs and I started to use iMovie because frankly, I did most of what I needed and I'm very good at making programs do what they are not suppose to.
I have a good idea of what I want and only recently has iMovie no longer been fitting my needs. Most of my content is web stuff between 5-15 minutes. Now with FCPX, it's the perfect time. It will not call it iMovie Pro because it's so much more but it's the perfect stepping stone.
So I would say, how familiar are you with iMovie? Will it do most of what you need? If so, start out there and push the program till it no longer will do what you want it to do, and then transition to the new FCPX and by then, a lot of the training and classes should be ready for it.
Because let's be honest, most pieces are truly only cuts from one thing to another. Once we get into multi layer audio, video and fancy graphics is when we need something more, otherwise, iMovie might just do it for you.
