Some FCE questions

[robd54]

Hey everyone, my wife and i are expecting our first child in march, so with that I plan on buying a camcorder. Right now I'm pretty set on the Canon HF11. I've been researching video editing software and was ready to go back to PC to use cyberlink powerdirector or sony vegas, but in reading more about FCE and the mac platform it seems to get alot of praise. I have a 24" iMac and would either keep that and buy a macbook/mbp so i can edit freely w/out being tied to the office or sell it and buy a fully loaded pc and laptop. I have a few questions that I haven't seen clearly defined so hopefully someone can help.

- Can FCE edit/import full 1080P?
- Can it output full 1080P to be played on a bluray player (Roxio toast?) on either standard dvd or bluray (assuming affordable burners get released)
- Is FCE fairly easy to learn/use/edit for home movies?
- Other then DVD, what's the best way to distribute the movies to family/friends?
- Can FCE do chapters, menus, etc. in a HD format?
- Does it support creating 5.1 surround sound?

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[NRose8989]

Hey everyone, my wife and i are expecting our first child in march, so with that I plan on buying a camcorder. Right now I'm pretty set on the Canon HF11. I've been researching video editing software and was ready to go back to PC to use cyberlink powerdirector or sony vegas, but in reading more about FCE and the mac platform it seems to get alot of praise. I have a 24" iMac and would either keep that and buy a macbook/mbp so i can edit freely w/out being tied to the office or sell it and buy a fully loaded pc and laptop. I have a few questions that I haven't seen clearly defined so hopefully someone can help.

Obviously I'd suggest keeping the iMac and getting a MB or MBP over going back to PC's

- Can FCE edit/import full 1080P?

Yes, The HF11 records video in 1920 x 1080i, regardless of shooting in 24p, 30p, 60i. Through some special magic, Which to this day i have no idea how it works because no one has come up with a good answer, when you shoot video in a mode like PF30 (30p) it's progressive video wrapped in a 60i stream. so when you edited it, you use a 1080i60 sequence setting even though the video will be progressive. So in short, yes FCE 4 will edit with 1080p video.

- Can it output full 1080P to be played on a bluray player (Roxio toast?) on either standard dvd or bluray (assuming affordable burners get released)

On a blu-ray disk yes, But I'm pretty sure you can't with a standard DVD

- Is FCE fairly easy to learn/use/edit for home movies?

Yes and No, FCE though a watered down version of Final Cut Pro, Is not for the faint of heart. It's a pretty steep learning curve and it requires a lot of reading (the 1140 user manual). If you just install FCE then open it and try to play with it, you will get no-where. It's not like iMovie where you drag and drop. BUT once you start to get the hang of it, you begin to realize how much more control you have over your video than anything else. So yes it is hard to learn but it's worth it once you get it. I wouldn't recommend anything else actually.

- Other then DVD, what's the best way to distribute the movies to family/friends?

Vimeo.com allows to to upload 720p HD videos and the quality is better than anything else I've see for streaming video.

- Can FCE do chapters, menus, etc. in a HD format?

Yes you can set chapter markers that can be export for use in iDVD.

- Does it support creating 5.1 surround sound?

I think this depends on your camera / mic set-up than the editing suite but I'm unsure.

 

[Courtaj]

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