Home Movies Never Looked So Good..! (Apple Final Cut Express)

Member Name: beedubblyer

Product:	Apple Final Cut Express
Date:	30/01/04 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Professional editing capabilities, simple and intuitive to use, stunning results

Disadvantages: Requires a lot of storage space - but then ALL digital video editing does

Apple has a reputation for crafting powerful machines and providing one of the most user-friendly interfaces, in the Mac Operating System. But in the past few years they?ve also come up with some innovative and creative applications too. Final Cut Express is one of the more astounding of these.

Final Cut Pro was their original desktop video-editing suite, and as the name suggests, it provided a complete professional solution. Express is the semi-pro version, and it?s at that level I?ve been using it, equally often in a work environment, and at home. FCE uses the same interface as the Pro version.

IMPORTING:
Couldn?t be easier, thanks to the usual Mac ease-of-use. Plug your Mini-DV camcorder (or other digital video source) into your Mac?s Firewire port, and select Capture from the File menu. Options to capture the entire reel, or to stop after an edit in the original footage, are self-explanatory enough.

ORGANISING:
You need an awareness of the basics of film editing before you start using this package ? the basics of cutting between shots, the effects of various transitions, all the usual film studies malarkey. Now, FCExpress gives you everything you might expect to find in a basic editing suite ? all on your screen. The Browser window acts as your bin, a place to arrange your unedited raw footage, sound clips, and also the Sequences that you construct on the Timeline (more on this to come). Keeping variations on subclips and mini-sequences here will save your project from chaos.

It?s all too tempting to rush straight into FCExpress, slap a few clips down on the timeline, and get cutting. But that would be wrong ? if you were dealing with a reasonable amount of footage, you?d end up going backwards and forwards, losing track of what?s fitting in where and why you?re bothering. On the other hand, if you spend a short while looking through your rushes, making subclips of your highlights and key sections, you?ll sa
ve many hours of editing time in the long run. One thing: make sure you allow for plenty of roll-in and roll-out time at the start and end of subclips, otherwise you risk not having enough time to use in transitions and other fancy edits.

EDITING:
The sexy bit. Even working with one humble camcorder, you can start to create compelling video by a judicious wielding of the editing razor. Slap on a subtle cross-fade or a nicely timed jump-cut, and footage that looks all too everyday can suddenly spring into life. (Ask Eisenstein.)

The layout of FCE?s Timeline, where the real construction begins, is intuitive and adaptable. Preview your clips in the Viewer window, setting In and Out Points, then drag & drop to the Timeline. A project will start with 2 video tracks and 4 of audio, but you can add more for complex fades, overlays and effects. As you drag your clip into place, you?ll notice that it brings stereo sound with it. Depending on how you drop the clips, you can insert, replace, or fill gaps to the frame.

This is digital editing, of course, so even while your clip is on the Timeline, it?s still entirely malleable. Wind the In or Out point back or forth, lift the clip to another track, or swap the order of clips. You can keep the audio and video tracks locked, so they move together, or unlock them ? handy when the audio isn?t synchronized with the visuals, if you?re adding a ?reaction shot? or another cutaway image, for example.

Once you have a few clips juxtaposed on the Timeline, look back at the Browser window for a tab marked ?Effects?. This is where you can find FCE?s myriad transitions, and where you can prove the old adage that just because your software can do it, doesn?t mean it?s tasteful! The handiest transitions are fades and dissolves, but there are enough tricks to keep the most MTV-addled viewer entertained for hours. Wipes, page-peels, cube-spins and other flashy nonsenses are here, but should be
used with extreme caution. As with anything, applied with taste they can be extremely effective ? but don?t pick a new flashy transition when a simple cut will do. Remember, the best editing is often invisible. Under the Effects tab you will also see Video Generators (for titles in 2- and 3-D), Audio Transitions, and Video & Audio Filters. Parameters for all of these doodads are mostly self-explanatory. After setting the length of your Effect, it?s again a simple matter of dragging and dropping onto the clip or clips you want to alter.

Saving regularly is as important in FCE as anywhere else, and there are sufficient Undo levels to get you out of most of the problems you get yourself into. FCE provides Markers to keep track of where you are in your timeline, and these can also be seen on the Canvas, where the Sequence from the timeline can be previewed.

RENDERING:
When playing back a Sequence, its necessary to Render any transitions between clips, or different video or audio tracks. This is the most processor intensive task in FCE, as it generates the final, professional-quality image. An exciting feature of the new FCE2 is the ability to preview effects and transitions in real time, without rendering, which is bound to be a huge time-saver ? I?ve yet to see this in action.

TWEAKING:
The Video Filters are probably the hardest part of FCE to get to grips with. A lot of trial and error will probably lead you to the decision that any of these should be applied sparingly, and where the picture quality on the original recording is desperately in need of adjustment. There are Filters that will help you crop clips of different sizes, adjust colour imbalances, or tint shots ? but it?s extremely difficult to employ distortion effects on ?live action? effectively, at least without a great deal of practice.

AUDIO MIXING:
And, when you?ve locked yourself in a dark room for weeks on end, becoming obsessed with the differe
nce a frame here, a frame there will make, swapping clips and sequences time and again, wondering what material you?re going to save for the Director?s Cut? you?ve still got to devote the same attention to your soundtrack. FCE provides the same level of control over audio tracks as for video. You can adjust levels frame-by-frame, if necessary, and all of course in stereo. Mixing in a little background music (imported as an AIFF file) can also make a huge difference, and if you feeling especially adventurous, you could always create a few audio tracks of sound effects or extra ambient sound. If you?re feeling especially indulgent, why not use the VoiceOver tool to add a Director?s Commentary, a la Peter De Lane?

PRINTING:
Two choices here. Either plug your Mini-DV camcorder back in, and Print to Video, keeping a Master tape of your finished masterpiece. Alternatively, Apple?s advanced interoperability of applications means you can export your project for burning to DVD in (what else) iDVD or DVD Studio Pro.

PRACTICALITIES:
Of course, keeping vast amounts of digital video on your hard drive is going to take up all your free space in record time. (At present, I have managed to store possibly ninety minutes of video on a 40Gb G4 PowerBook, but this doesn?t leave any room to back-up an iPod?s music library.) The common method is to store footage and rendering files on a slaved Firewire storage drive, keeping the key project files (the *brains* of the project) on your main computer.

At £200 for the latest version (optimized for G5 processors), FCE is not quite as affordable an option as the iMovie application that is currently bundled with OS X operating systems, but it offers are far greater degree of control, and a reassuringly bewildering range of tools for tinkering. iMovie seems to lack the kind of editing support that is intuitive for anyone with a basic grounding in editing principles. To the other extreme, Final Cut Pro
is more expensive, and doesn?t have any fundamental edge over the Express version that would make it essential. If you take your digital video projects seriously, and you?re looking to impress your mates, FCE is the logical choice.

Summary: