Final Cut Express Anyone?

[windsorguy]

Anyone out there use Final Cut Express?

I'll be purchasing the DVX100A in the not too distant future so I was hoping to hear from other FCE users.

Are there any major issues I should be aware of?

[Bradalius]

From what I have seen FCE can't edit at 24 frames per second. I am currenty trying to find out more though.

[windsorguy]

Really? I heard that it can handle the standard 24 frame setting but not the advanced 24 frame setting. I have no plans on going to film so this wouldn't bother me, however, if it can't even do the regular 24 frames, that would be very bad.

[magicdavek]

As recently announced, Apple's Final Cut Express 2.0 doesn't handle 24p either. Too bad. Apple needs to have features like that to distinguish Final Cut Pro from Express. Final Cut Express is a extremely capable program. With the exception of LiveType and Soundtrack in FCP 4, there's little in FCP that most people would really "need" that is not found in Express. I use both. However due to hardware limitations, I can't upgrade to Final Cut Pro 4. So to run native under System X, I use Final Cut Express 1. Honestly, for most of my projects, I don't see much difference in terms of what I need to do compared to Final Cut Pro (which will only run if I reboot in OS 9). But I'm longing for the day when I can use LiveType and SoundTrack. In the meantime, Express is meeting my needs just fine. If Express could handle 24p, I'd HIGHLY recommend it to others at this site. However, that missing feature means everyone has to lay out the big bucks for Pro.
Bottom line - Express is great (90% of FCPs features for 30% of the price) except for DVX users in 24p mode.

[dashwood]

Express will handle 24Pn just fine. It will think it is normal 29.97 footage - just be careful not to make a cut on the pulldown frames.

[magicdavek]

Dashwood,

I think you're right Dashwood. My understanding is that the DVX100 puts out all footage whether shot as 60i, 30p or 24p as standard NTSC 29.97 fps. The conversion from 24p occurs in the camera during shooting. I overlooked this in my post above. So I revise my opinion - Express is a great program. Unless those features that distinguish Express from Pro are necessary to you, you can save a bundle by getting Express. Two of the key feature differences are LiveType and SoundTrack. However, the titling in Express 2.0 is supposedly improved over 1.0 (though not as capable as LiveType, obviously), and Garage Band, now part of the iLife suite (free on new macs, $49 after the fact) seems to have much of the functionality of Soundtrack. Given this, the justification for buying Pro is even smaller.

Because Pro is so expensive, it would be easy for those of us who have laid out the big bucks to look down our noses at Express. But as someone who uses both, I don't. Again, for most of what needs to be done, Express does it as well as Pro. Many of Pro's distinctive features are for high end stuff which most of this site's readers would have no need for. My gosh, the feature film "Cold Mountain" with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman was edited in Final Cut Pro! It was used for some of the sequences in Harry Potter! Pro has features like dealing with 35mm movie film, uncompressed digital video (miniDV is compressed 5:1), 4:2:2 sampling (miniDV and DVCAM are 4:1:1), and DVCPRO50 (as used in Panasonic's $65,000 AJ-HDC-27 High Definition 24p video camera), and frankly most of us aren't going to be using any of that stuff. So look carefully at what Pro has to offer over Express, and if it is worth $700 to you, then fine. As for me, if it weren't for LiveType and Soundtrack, I'd no longer upgrade my registered copy of Pro and just stick with Express.