[SeSawaya]

Just wondering if anyone has used this yet. I JUST got it and am reading a book on it. iMovie was SO easy but this looks a bit more complicated.

Whats your assement of the program? Any tips to share?

thanks!!

[k2director]

It's a great program, and very powerful for the price. Of course, if you're coming from iMovie, all the different editing tools, and multiple tracks, and multiple windows, can be daunting. That's the one drawback: if you don't edit very often, you can end up feeling a bit disoriented each time you return to the program.

But besides that, there's so much you can do with the software. A couple untapped features many people never learn:

1) Advanced editing tools (like the Roll, Ripple and Slip tools). These make the daily grind of trimming and extending clips much easier, and can reduce what would take 2-3 steps into just one step.

2) All the image manipulation tools found in the Motion tab for a clip (scale, rotate, opacity, etc.). And the fact that if you switch your view to Image+Wireframe mode, you can do a lot of cool manipulations visually on an image (ala a drawing program), instead of entering in values into fields.

[k_munic]

i'm in the same "transition" state as you: working almost 2 years with iMovie, i upgraded now to fce - and this is really a quantum leap!

you should'nt forget: fc is a real professional tool - so, fce is just the lil brother in meanings of "just" for mini-dv material and without the "big" pic manipulation tools...-

my only hint i can give at this moment (btw: there's NO good book available in german ;-(, only advice is from 700pg of .pdf files "where the f*** are the f*** printed f***** manuals?! and the apple help function) is:

use BOTH programs!

e.g. for a rough cut use imovie; do it really quick and dirty; export it as a .dv file. import it to fce; do the finishing here.

at the moment i do use fce just as a "special effects machine", doing split-screen, titel art work etc. ok, ok, therefore it's not intented. but that's a good exercise to switch completely to fce. and fce is sensational in doing "eye candy"

next big project is a wedding movie, which all guest get after the "show" ... i'm sure, it will have terrific results, most people are not common, what you you can do with your home computer.

oh, btw: some guest i told about my project, say "oh, you're using an apple - yes, i've heard of, you can do quite easily do all this video and grafix work!"

aah, again this warm fealing to be on the right side.......

[k_munic]

? Check out my new book, Final Cut Express for Dummies, available now.. [/B]

helmut!
hurry to translate this into german PLEAZZE! you need any help?

oder, mit DEM namen bist du deutschprachig, richtig? na, dann brauchst du meine hilfe nicht hab mal 12 jahre vom werbetexten gelebt, insofern liegt mir die "dummies" sprache........ viel erfolg mit dem buch! grüße aus münchen.

[MoparSteve]

One question I've had is, can FCE or FC change the brightness or contrast?

[dampeoples]

Originally posted by MoparSteve:
One question I've had is, can FCE or FC change the brightness or contrast?

I'd like to know that as well. I know you can do it with QT.

The DVD that came with FCE helped me a lot.

[k2director]

You can change brightness and contrast by applying a Brightness/Contrast filter to the clip, and then adjusting its settings.
The only gotcha: you can't set keyframes for brightness/contrast (or any other filtered effect). In other words, you can't set brightness to start at 0%, and then ramp up to 30% by frame 15 in a clip, and then go all the way up to 100% by frame 20. You can only set a constant level of brightness (or any other filtered effect), per clip. Of course, you could always cut up a clip into multiple parts, and then assign different brightness settings to each new clip, but that gets a bit clunky, and there's no smooth ramp up between settings.


k_munic: thanks! Not sure what my publisher's plans are for translations, but if I learn of something, I'll let you know!

[d0ubled0wn]

Originally posted by k_munic:
use BOTH programs!

e.g. for a rough cut use imovie; do it really quick and dirty; export it as a .dv file. import it to fce; do the finishing here.

Why export/import as DV? FCE will import iMovie project files directly. Well, that was true until iMovie 3.0.3 came out, FCE doesn't recognize a 3.0.3 project file... yet.

[Powaqqatsi]

Originally posted by k2director:
Of course, if you're coming from iMovie, all the different editing tools, and multiple tracks, and multiple windows, can be daunting.

I find it daunting the other way around, I use FCE and I tried iMovie last week and I find iMovie real hard . Maybe I'm REALLY weird.

[ingeniero]

Hi there, I'm new to video editing and I'm trying to play around with some footage I took on my Sony DCR-TRV22 miniDV camera on FCE, guiding myself with K2Director's book, FCE for Dummies!

I'm trying to capture footage directly from the camera, but I keep getting "dropped Frames" and the process aborts. If I turn off the abort feature, I get stuck frames and the audio rolls thru and everything is out of sync! I see no troubleshooting section in the book or see this topic widely published! I'm using a Pismo 500mhz 512mb Ram. please help!

[k2director]

Hey there ingeniero,
Well, since you bought the book, I'll try to help you out!

Dropped frames can happen for a number of reasons:

1) Slow Mac
2) Low amount of memory (due to lots of open apps, or just plain old low memory)
3) Slow hard drive (like 4200 rpm drives, sometimes 5400 rpm drives depending on how full they are)
4) Fragmented drives
5) Occasional glitches in Firewire implementation with your camera.

I'm not personally familiar with your Sony camera, but I've used 3 Sony DV cameras in the past (current one is a Sony), and never had problems, so hopefully that's not the issue.

The culprit may be that you're running low on memory (try quitting all other apps....though you probably looked into this already), or you're capturing to a slowish drive, like an internal 4200 drive in the Pismo? Or perhaps a slow external Firewire drive. Newer 4200 rpm drives (like the ones built into current Tis/Alubooks) are usually fast enough to not have issues, but if you're using a drive that came with your Pismo from a couple of years back, then that's another story...those drives were not as good. Or maybe you're capturing to an external Firewire drive--in that case, it should be using the Oxford 911 bridge chipset (if it's a year or newer, it's almost guaranteed to be using the right chipset), and it should be at least 5400 rpm. I used to try to capture to an older external Firewire drive (4200 rpm) and would have dropped frames from time to time, especially as the drive got full.

Also, while many people debate the merits of defragging drives under OS X, it's definitely worth the effort when you're troubleshooting (provided the drive has had a lot of activity).

Let me know if that helps.

[ingeniero]

thanks for your information, k2director. I didn't have any other applications open, but I am using a IBM 30GB travelstar 4200 rpm harddrive that I installed last year. i had purchased it on eBay and I understand it was about a year old. I may consider purchasing a new 40GB and try this out. It definitely makes sense to me.

P.S. Congagulations to the "Rocket" Roger Clemens for his 300th career win and 4000 strike out achieved this Friday the 13th!!!! Go Yanks!

[eddiecatflap]

..my sis is getting it soon..

..imovie crashes too much , altho. since changing the audio from 12 to 16 bit it IS more reliable..