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Advantages of Final Cut Pro

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Greetings.

I am dabbling with FCP - the trial version - and although I have done a bit of research, I can find no real advantage over iMovie (I'm on iMovie 11) apart from elaborate colour correction.

Can anyone spell out in simple terms why I should spend £200.00 on it?

Cheers

Mitcherooney
 
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chas_m

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FCP might not be right for your needs, but of course you didn't really elaborate on what your needs are. FCP's main advantages over something like iMovie are:

a. Multiple tracks of video
b. Multiple tracks of audio
c. More precise editing
d. Colour correction
e. Works with more pro formats, particularly in HD and 4K
f. In conjunction with Compressor or Motion, has many other capabilities iMovie doesn't have, like mastering for DVD or adding motion graphics.

There are many others but that's the main advantages.
 
OP
Mitcherooney
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Thank you both for your replies.

It's much as I thought. There are some 'terrific' esoteric options which are way above my head which I can probably live without quite happily.

I was hoping that the program would provide better quality output - sharpened images, for instance, something more akin to commercial DVD quality. Perhaps it does and I just haven't figured it out yet....

Cheers again M
 
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chas_m

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That's not a function of FCP or iMovie -- that is a function of the quality of the video, and the format to which it will be converted.
 
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Thank you both for your replies.

It's much as I thought. There are some 'terrific' esoteric options which are way above my head which I can probably live without quite happily.

I was hoping that the program would provide better quality output - sharpened images, for instance, something more akin to commercial DVD quality. Perhaps it does and I just haven't figured it out yet....

Cheers again M

Well, both iMovie and Final Cut Pro output full 1080P HD, which is much higher quality than "commercial DVD". But there's the Garbage In, Garbage Out factor to consider here. Are you shooting Standard Definition video and expecting "commercial DVD quality" output? Commercial DVD's are typically mastered from HD sources and down sampled. Are you shooting HD video? What are you using? How do your clips look before you edit them? Your issues may also result from editing heavily compressed clips and/or improper settings in your projects. For what it's worth, there is a sharpening tool in Final Cut but it can't save an image that's too soft right out of the camera.
 
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Greetings.

I am dabbling with FCP - the trial version - and although I have done a bit of research, I can find no real advantage over iMovie (I'm on iMovie 11) apart from elaborate colour correction.

Can anyone spell out in simple terms why I should spend £200.00 on it?

Cheers

Mitcherooney

- Better at cleaning up audio
- Multiple video and audio track syncing tools
- handles multiple video and audio tracks at one time
- loads of customizable plugins
- key frames


Essentially if you haven't noticed anything in it that you need, its likely you wouldn't use any more of the features that you already have in iMovie.

The two main reasons I made the move was easily be able to sync audio and video files, and better tools at cleaning up audio.

I now record into my mac video quicktime audio record option via a Samson USB Meteor Mic (Cardioid mic), video is from my Canon 70D DSLR (1080P, 30FPS) which I can very very easily and quickly sync in FCP without any issues into a single file. Plus the audio correction tools make sure my audio is optimal and consistent with every new view.
 
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That's not a function of FCP or iMovie -- that is a function of the quality of the video, and the format to which it will be converted.

This.. I agree..

@ OP, What video camera system are you using? Codec and compression?

I shoot 1920x1080 @ 30FPS in IPB mode on my Canon 70D DSLR which outputs to a fairly large Quicktime .MOV file.
 

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