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Difficulty level of Final Cut vs. iMovieHD

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for those of you who have used both fairly extensively, could you give me a rating of the difficulty level for Final Cut Express (i Guess) vs. iMovieHD.

1 easy
10 fuggetaboutit!

And, i know from looking at the video on my website I don't look like i would really need Final Cut, but could it be used to improve the quality of my podcasts?

Lastly, does motion work with FCExpress, or only studio, and is motion a standalone product or only to go with FC?

thanks,

Brian
 
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I used imovie for over 2 years and express for about 7 months and it was a little hard at first but if you use a tutorial book to help you like "Final cut express hd 3.5 editing workshop" I have that and I'm going to sell it along with express because I just won a bid for final cut 5.1 studio. If your intrested in it PM me. So yea I think if you can use imovie well then fce hd should be fine for you. I don't think you will improve quality but you can fine tune your settings to get them to look better maybe. I think motion would work with fce but it will not work the same as liketype or soundtrack and thiers no real way to get motion but buying final cut studio (the one I'm getting). Atually I do think it will work because their is a send to motion button but I don't have motion yet, when I get it tomarrow maybe ill leave fce instaled and see how motion works with it. I don't think you will need it though. But no it is not a stand alone product.
 
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Motion was a standalone product but Apple has made all of the standalone pro app only available in the suite now. Perhaps you can find a single license copy on the net somewhere.
 
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I just won a bid for final cut 5.1 studio.
I'd be concerned that it is not upgradable. I suspect several people are selling the version 1 of studio after they used it to upgrade to version 2. If I was Apple, I wouldn't accept a second upgrade and in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the license disallows this type of sale.
 
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Thanks for all the info, I figured motion was too good to be standalone, but it was worth a shot. I can get Express on student discount, so when I'm ready, I'll have a look. for now, iMovie is working for me, but eventually I do plan to do some bigger projects.

Thanks,

Brian
 
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I think it all depends on what you want to acheive with your film there are alot of plugins around for Imovie which recreate complex effects, titles, transitions, etc. Check out http://www.geethree.com/slick/ I bought some of these a few years ago and they are great.

I moved on to FCP and sometimes use these effects on projects if I'm feeling lazy. FC express is great and works well with imovie allowing you to export your imovies into it with all sound effects, transitions, etc in place. My students use imovie and FCE all the time then move on to final cut pro in their final year.

The trouble with imovie is that you can't edit multiple video and audio tracks which after a while becomes very annoying. Hope this helps!

it's hard to rate them because the more you use Imovie the harder it will get for you to acheive what you want due to it's limitations. On the other hand the more you use Final Cut, in any form, the easier it will get....but you'll never stop learning.
 
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cool....

so let me ask one more, then,

Will FCE do layering of video? Like a news spot with video running in the uppeer or lower corner?

Thanks,

Brian
 

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