Customer Reviews

Apple Pro Training Series: Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System

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First off, finding everything contained in this book will take you on a
very long surfing safari, plus many trips to your friendly
neighborhood post facility. Save yourself some time and money,
learn how to be an expert in your field, and spend more time doing
what you love.

Second, this is Apple-certified courseware, which means that it
comes in the regular APTS lesson-based format, with lesson reviews
at the end of each chapter, and material on the DVD-ROM. There are
now instructor-led classes devoted to the subject, as more and more
facilities switch from another platform to Final Cut Pro, or move up
from miniDV to the broadcast world. Now's your chance to learn from
the masters and become one yourself.

All in all, this is one of the best books of its kind that I've read. It fits
right in with the Apple philosophy of giving power to the users. I
recommend it to all you editors who not only need to know how the
system works, but why it works that way.

I picked up a copy of this book just after Walter Murch and Sean Cullen's appearance at a LAFCPUG meeting last October. At the time I thought I was buying a techdork's guide to FCP that would help me optimize my system and get it flying, but it turned out to be so much more ...

Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System is a far more comprehensive book than its title would imply. It his a handbook of how-tos and valuable get-it-done information that make it a must-have for anyone assisting on a show using Final Cut Pro, or whose job involves supporting FCP and integrating FCP workstations into Networked environments.

That the book has the feel of an Assistant's reference should come as no real surprise. Sean Cullen, one of the lead authors of the book, has been Walter Murch's Assistant (now Associate Editor) for about a dozen years. During this time he has been responsible for convincing Murch to make the leap over to Final Cut Pro for Cold Mountain, and taking up the mantle of Final Cut Pro evangelist to the editing community at large. (The struggles and successes Murch, Cullen, and the rest of the Cold Mountain editorial team are chronicled in Charles Koppelman's book, Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. An excellent read that is also available from Amazon.) This successful effort lead to the Murch and Cullen using FCP on the 2005 Sam Mendes film, Jarhead.

The first six chapters of the book are called "Using Final Cut Pro in Real World Workflows", which details offline and online workflows for both film and video projects including project setups, organization, and project distribution. This section is loaded with helpful bits of information that can help the assistant avoid many common project mishaps.

Chapter four has a very good, hands-on, Cinema Tools tutorial, which takes you through the process of importing a Flex file into the Cinema Tools Database, Importing Clips, Synching Media with the Cinema Tools database and cut list generation.

The rest of the book's eight hundred plus pages address topics ranging from system configuration and optimization to networking and Xsan Implementation, and concludes with over a hundred pages of information on troubleshooting your Final Cut Pro system.

Although I strongly endorse Peachpit's Apple Pro Training Series (having learned the fundamentals of DVD Studio Pro and Shake from other books in the series) in general, Optimizing Your Final Cut Pro System is a must-have for any professional editor or engineer using FCP on the job.

I purchase this book thinking I was getting something different. When it arrived I began reading and I was shocked at the information it provided. I purchased every book in the series from the Apple Pro Training line up except two at this point but this book is a must have after you learn Final Cut Pro buy this book you will not be disappointed....