Customer Reviews

Final Cut Express 4: Visual QuickStart Guide

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I neglected to read the reviews on this page before I purchased the book, and had I done so, would not have added this book to my library. That would have been a great loss.

I bought the software for Final Cut Express 4 three months ago and have struggled with a learning curve that seemed at times vertical. Particularly annoying was that the highly recommended book I bought at the time included a DVD which I at first thought was a good idea, but came quickly to realize that chopping about in someone's deadly dull movie is no fun at all. I dreaded doing the lessons. Worse, they tied me to the computer, for without the computer the book went from irritating to useless.

Recently I stumbled across Lisa Brenneis's book. Brilliant! Fun to read lucid prose written in an engaging and conversational style and sans the labored jokes other series include; an intuitive index which really enables you to find things (the above mentioned h.r. book has a thwarting index) and a useful Table of Contents. Every page of 600 is informative. Each time I open the book I discover something new. The first paragraph on something tells you what you need to know, its basic function, and then below it, as your eye drops down, additional information and tips. Opening this book is like FCE itself, an ancient carved box; lift the lid, and inside are hundreds of strange and wondrous tools. You lift them up, turn them over, glance at Lisa's book and light dawns - ah, yes, how marvelous. But then, you turn the tool another way, puzzled, until Lisa tells you of further uses, applications of which you had not dreamed.

Terrific, too, is that you do not have to be at your computer to read this book and enjoy it. Wait for your spouse to get his or her hair done, or shop for truffles or something, and you can find a chair, open the pages, read with delight and stick in a bookmark to use the information as soon as you get home. Try that with the other books out there.

To anyone who wants to learn FCE4 from scratch, I would suggest watching the free Izzy videos on FCE4 available online; ditto for the free LiveType tutorials; thus armed, open this book. Lisa is a born teacher and writer and I cannot recommend her book too highly. I wish I had discovered it earlier. The prose is crystal clear, the book is of tremendous value, and the negative reviews I see on this page are incomprehensible to me. It is unquestionably the best book on software I own and the only one I can say I enjoy reading.

G. W. Marsh

Final Cut Express 4: Visual QuickStart Guide

I'm fairly experienced with Final Cut, but every once in a while i get stymied by some odd event or set of procedures. That's when i reach for this reference manual. The book isn't really designed like a over-arcing tutorial guide, like a step-by-step from beginning to end, and maybe that's what some reviewers desire. It does have step-by-step guides, but for very specific events. It covers the basics, but for beginners, the entire final cut suite of products can be like hitting a brick wall - you have to be patient and keep editing, and the wisdom will eventually come. It's not easy, but i found this guide helps me.

And reviewers should really lay off the personal attacks on authors, that's just ugly.
...just you wait until Zombie Charles Dickens comes knocking on your door...

This is not a "How to" book. It explains the functions but not the procedures, It does not tie anything together and gives no examples at all on how to do anything with Final cut express, It just explains what the particular function does. The photo's are terrible. Unfortunetly it was the only book avaliable on Final Cut Express at the Big Block type bookstores. I knew from the get go I was not going to enjoy this book, The software PDF manual is way better to bad that's not in print..

This is a well organized, easy to use reference. Visuals are extremely helpful.
I would highly recommend this as a valuable resource for students as well as more advanced users of Final Cut Express.

I have been a ULead video editing software user for 2 years. ULead provided a helpful how-to book written by a man who videos weddings and other events for a living. His book takes you through case histories, all the while illustrating how he used ULead to prepare the video and burn DVD's. What a great approach.
Sadly, not the one taken by Ms Brenneis.
This book by Ms Brenneis is, in a word, confusing (trying to be generous, here!). You find yourself being referred to chapters you haven't read yet in order to do something that should be straight forward - such as CAPTURE. This book is like the typical software manual that we have all put on the shelf and not read because it is only useful as a reference.
To make the $200 that I spent on FCE 4 NOT a waste of money, I have ordered another book and will write a review of it here ASAP. Here's hoping that I can be more positive wrt that book!

So, I read the first four chapters and then went to chapter 5 to import my video. How exciting! The problem is what I saw on the screen did not match anything in the book. What capture screen? All I saw was the actual video itself being imported, no Capture tab, no buttons, nothing that was discussed in the text. No "Anatomy of the Capture Window." Is this really a book about Final Cut Express 4? So now I'm sitting here with imported digital video and without the foggiest notion of what to do next. Please advise. Why isn't this book working for me? It seems as opaque as a Microsoft help window. QuickStart my foot! More like QuickLost.

Peach Pitt Press and the Quick Start Guides always satisfy and in this case for Final Cut Express 4 it did not fail. It is an amazing format that is very intuitive that gets you up and running as no other manual can. The best thing about them is the price is reasonable. That is the best combination one can have. Peach Pit should now have a Quick Start guide for Keynote. In fact for all of iWork 09.

I purchased this book to help me understand the basics of Final Cut Express 4, but it falls well short. There are no detailed explanations or "How To's". I got more out of postings on the Internet - that's why the 1 Star rating (I tried to give it zero stars but the system doesn't allow it).

I have worked with computers since 1982 and have developed software and written user guides. This one just doesn't measure up.

Let me just say flat-out that this is one of the worst software reference guides I have ever seen in my life. I really wish that I had not spent the money on it. It is not helpful at all, and I'm sorry if this offends folks, but this author's writing style is very poor. I really have to hit the Peachpit folks and ask how they could possibly include such a poor work in their excellent Visual QuickStart series. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone.

A great source for reference. The book has a very good breakdown of the elements of fce. If you can think it,then you can look up how to do it.