Customer Reviews

Final Cut Pro HD for Dummies

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I've had wome one-on-one training on Final Cut Pro but this book helps fill in the gaps. I'm just getting into it but so far it's been a real help.

Books are truly only helpful when the software is actually stilling be used by the masses. 90% of the information in this book would be extremely helpful if we could roll the clocks back 6-8 years. Referring to the benefits of SD, referring to the benefits of using Tape, these are all very old school thoughts, that quite frankly have lost a lot of applicability by today's standards. Most folks today are recording to SSD or using SD Cards, this book was written before the advent of such ideas, thus leaving you quite behind and in the dark.

While this book covers the basics, it doesn not cover any of the maddening aspects of Final Cut Pro, like why scrolling text bleeds off the frame, the complexity of importing still photos, FCPs inablilty to play well with non-mac files, why you need to create a "scratch disk" instead of just working directly off your drive, etc. What the book covers can be more easily picked up on one of the numerous, free, on-line video tutorials.

Note: For Mac users only. But then again, most of the people wanting to do things like edit movies are using a Mac already.

Final Cut Pro HD, is the latest version of the Final Cut program. HD stands for High Definition, and this version is indeed capable of editing HD video. But like with a lot of other software packages, the basic tools that you will use every day form the basics of the package, and they can be learned in a short time. Then as you reach points where you want to do more you can go back to the book to catch up on each point as you need it.

Final Cut is suitable for editing the movies showing you new baby, or if you really want to you can use it to get just about as sophisticated as you need for that feature length film you are making with your A-List actor friends. As with all the For Dummies books, this book isn't really for dumb people, it is for people that are just un trained on this particular package. It's a good book.