Customer Reviews

The Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro 6

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

 

 

If you need to get up to speed on Final Cut and new features --- this guide gives you concise information and visual backup to explain a complicated edit process minus having to wade through a typical 600-800 page manual (use the official manuals as a reference when you have time!) --- plus the size makes it portable enough to take with your laptop on the job. This is my 4th Rick Young manual --- his choices and descriptions have never disappointed me - I have referred many novice editors to his books. The feedback has been positive.

What the larger Apple manuals are great at --- is providing practice material and step by step instruction --- sometimes it's best to start from page 1 --- especially as a newbie to editing. However --- Rick Young's series of condensed guides --- serves as a tremendous handy abridgment with the MOST important details needed for most conditions when you don't have time to drag out the BIG books. His manuals are written from an editor's perspective with brevity in mind. Think of it as a "greatest hits" version of editing information. You won't be disappointed.

I am taking a class in Video Editing, and we are doing the class on the Macintosh using Final Cut Pro 6, so this was a required text for the class.

This book has both some serious plusses but also serious minuses. First the strengths. I feel this book serves as a good reference for intermediate Final Cut Pro users. I think mainly this book is great for people who may be familiar with an older version of Final Cut, or are familiar with a different editor (Premiere, Vegas or whatever) and are migrating over to use Final Cut. For such people, this book is great because if you want to, say, know how to add a video track, or how to slice a clip into two parts, these kinds of things are very easy to look up in this book. And obviously the book is attractively priced.

Now the negatives. I think this book is nearly useless for users who are trying to learn not only Final Cut, but how to edit in general. Because the book is organized in "how to do this, how to do that" with pretty much no discussion of *why* you'd want to do these things, or how doing these things would improve your video project, or even how to go about editing a video project using some clips that you might already have. A pretty substantial level of editing knowledge seems to be assumed by this book. On the other hand, really only the pretty basic straightforward things are covered in this book. So I don't think it has anything to offer advanced users.

So I dunno, for a very specific group of users, this book is a nice one to have on your shelf. For everyone else, I think they'd be better served by something else.

I'm a video editor with 3 years of experience in Final Cut Pro. When I spotted this slim volume at my bookstore, I was intrigued and picked it up to look through - then I bought it on the spot and went home and read it. The explanations are very clear and well illustrated. The tips I picked up have already saved me a good bit of time and frustration during my editing. I wish I had found this book earlier!

This book also does a great job of going over what you need to get started in Final Cut Pro - installation, settings, etc. While this book is not a "load this clip from the CD and now push this button" type book, the examples are very clear, and can be done with any video clip on your computer.

There is definitely material here for even experienced Final Cut Pro users - for example, I'd never really understood some of the rendering and format options (AIC, ProRes 422, etc) and this explains them, and shows how to use them to your advantage. Heck, the explanation on page 24 of how to put custom buttons on your toolbars, or the one on page 85 on how to use the select track tool, have probably saved me 5 or 10 minutes an hour since I learned to use them.

Hope you enjoy this book as much as I have!

great for starters, helped very much to do the BASICS and just a little more. i volunteer at church to make the dvd for our local comcast station. that said, we upgraded from our Casablanca to a mac and final cut pro7. I use a mac at home so being familiar with the mac i found the fcp6 book to help me learn most of what i need for our weekly broadcast. I'm a 63 year old non computer person, so if the book was able to get me up and running it had to be good.

I can't say enough good things about how much this book and the edition before it helped me. If you're just starting out and scared off by those 3 inch thick FCP books, this will get you up and running fast. Good clear, concise explanation covers all the basic functions we spend 90% of edit time doing. You can read the other books to get the other 10% after you get your feet wet. I've been editing for several years now and I still find this book useful. This is just really clear instructional writing. Mine is filled with Post-It bookmarks.

As a pro who's made quite a bit of money and some really polished projects with everything from Avid Media Composer to Media 100 to Final Cut Pro, I can personally attest to the value of this book. Having had a lot of experience with FCP, I've *still* gained valuable skills and insights in reading this book.

A previous 'review' from a 'Mr. Minter', who absurdly complains that he has to use a Mac, which he 'hates', in order to access this 'overrated' software, proving that he's in fact *underrating* Final Cut Pro is sadly typical of ignorant users who complain of imaginary obstructions to educating themselves. The fact that Final Cut Pro runs on a Mac is no accident, as the hardware extends the software's reach in unique fashion. This is just one aspect of Final Cut Pro that this book does a very nice job of distilling, in the service of engaging the reader, ALL the processes one needs to master in order to actually build an effective and compelling visual narrative. The author presents these processes in a logical, 'stepped' method, making the most of graphics and clearly and engagingly written descriptions of each process, and how each process interlocks with the next. You can get up and running fast, and learn to teach yourself through doing, using this book as a reference and a comprehensive resource. What more can you ask, short of a personal instructor visiting your studio?

I hate using macs but as final cut is only on these computers, I had to learn how to use the software, this book gave a very well excuted instructions. The author did a very good job explaining this over rated software, if you have to use final cut software than this is the book for you.