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48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great introduction to Final Cut Express, March 26, 2004
I recently picked up a copy of Final Cut Express when I bought a miniDV camera to record some 16mm home movies to disk. I captured the DV stream with iMovie because that's what I was familiar with and was able to do simple cutting and splicing using FCE2 by just feeling around. I could see however, I was fumbling and there were obviously easier ways to accomplish even the simple things I was doing, let alone 99% of FCE2's features.After getting my feet wet with the home movies I wanted to do something *interesting* with 5 hours of videocam footage I had recorded years ago thinking "some day I'll make a little movie from this". For this I needed to become familiar with the FCE2's capabilities. I read through the documentation that came with FCE2 but I didn't really get it. I wasn't familiar with the terminology, the concepts were foreign to me. So I grabbed a copy of the Apple Pro Training Series Final Cut Express 2 book and committed to learning some things. The book comes with a DVD containing lesson materials. Some of the material in the first lessons was basic even for me as I'm familiar with the Mac interface. In some cases I would just read through the exercises and not bother using the computer. But the exposure to the basic terminology was already useful. After those first few chapters I found pretty much every exercise valuable. I appreciated the author's style of repetition and reinforcement of concepts and techniques. When I completed a lesson I was satisfied that I had learned something I would use. With my own project in mind, I would visualize how I'd apply what I had learned but was glad I didn't go off and start working on my own stuff until I had finished the book. When I did complete the lessons I was comfortable with FCE2, which before I opened the book appeared almost hopelessly complicated. With the lessons under my belt I was able to get more out of the FCE2 documentation because I understood the terminology and what questions to ask. I was also able to read through online discussions and understand what people were asking and suggesting. Having read the book and, most importantly, done the exercises I felt I was really taking advantage of FCE2 when I used it for my project. Even if I didn't remember everything I read I remembered I had read there was a way to do this or that and found the details easily. Sometimes I'd refer back to the book but most often I used the FCE2 help document or just looked in the menus. I found the book a great way to come up to speed with Final Cut Express 2. After completing the book I was able to make good use of FCE2 to take boring footage, modest effects, an incredible soundtrack and nice titles to tell a story in an entertaining way. The book made FCE2 accessible, FCE2 made my project a reality, and I'm very pleased with the results.
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by Tom Wolsky
by Hillman Curtis
