Apple Final Cut Express 4 Review January 22, 2008
Posted by gregchiaramonti in Animation, Apple, Computer Graphics, Creativity, Digital Media, Editing, Final Cut Express, Greg Chiaramonti, Movies, Music, Video, Visual Effects, YouTube.Tags: Apple software, chroma key, compression, digital video editing, DV, Final Cut Express 4, fps, jaggies, keyframe, MPEG4, music video, render, upload video, Visual Effects, YouTube
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I just completed this music video for the song New Day Way from my album, Find My Way, and I used Apple’s Final Cut Express 4 for editing, effects and compositing. Really awesome program. I actually have old versions of Adobe After Effects and Premiere, which I’m pretty adept at, however they were a bit glitchy at this point running on my new iMac. And I’ve wanted to learn Final Cut Pro for some time, but the pro version is just not affordable to me right now – and probably more than I require for my editing needs – so I picked up a $200 copy of the latest FCE. If you’re not looking to produce a broadcast TV show or feature film, than FCE may be a good choice for your mid-level video production.
I spent a few days studying the pdf manual and tooling around with some of the features before just diving in full bore to put together my video. For the most part, once I decoded what all of the buttons are, I really like the interface. Just seems easier to navigate than AfterEffects or Premiere. My favorite thing about FCE is that it effectively replaces both AE and Premiere, as you can composite endless layers and add a diverse range of effects, while simultaneously editing the entire project all in one program. No exporting clips to AE for effects and compositing, and then importing back into Premiere for the final editing and transitions, etc. Saves a lot of time and organizational effort.
Also, the real-time preview works really well, though I had to set it to the lowest quality in order to not get dropped frame errors during playback. Only in the most effects-heavy scenes did the preview stall out, and even then, I could at least view one frame at a time to get an idea of how it will look. It’s also great how FCE is a non-destructive editor, so your original clips are only referenced by the software and are never actually modified.
Pretty much any type of effect that you have in AE exists in similar fashion in FCE. Plus transitions such as those you have in Premiere. And you can add third-party stuff, too. One third party addition I’m considering is a DV chroma key enhancer, as the built-in chroma key doesn’t work as well as I’d like it to with DV format video. In my own video, I used a glow around myself anyway (kind of going for a cheesy 80s Xanadu look… just for fun), so that sort of hid the green key remnants around me, especially at the smaller web size video I outputted to. But in the future I may want a cleaner key, so I may drop the hundred bucks for the better DV keying. They say the chroma key works perfectly for higher-quality video, it’s just that consumer-level DV isn’t clean enough for a perfect key. There are a lot of nice matte effects – 4 point and 8 point garbage mattes – to hide extra junk that doesn’t get keyed out nicely.
As far as animation, I was going for a minimal, retro approach in my video, so all I basically did was move some center points around and keyframe them, and also playing with scale and rotation a bit. You can pretty much keyframe just about any property of any layer or effect. I didn’t get into using the pen tools too much for refining and smoothing the keyframes and motion paths, as I didn’t catch on to this until well into my editing (I wish the motion paths were more apparent in the initial Canvas view, as you have to click on a wireframe view to see them). But it’s good to know that FCE has most of the same capability as AE when it comes to spline-based motion and keyframe paths.
All in all, I was quite impressed with the high-quality effects, especially the lens flares, slit scan, and blurs. Lots of options for experimentation and precision. I had some trouble figuring out how to work the transitions – mainly because I probably should have produced some of my scenes as separate “sequences” and then added them to the final project, in order for the transition to work more smoothly. In my case I had many compositied layers in one overall sequence, and had to double-up on transitions on a couple occasions so that two layers would transition simultaneously.
Rendering final output did take some time, mainly when compressing into a smaller format for the web. I rendered to MPEG4 at 320×240 in order to upload to YouTube. After a few tests, I did some research and realized that I’d need to up the frame rate and keyframe amount, so I set it to 30 frames per second with a keyframe every 30 frames. This really increased the quality and lessened the amount of blurry artifacts. It did, however, take about 15 hours to render. In comparison, my final, uncompressed DV output only took about an hour. I guess the compression process really eats up cycles. Final DV suffered from some interlacing jaggies on the 2D animated artwork, so I wound up having to add some Gaussian blur to those layers. This helped out a lot, though it added another hour to render.
So I highly recommend Final Cut Express for those of you who need something a lot more capable than Apple’s iMovie, but without all of the bells and whistles of Final Cut Pro. Or just to wet your feet if you’re planning on eventually upgrading to the pro version.
I love the video effects. Next time get someone who can sing and it will reflect better on your video work.
Umm… glad you like the video. That’s actually my own music, though – sorry you don’t like my singing. I’m not a professionally trained singer or anything, but a lot of people seem to think I’ve got a good voice and dig my music. Oh well, I’ve got more songs at my site, http://www.findmywaymusic.com – maybe you’ll dig my more rockin’, heavier stuff.
Thanks for the post. Video is pretty cool. like the trippy 1960’s physcadlic effects.. your singing though – eh? Seriously though, I am hoping to learn how to do some of those effects now that I am getting this software and a MAC. I make videos for other people and my church worship, and I have taken Adobe’s Premier Elements on a Windows platform about as far as it can go. You will see by going to the link below. Note, that is not my music, just videos I made for someone else. Although with Premier elements, I do like how I can lower the rendering on one frame and up it on another for 2 pictures that are overlayed, causing them to bleed together.
http://youtube.com/shervieux
Glad you liked my video, Scott. I checked out your youtube site… You need to work on timing with your editing. Sometimes you have a few words of text but keep them up for way too long, and then you have a paragraph of text up for only a few seconds. There needs to be a balance between time needed to read the text and keeping edits in line with the rhythm of the music. You may also want to think about sticking to just one or two different font styles and sizes with your text throughout each video – it will be more visually consistent and easier to read.
Awesome review… I’ve been looking for a review by someone that actually uses the various features and effects of FCE. I recently got acquired my first Mac. A Macbook Pro, and I love it. iMovie is user friendly, but hardly a powerful video editor and the “rendering” still images takes for-flippin’-ever! I was wanting to upgrade to FCE, but I was concerned that it may not be worth the money (price vesus functionality when I already own iMovie ‘08). I am convinced, after reading your review, that FCE is the way to go for someone like me who is somewhat of a begginer, but wants to learn the more complex functions of video editing. Thanks for the review, and good job on your own video. I didn’t think you sang half bad!
Thanks Ryan, I appreciate the comment! Yeah, FCE is really worth the price, and it’s actually even $100 cheaper than it used to be. iMovie ‘08 is very clunky as far as I’m concerned. Apple seems to want it to be more of a video version of iPhoto than a real video editor. But whereas iPhoto is extremely useful for photo managing and simple image editing, and also GarageBand is a fully-functional audio app, iMovie ‘08 just doesn’t cut it. The previous version of iMovie was a lot more functional, and was useful in conjunction with Adobe After Effects and Premiere. But with FCE you’ve got an all-in-one effects, compositing and editing solution. The more I use it, the happier I am with my decision to buy it. Good luck with your new Mac!
I wan to use Final Cut Express on a Macbook Pro 1.8 with 2GB of ram.
Will it run smoothly?
Thanks in advance
Hi Raposo – you should be able to run Final Cut Express on your Macbook with no problem. The tech specs page for FCE is here:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/specs.html
It says 1.25GHz or faster with 1GB of RAM or more. You’ll also need OS X v.10.4.10 or later.
I’m running on a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB RAM, and for the most part have had no problems except some areas with many layers of effects that won’t render in real time in the preview window as I edit. But once you learn to use sequences and separate out some of the heavier parts of the project to their own timelines, plus if you render parts of the timeline as you edit, it will help with the previews. You can also adjust the playback quality of the preview, which also helps. Make sure you have plenty of hard drive space for all of the video clips and render files, too. I bought an external 300GB just for video editing, as it was starting to eat up too much space on my internal drive. Thanks for writing and good luck!
Real good job on the music video! I agree with the ‘clunky’ aspect of iMovie, and that is why my school, overseas, has switched to FCE. I’ve gotten through the basics of capturing and editing with video, text and transition clips. But haven’t figured out how to prevent losing media files when, after saving the FCE project on one computer, transfered to a flashdrive, and then opened on another computer, getting the message ‘Some files went offline,’ a red line drawn through the video file of the browser and the canvas in red with ‘Media Offline.’ Has been frustrating. Any guidance?
Thanks!
Thanks, Jack!
Sounds like you need to copy the media files over to the other computer (you are only copying the FCE project file, which only “points” to the separate media files). FCE stores the files on the scratch disk (whichever hard drive is selected) in a folder, for example: /Volumes/Media/Capture Scratch/Name of Project/
To find out where the files are stored, go to the original computer/project file, select the clip and choose View > Reveal in Finder. This will tell you the file path. Copy that project folder from the Capture Scratch onto your flash drive (if it fits… you may need a larger external hard drive or burn to DVD, etc.), and then copy to the new computer. From the new computer, open the FCE project, and choose File>Reconnect Media. Then go thru and find the clips. You can find more info in the FCE pdf manual under Part XI: Project Management and Settings.
hi,
i just bought my first mac and I’m new to this whole thing.
I was really upset when I realized that audio tracks cannot be added to imovie.
Can you tell me if Final Cut Express can have the audio tracks added?
As I am trying to do a music video and I don’t want to waste my money.
Thanks so much!
Victoria u can email me at v_trestrail@hotmail.com
oh, and also, does it handle avchd?
Thanks again!
V.
Hi Victoria,
Sorry it took a while to get back to you… been busy with the holidays and all dat… Thanks for your comments!
Yeah, the new imovie is weird and not as good as the older version, where you could easily add audio tracks.
Final Cut Express lets you add as many audio tracks as you need. I created my own music video with it (the one on my blog), and it was easy to add audio tracks and sync the video to it. FCE is a very professional program so it may take you some time to learn compared to imovie, but you can do some amazing things with it once you learn the basics.
You can also edit AVCHD video with it, but you need one of the newer Macs with the Intel processor to do this (if your Mac is new, then it’s most likely got the Intel chip).
Here’s the page on apple.com about FCE for more info: http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/
Hope this helps.
Take care and good luck with your video!
Greg
I heard a rumor that this program was incredibly hard to install. Please let me know if there is any truth to this or I’ll just get a new computer with it pre-installed.
-Thanks
(BTW nice video)
Hi Zach,
I don’t remember having much trouble installing it – fairly straightforward. Once you start working with it, you may need to make adjustments to the default settings, like real-time rendering quality and which drive to render/save video to, depending on the type of video you are working with, how many layers, size of files, speed of your Mac, etc. I wound up keeping the real-time preview quality at lowest setting, plus I bought an external drive (500GB) to use for the raw video and render files. Maybe the rumor you heard was for the Pro version, but the Express version should install fairly easily.
Thanks for the comment and glad you liked my video!
Greg