[wonderings]

I have lately been enjoying and very interested in video editing. I have been putting together small movies and events for a friends wedding and some short movies for our Church youth group that I help out with. I would like to learn more about Final Cut Pro 3 (which we have at work). I have been using iMovie 3. Are there any good books that really just talk about the basics. I am not doing anything fancy right now. I would like to be able to put together nice intro titles on backgrounds. I really only prefer fade transitions. But any suggestions on a book or two of the basics would be appreciated.

 

[MannyP Design]

The MacWorld Bible series is good:
Final Cut Pro Bible

And the QuickPro Series by PeachPit Press is also pretty good:
FCP QuickPro

Of course, the "Dummies" series of books are always good, regardless of the title.

 

[wonderings]

Are these books pretty easy to understand? this is all very new to me and I need simplicity to start with. Thanks for the suggestions, I will be looking into those books

 

[Klaatu]

Even the "Dummies" books may be a bit too much because Final Cut has so many features. I gave up trying Final Cut because I couldn't get a handle on all the complex steps required.

If you want simplicity, stick with iMovie. It allows for the simple transitions and basic titling you describe. Don't even bother trying to learn Final Cut unless you have a week or two to spend full-time with it.

One short-cut is to look up whatever you want (i.e. "titling") in the Final Cut Help menu. Search for "titling" and it should take you to the appropriate guide.

 

[MannyP Design]

Your best bet would be to start with iMovie and get the iMovie missing manual (or iMovie for Dummies if it exists). From there you could go to Final Cut Express which, to me, would be a natural progression -- it is a little more obtuse because of the extra features, but it will prepare you for Final Cut Pro if you decide to move up to that level.

But, if you want to save money and move up a notch in the video editing area, use Avid's Free DV editor:
http://www.avid.com/freeDV/index.asp

It's approximately the same level as Final Cut Express, but much cheaper.

Let it be said, iMovie is a very dumbed down movie editor. A lot of the work is done for you... jumping to FCP would be a pretty intimidating task if you know nothing about non-linear editing (aka desktop video).

 

[CubaMark]

MannyP, are you speaking from experience? If so, you may be perhaps the only person in Canada to get Avid's FreeDV app to actually launch.

We couldn't get it to work on any of our eMacs of G4 towers, all running 10.2.8 or higher.

M.

 

[wonderings]

I have been using iMovie alot but I some of the projects are getting larger and I have some problems with video and audio after about 10 to 12 min of a movie I am working on. The reason I asked about Final Cut Pro is because I have that at work. I really dont want to buy Final Cut Express when I already have Pro to play with. I guess one of the big things are titles. I really dont like the ones in iMovie. Oh wel I guess I cant complain, it was after all a free product

 

[MannyP Design]

Mark:

Yup, I got it to work. I just played around with it so far -- but only with Jaguar (doing a little video capturing and quick little splicing). That's about it. I've yet to actually produce anything longer than a minute as I've been doing a lot of 3-D design lately. I'm gearing up to work on an hour (or so) long project that I'm going to use as an excuse to play with both FCE and Avid to see how they compare to each other along the way.

Maybe you can Macnutt should trade programs -- he's been having a helluva time with Final Cut Express for some reason (it launches... just refuses to do much of anything else, though).

I seem to be the one that never sees any glitches with software for some reason -- OS updates, hard disk issues, software not launching... *knock on wood*

 

[MannyP Design]

Are your audio/video problems sync related?

If they are it's most likley the audio not being recorded at 16 bits. Some camcorders will allow you to record at 12 bit to allow "overdubbing" of extra audio (like music). To get around this problem (if this is one of the problems you are having) just export the project as a full-quality Quicktime movie.

Now you'll need QT pro for this part, but what you do is extract the audio out of the exported movie and then re-import it using the EDIT> ADD> SCALED.

This will stretch the audio back into place.

 

[wonderings]

it was a weird problem with both video and audio, I would edit the video clip, cut it apart, but when I watched it back, the clip kept playing past what I deleted, even though there was nothing after it, or another video after it. That was the main problem, what I did to get around this was open a new project, edit it the way I wanted to, exported it as quicktime, then brought it back into iMovie as a new clip and just put it where I wanted it. that worked fine for me.

 

[MannyP Design]

Mark:

I just checked it out and it appears that there may be a problem with Avid Free DV and Panther, however I downloaded the installer from their web site again and did a re-install... everything checks out. It works great in Panther.

Cheers,