Final Cut Pro vs. Final Cut Express

I

Indien

I am looking to buy some software soon, and I am really having a hard time deciding if I want to shell out $1300 for Final Cut Studio 2. Is it worth it? I want to start making some documentaries and several music videos for friends. Will Final Cut Express have enough features that I will need? Please Help!
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I have both. Gee, where do I begin?

I got Studio 2 just for one reason myself: Soundtrack. This is the most awesome program on the face of the earth.

I can go on forever describing the differences, but my question to you is this: what do you expect out or an editing program? What do you need it to do? Based upon your answers, we can suggest one program over another. :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yes, Studio 2 is worth it.

Yes, Express will have enough features to make documentaries
and music videos. But I don't know if it will have all the features
you need.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I have both and found myself running up against the limitations of FCE relatively quickly, but they fixed my main gripes in the latest version...I can't for the life of me remember what they were, but I remember being happy for folks that they had fixed them.

I love my FCS, it's got everything I could ever need in it (I also bought Shake at the same time, so I have a full production suite on my laptop and desktop and I use external haddrives to store projects and move them between machines.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
knightly said:
I love my FCS, it's got everything I could ever need in it (I also bought Shake at the same time, so I have a full production suite on my laptop and desktop and I use external haddrives to store projects and move them between machines.
Click to expand...

How easy was Shake for you to pick up? I upgraded to FCS2 when it was released but can barely figure out Color. It's a tough program and from what I've seen of Shake it looks equally tough.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Haven't quite figured out the timlining stuff or the 3-d stuff yet, but I've got the gist of the workflow. I wish there was a resource out there for it like the videocopilot tutorials for AE...that would be nice...I've found a couple of them though.

FCE has: No 3-way color corrector-just a 1 way, No support for higher end video formats, no batch logging and import, they've added keyframes from the last version for the filters which was my main gripe with the old version of the program.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks

Thanks so much guys, after some thought I have decided to spring for FCS. I have not really done much editing yet, but I plan to dedicate myself to a thorough understanding of my software and don't want to be limited by FCE, whenever that time may come. Also, in the future I would rather just pay for a FCS upgrade, instead of having to pay for stepping up from FCE.

So in short, thanks.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
They do have student discounts...but they come with a limited license for what you can do with the end products...I went a different route. It was a gift to me from a friend who works in a place that gets a corporate discount from apple...I gave him money as a present in our present exchange. I saved a ton of money doing that. ended up being about $500 as an upgrade from a previous older version (3.something - check the upgrade availability then buy a used copy from ebay for the license number to upgrade ;) ). Shake was heavily discounted this way as well.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top