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MillimeterEdit Review — Apple Final Cut Express 1.0.1
Jul 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Steve Mullen
A guide to getting started with FCE.
Apple's release of Final Cut Express demonstrates that “business as usual” is truly gone from the NLE market. Apple, faced with a market need for a lower-cost editor, had a crucial choice to make. Traditionally, companies responded to this need by marketing a very low-cost NLE that had no upward compatibility with the top-shelf product. Alternately, they stripped everything possible from their expensive NLE and offered a mid-range product. Or they took both paths.
 Setting up Final Cut Express might not be as simple and intuitive as you'd expect, but the actual editing is relatively easy. |
Users were faced with a terrible dilemma. If they purchased the low-ball product, they often got as many or more features than the mid-priced product. While this seemed a good value proposition, it was a dead-end solution. If they bought the mid-priced product, they got an apparent measure of upward compatibility. However, to get real work done they often had to buy back missing features.
Faced with the same choice, Apple could have enhanced iMovie. While iMovie is seen to be primarily for “home editors,” my review (upcoming in the September issue) shows it to be a surprisingly capable NLE. Apple could have added audio scrub, a tabbed Shelf (providing multiple bins), and a dual-window monitor with more traditional clip-marking functions. The advantage of this path is that a customer would be productive almost instantly.
Alternately, Apple could have taken Final Cut Pro 3 and removed features such as realtime preview, color correction, and the compositing tools. Certainly most novice editors could have survived without these capabilities.
Apple did not take either path. Final Cut Express has the look and feel of Final Cut Pro 3.0 and offers almost all of its editing capabilities. The simplest way to conceptualize the difference between the two is to keep in mind that FCP supports formats from DV25 to HD, while FCE supports only DV25. This decision has dramatically altered the Mac NLE landscape. Adobe has announced it will not provide Premiere Pro on the OS X platform, and Avid has announced Free DV, a free pared down version of its Xpress DV application.
After installing FCE, you should watch the “Getting Started” DVD. The DVD refers to consulting the Final Cut Express user manual. Unfortunately, Apple does not provide a printed version of its comprehensive, 750-page PDF user manual.
After starting FCE, use Apple > Preferences to set application parameters. (Apple should divide these parameters across two menus: Application Preferences, which could be password-protected by an instructor, and User Preferences.) Although many of the options settings are obvious, some (e.g., cache size) are not. It might be best if the obscure Application Preferences items appeared on an Advanced tab. This is the point where you will probably discover that FCE has no Help menu.
Now select a preset window arrangement — or create your own. If you have an NTSC monitor connected to a DV camcorder or deck fed by FireWire, enable viewing via the View > Video function.
Next select Apple > Easy Setup to choose the nature (NTSC/PAL, 32kHz/48kHz audio, 3:4/16:9) of the DV video you will be working with. (FCE doesn't specify the “DV — NTSC” setting as 48kHz — although it is.) Apple really should provide a wizard to help users arrive at the correct setup rather than a pull-down of 18 presets.
Now that FCE is set up, you can open a new Project. There are more settings that can be made under Edit > Project > Properties. The Project will have a blank Sequence (i.e. Timeline) ready for use. You can alter some aspects of a Sequence's appearance by right-clicking on a Sequence icon in the Browser and then selecting the Settings function.
If you have been counting, setting up FCE has taken us to five different menu locations. Additional settings are also found under the View and Sequence menus — as well as at multiple locations on each Timeline and Viewer window. Experienced editors may find all this confusing, while novice editors might be intimidated. Final Cut Express is significantly harder to learn than iMovie, even for simple editing tasks. The non-standard “VTR transport” buttons — although very elegant — don't speed learning either. And for those coming from a Windows-based NLE, right-click functions are not comprehensive or well organized.
Once you have learned FCE and set up your application, Project, and Sequence, editing with FCE is simple. DV material is input via the File > Capture function. You have a choice of immediate capture, capture from marked in and out points, or logging clips for a batch capture. Most likely, you will want FCE to auto-segment the captured DV media into clips.
Once your clips have been captured, they can be trimmed using the Viewer monitor. Click the Audio tab to edit audio by ear and by a large waveform display. Trimmed clips can be dragged into a Sequence. An alternate way of adding material to a Sequence is to place the time marker at the desired location and then drag a clip onto one of the seven Edit Overlays: Insert (ripple), Insert with default transition, Overwrite (non-ripple), Overwrite with default transition, Replace, Fit-to-fill, and Superimpose.
Once video and audio clips have been placed into a Sequence, you can treat each as an object. You can select one object or multiple objects (shift-click or lasso), drag, Cut/Copy and Paste, drag object “ends” to trim, ripple-delete, non-ripple delete (Lift) — all as one expects to do with a Mac (or Windows) application. I find Apple's non-modal Timeline to be one of the reasons FCE and FCP are easy to use. Premiere users, however, may find it frustrating to not be able to create a rubber-band node directly without first clicking the Clip Overlay button and then clicking the Pen tool. Likewise, you cannot drag a node without first selecting the Pen tool.
Final Cut Express ships with more than 200 transitions, filters, and effects. If you have a Mac G4 or G5, you can preview many of them without rendering. You can add effects by clicking on the Effects tab in the Browser and then looking for the effect you want within folders. However, I find it faster to add video transitions, audio transitions, video filters, and audio filters via the Effects menu.
The Color Corrector in Final Cut Express is great for repairing color problems and for creating special looks. A waveform monitor really should have been included to allow signal monitoring. Final Cut Express includes more than 12 audio filters, including a three-band and a parameter equalizer. Also provided are a compressor/limiter, 60Hz or 120Hz hum remover, and noise gate function.
FCE provides titling tools, which you can access from the Viewer window. Titling options include crawl, scroll, and lower third. FCE is bundled with Boris Calligraphy, which you can use to build 2D and 3D titles with custom fonts, type settings, drop shadows, and outlines. Although transitions, filters, and titles all exist in the Timeline, Apple chose to place parameter controls in a Viewer window tab rather than in separate effect windows.
FCE has a complete set of compositing capabilities in the Canvas window. Up to 99 layers of video can be composited in a Sequence. You can control parameters (scale, rotation, and keyframing) of each layer. Final Cut Express includes features like motion paths with Bezier curves, motion blur, time effects, and frame blending. Thus, you have precise control over the location, movement, and speed of each video element. Sub-pixel interpolation rendering is used for maximum image quality. I expect that many budget-conscious editors will not need to buy and learn to use After Effects because of the compositing power in FCE.
When you import a Photoshop file, Final Cut Express puts each layer into its own video track. Now you can use compositing and keyframing to create complex motion graphics. I found this a powerful feature.
If you are creating a documentary or need voice-over narration, use the Final Cut Express VoiceOver tool. The VoiceOver tool gives you a countdown before starting, then records directly into an audio track while the video plays.
A production can consist of one Sequence, or a Sequence composed of multiple Sequences. You can export back to a DV camcorder or deck. Another option is to create a DVD using iDVD. You can insert markers into a Sequence. When a Sequence is exported, markers are recognized by iDVD or DVD Studio Pro as Chapter Markers. (See my article on iDVD 3 on p. 75 of this issue.)
Based on the QuickTime media layer, FCE gives you multiple export options. From the Export menu you can choose a codec and then select the transfer setting needed. However, you cannot simultaneously export multiple streams, each optimized for a different transfer rate.
The strong capabilities provided by Final Cut Express make it an obvious choice for those editing DV. Hopefully, Apple will enhance FCE to make setup simple.
The only question you might have is, “Should I spend the extra money and go for Final Cut Pro 4?” Now, if you have a bigger budget, you'll want to stay tuned for my FCP 4 review appearing next month. But if you need to get going now, you won't go wrong with Final Cut Express.
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