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 - BUG In Final Cut Express 4I bought this and it worked well for the first week. Then a BUG in the software stops you from opening projects. Loads of people are upset by this and I have lost over 6 projects. Apple have fixed this BUG with Final Cut Pro but not with Final Cut Express 4. Why? Do we not matter? The unreliability is shocking. I don't trust this software anymore. BEWARE! Rating:  - excellent video editing productIf you want to video edit and are a novice this is the product for you. Just load up your video and then drag and drop it into this product. The more you use it the more proficient you become. Make videos like Spielberg and when you become that good, download your videos to Youtube for approval. When the public becomes impressed, now you are ready for the $1200 pro version of Final Cut. Rating:  - disappointingFinal Cut Express is a difficult program with a steep learning curve and is in stark contrast to the beautifully human engineered Imovie program. When I saw the title "Visual Quick Start Guide" I expected just that. Instead I have labored to page 170 and just started to learn about the browser. I expected to see a quick initial guide showing how to do a first editing job followed by more detail on each step. Instead I had to labor through endless detail on basic features first, which are easily forgotten by the time basic editing (page 221), trimming edits (page 319) or creating transitions (page 389) are discussed. A concise description of basic editing is sorely missing. May be this book is useful as an encyclopedia for the program, but "learning Final Cut Express the Quick and Easy Way" is a completely misleading description. Rating: - Not ready for AVCHD yetThis software crashes when importing AVCHD files from certain cameras, my Panasonic HDC-SD9, for one. I had to buy additional software to read and convert the files before importing them into FCE4. Also, although it reportedly supports AVCHD files, it does not support their 5.1 surround audio, and as of right now, it doesn't support full 1920x1080 resolution. Currently, FCE4 only supports a maximum resolution of 1440×1080. Video can be exported as 1920 from FCE4 using Quicktime Conversion, but not without interpolation. Rating:  - Impressive. Time to learn.(Note that when I compare "iMovie" with FCE-4 below, I am referring to timeline-editing versions of iMovie). I've used timeline versions of iMovie for years - to quickly create movies at home, and video presentations for work. I sometimes wanted more power than iMovie had and I wanted to stay with timeline-based editing. So, I gave FCE-4 a try. FCE-4 has an impressive professional feel with a UI that is an extension of iMovie's. FCE-4 has a longer learning curve compared to iMovie, though this is not a criticism - it has more features. But be ready for that. Having never used any prior version of FCE, the tutorial book "Apple Pro Training Series: Final Cut Express 4" by Diana Weynand, was key in ramping-up. I am still learning it, but am impressed at FCE-4's technical capabilities. I've taken some side-tracks to learn more about "movie-making" generally (lighting, sound, story, etc). This is all part of it and is fun and educational overall. Compared with iMovie, FCE-4 is a significant step in capabilities, and also in terms of time investment to learn it.
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