Apple Final Cut Pro

Having learned on Avid's Media Composer while studying at the Art Institute of Dallas, it was my dream to own a proffesional non-linear system at home. Well, last year after deciding between Final Cut and Avid DV Express, I bought Final Cut Pro. Except for a few occasional "unexpected quits" Final Cut is a great program, though a bit expensive. The user interface is great. Everything is laid out logically as it should be. I only wish the tool pallet was a little larger with some short-cut buttons for a quick and easy video or audio dissolve and for other editing features such as lift, close gap, split edits and ripple delete. A minor inconvience though, as Final Cut does alot of things and offers you flexibility. Don't let the appearance of lack of some more advanced buttons fool you, this thing is loaded! I love the key frame graph, which you can expand each graph seperately if need be. Another great feature is the media management which allows you to do alot of stuff if you have a complicated project -- nesting sequences to marking media files off-line for recapture later. Compositing is another very strong point of Final Cut though a few more filters and real-time effects would be welcome (perhaps this will be addressed in Final Cut 4). And finally customizing your work-space is easy, fun, and great. You can choose among pre-set layouts or create, modify AND save your own. The learning curve to Final Cut can be steep at first, but like riding a bike it becomes second nature.

Easy to learn (even w/ no experience in non-linear post) Flexible Very stable

Expensive Could use some extra "shor-cut" keys in the tool pallete More filters and real-time effects would be welcome

Avid Media Composer

Excellent support

I wanted to move up from iMovie as I had some really great ideas for ways to compile the tons of MiniDV footage I have of family and various places we went.. I also didn't have $1000 to buy Final Cut Pro let alone $1600+ for Avid and the rest of the stuff out there (sorry Adobe) is just not good enough... so when I found out that my wife (who is a teacher and now homeschooler) still qualified for the education price I jumped on it! (don't worry guys, Final Cut Express is almost the same for that same price if you can't get the discount)... and I have been very happy so far. I used the 5 volume manuals to get started but also got Tom Wolsky's book for additional reading (and I recommend it). In a week, I edited and tweaked to perfection a 1 hour DVD (that I burned with iDVD). I did this at about 1-3 hours of work per day. The learning curve is steep but short... It took me two or tree days to master the interface which is desigend for DV from the ground up. I hope Apple doesn't tweak it too much for FCP 4, as it is ideal now. The stability of 3.0.4 on my OS X.2.3 has been perfect... never did FCP quit like in previous versions. I also have had no problems with the log and capture with my Sony DCR TRV27, they work in perfect harmony. My only wish is that I had a dual 1.25 to do the encoding and rendering, as my 1Ghz PowerBook is taxed in some areas.

Easy to learn for a powerful Pro app. Stable - especially compared to my P4 XP book Powerful - more effects, and generators and correction palets than you can shake a stick at 100% Software based!

-Price if you are a Pro ($999) -Yes, you have to read the manual! -Occational GUI bugs that go away on their own

iMovie Windows Movie Maker

Apple tech is the best in the business, but the good support costs you $$. that said their free support is 100% better that what I get from IBM on my Netvista.

the best digital editing softwear you can buy hands down

everything runs perfect on a apple power mac g4

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