FCE 4 - too much for average user?

I am an average home movie user with a Sony HD miniDV camera and was wondering if FCE would be "too much"? I don't have any experience using FCE so I wasn't sure if I would gain much over iMovie or if it would be too complicated. I have some experience with iMovie but have not been heavy into editing but with a new baby, I plan to do a lot more in the future. Thanks for the help!

Judging by what you say I would think iMovie (versions 2 to 6 - NOT 08) would suit you.
iMovie is quite an advanced editor, can produce high quality videos and has the merit of being dead easy to use.
Furthermore, with a new baby you will have neither the spare cash to buy FCE 4 nor the spare time to learn how to use it !
Ian.

Similar Messages

Is FCE too much for me?

Hi,
I am a newbie when it comes to video editing. That said, I am very interested in learning as much about the editing process as I can.
I have used iMovie for a while and I feel constrained - I feel like it is oversimplifying things to the point where I can't do what I want.
How bad off would I be if I went out and purchased a copy of FCE? I'm a software engineer so I am not afraid of complexity; that said, I don't want to get in so far over my head that I spend all of my time lost/frustrated.
This seems like a very active/supportive discussion list, so I would greatly appreciate any suggestions/advice you might offer.
Thanks!
BT

"I have used iMovie for a while and I feel constrained - I feel like it is oversimplifying things to the point where I can't do what I want."
I switched to FCE from iMovie six months ago, for your same reasons; plus I didn't like the resulting quality of some basic (for me) operations like speed changes, reverse, stills, etc..
I played with FCE for a month or so without trying to do anything productive, just getting used to the new approach, that is much more powerful than iMovie, but is sometimes quite different. Now I'm very, very satisfied and I don't mind using FCE also for very simple edits (I know some posters here prefer to use iMovie for simple tasks). When you know your way you get much more in much less time. Just, don't think to learn everything in one months.
After six months I'm probably mastering 30-40% of the FCE capabilities, and I'm learning more and more mainly thanks to the wonderful help from this forum.
Just a caveat: as Ian says there is still no official version of FCE for Core Duo...
Piero

Way Too much for me!!!!! I'll go back to youtube,very easy and better info!etube. Better info and eaiser!!

This website is way too much for the simple guy wanting to know a simple answer to a simple question about an iPad 2 or a iMac!!!!!

No problem! There are many people for whom videos are a much easier way to learn things than trying to read written instructions or explanations. You should always use whatever works best for you. If these is something youtube cannot help you with, feel free to come back and join the huge number of users in these forums.

OS Lion Slow, is it too much for my MBP?

hi everyone-
I have a 2007 model MBP, 2.33 GHz Intel core 2 duo. I upgraded everything I could within the last year with a 500 gb internal hard drive and 4GB 667 MHz memory installed. Out of that 500GB hard drive, almost 290GB are available.
I upgraded to Lion and everything seemed to run well at first and was impressed with the speed. However recently everything has slowed down. I searched the forums and found tips on disk repair and repairing permissions, which ended up making the OS unable to boot at the startup screen. Thank god for time machine. Long story short, I pulled out my old Snow Leopard disk and reinstalled (yes I also tried the lion recovery, which didn't help), and then went and reinstalled lion from the app store. 1 weekend later and now Monday, I'm back to having everything running. However today I am noticing that the apps are lagging once again,and I'm constantly getting the beach ball and little gestures are taking forever to load. Could Lion be too much for my MBP, which up until recently flew?
Any and all suggestions will be helpful. I use my MBP everyday for my workload, so getting this to perform again and keep up with my demand is extremely important.
Thanks!

Check the SMART status in Disk Utility. Other than that, not that I know of. Perhaps more advanced disk utilities like Disk Warrior, but I don't know.
You would hear the disk making a lot of noise if it were having issues accessing a bad sector.
I had a drive that started causing slow-downs and beach balls for a while. Erased drive and reinstalled. Same thing. The SMART status in Disk Utility showed Verified up until the drive died completely.

Is this video too much for my G4 Powerbook?

Hi,
I have downloaded a video from Vimeo and it won't play. At best it gets very choppy, even the audio, to the point where it just stalls.
I have a G4 powerbook, 15"
1.6GHz
2GB RAM
250GB hardrive (165GB free)
OSX 10.5.6
Quicktime Pro 7.6
The video is;
H.264 Decoder
1280x720
Millions
AAC
Data size 52.99MB
Data rate 6233.57kbits/s
Is this too much for my good old Mac?

Thanks Kirk, what a shame. I'd love a new Macbook Pro but I always said I would use my G4 till it fell to pieces, never thinking it would fail me in such a unremarkable way.
Might have to wait till the end of the summer though.....
Would you mind educating me somewhat. I wasn't sure from the details given in the Quicktime movie inspector whether the video was HD or not. The creator of the video shot it on a Canon Rebel XT SLR camera, in burst mode. That itself made me doubt it was HD, but Vimeo deals in HD footage so I just didn't know.
How did you deduce it to be HD, and what should I be looking for? How much data could my G4 handle?
Thanks again Kirk!

HT5048 Hi, 1.34 is too much for me ... can I deselect Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian languages and download only the OS with less GB?

Hi,
1.34 GB is too much for me to download ...
Can I deselect Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian languages and download only the OS with less GB?
I tried several times but not successfull ...
please help me to update my OS.
thanks

Are you asking why those non-ASCII characters are printing incorrectly? It's because the console is still treating the output as ASCII. The JVM is encoding each character as two bytes according to the UTF-8 spec, but the console is treating each byte as a separate, ASCII-encoded character. Changing the locale of the OS or the "file.encoding" property of the JVM doesn't affect the behavior of the console.
When I run your code on my WinXP machine (leaving "file.encoding" at its default setting), I get this output: // __ System.getProperty("file.encoding"): |Cp1252|
// __ |en_US|
// __ |225|�|
// __ |233|Θ|
// __ |237|φ|
// __ |243|≤|
// __ |250|�|
// __ |252|ⁿ|
// __ |241|�|
// __ |191|┐|
// __ |161|�|
// __ |251|√|
// __ |224|α|
// __ |223|▀|
// __ |232|Φ|
// __ |235|δ| The JVM is outputting the text as cp1252, but the console is treating it as cp437, its default codepage (encoding). When I change the console's encoding with the command "CHCP 1252" and run the code again, I get: // __ System.getProperty("file.encoding"): |Cp1252|
// __ |en_US|
// __ |225|�|
// __ |233|�|
// __ |237|�|
// __ |243|�|
// __ |250|�|
// __ |252|�|
// __ |241|�|
// __ |191|�|
// __ |161|�|
// __ |251|�|
// __ |224|�|
// __ |223|�|
// __ |232|�|
// __ |235|�| I don't know if it's possible to change the encoding of the console in your OS, but that's not a showstopper. Just write the output to a file, then use a reasonably capable text editor to view the result. And there's no need to change all those OS/JVM settings; just specify the encoding when you open the file for writing: FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("out.txt");
OutputStreamWriter osw = new OutputStreamWriter(fos, "UTF-8");

Aperture too much for Nvidia 6600?

I've heard that Aperture is too much for dealing with RAW files using the Nvidia 6600. I just bought an EOS 40D, and am wondering if anyone knows if this is true. I know Adobe has Lightroom as an alternative to Aperture, but if I can I'd prefer Apple's software. Is Apple planning on releasing graphics card updates for their PPC G5's? I have a Quad. Thanks!

Yes it runs. You might want to do a reinstall, or go through the troubleshooting docs.
I made the 1.5 update, have a Quad, an Nvidia GeForce 6600, and it works. It's just not a great LCD resolution, nor as fast at rendering as you'd hope.
Is there some super special soldering that needs to be done in order to install a Quadro FX 4500 or GeFore 7800 GT? Is that why Apple isn't providing upgrades for their 6600 userbase?
I realize they need special firmware in order to work on Apple motherboards, that's why Nvidia offers no Mac support...but once again, wth?
Apple Store employee's have been recommending I go buy one at Fry's....lol. Gee, if only it was so easy.
Unfortunately there is no upgrade available for PCI-Express PowerPC Mac's beyond the Nvidia GeForce 6600, which I already have, it was stock in my machine, and it's NOT good enough.

Is Mountain Lion just too much for my MAC?

I was running Snow Leopard and it was great everything ran smooth and everything. I needed to upgrade to iMovie 11 which I couldnt due unless I upgraded to Mountain Lion.
Now my computer just runs sluggish. Everything lags now, from internet browsing to itunes to everything. Ever since I upgraded its been like a downgrade.
My mac is a early 2008 model macbook pro. Is Mountain Lion just too much for my computer or is there anything I can do to fix this?

RIPJDilla wrote:
For someone who has never put together a computer or anything of that nature, how hard or risky is installing it.
It's easy. Apple even provides instructions for you: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1270
Crucial has a little app you can install that will examine your system and suggest upgrade options:
http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/MacOS.aspx
You don't have to buy from them, though they are a good vendor, as is OWC / MacSales.

I want to install Mountain Lion on my 2008 iMac. My current OS is Snow Leopard 10.8.6. I've heard ML may be too much for this iMac. I would appreciate anyone's advice.

I want to install Mountain Lion on my 2008 iMac. My current OS is Snow Leopard 10.8.6 and there is 4GB RAM. I've heard ML may be too much for this iMac and may slow it down. Has anyone had any problems with this upgrade?

See > http://www.apple.com/osx/specs OS X Mountain Lion requires a Mid 2007 iMac or newer, and your iMac can run Mountain Lion without any problem. 4 GB of memory are enough for Mountain Lion, but if you are going to use heavier applications, maybe you will need more RAM
Before upgrading, you must make a Time Machine backup and/or a clone with Carbon Copy Cloner, and check that your applications are supported > http://www.roaringapps.com

I own CS 5Premium. Reading the FAQs, it seems I am eligible to upgrade to CS 6 but I can't find the upgrade to purchase and download. I can't upgrade to CC because $49 per month is too much for me -- I don't use this product for work. The $29 offer seems

I own CS 5 Design Premium. Reading the FAQs, it seems I am eligible to upgrade to CS 6 but I can't find the upgrade to purchase and download. I can't upgrade to CC because $49 per month is too much for me -- I don't use this product for work. The $29 offer seems reasonable but $49 is way too much. I don't need the majority of the programs included in CC, but subscribing to just three of them will cost way more. Really not sure what to do here :-(

Thanks Ned. I did find this page, however it isn't an upgrade. I have been purchasing Adobe products for years so that I could just pay the upgrade price for current products. With the current system, I would be paying much more than I would for an upgrade. For example, I have been using my version of CS for at least three years. The upgrade cost me $750 so that comes out to around $21 per month. I guess I have no options as far as upgrading except for paying for the overpriced CC. Oh well, time to start looking for alternatives. It was just so convenient to have the same programs at home that I use at work.

Seek easy and safe way for average users to manage the contents of Portal.

Dear all,
My boss today requested me to provide a easy, safe way for average users in my company to manage the contents of Portal themselves.
My boss request users can upload files, documents, images and text into Portal.
I know that Oracle Portal provides security control for editing Portal. But it also provides a quite complex operations for manage the contents of Portal.
I am afraid average users cannot manage it easily.
Can anyone have experience on the issues and can you give me suggestion?
Thanks a lot
George (HK)

Hi Vijay.B,
We can give privileges to manage the contents of the portal page.
Create a group and add the users into that group and for the page level privilege >>add this group as manage.
The members of the group can manage the page.I know the above is the standard strategy for users to manage the portal contents.
But, as an average user, I think it is still to complicated to manage.
For my case, I need to provide a means for average users to add news to the portal, so my priliminary idea is that I will create a portlet for news entries such as news heading, hyperlinks, text and save the entries in DB. Then, on the homepage of Portal, I will create another portlet for displaying the news headlines with hyperlink pointing to the actual URL.
thanks
George
Regards,
Vijay.B

Maybe too much for me sli/plat neo 4 no pst with pci e

My stats are in my sig. Maybe too much for me but I been fighting for 3 weeks and 2 days. Whenever my winfast is in pci-e it throws memory error. Take it out and throw in a 8mb pci card into another slot works fine. I have tried diffrent powersupplies and memory. Was told the board was ok but did not see it for myself. Did see the card work . I have removed from case and sli switch checked , backplate coolers, I even did a cartwheel still no post with pci-express. Any ideas
this is on a winchester 3500 +

Then do the following: enter in BIOS and press Shift+F2 and after Alt+F3 then go to the Cell Menu and you will see one option called NV/ATI SpeedUp set it to disable save the BIOS and shutdown remove the PCI card and put your PCI-E card in and start the comp, see if it starts.
If not then you have an incompatible PCI-E card, if you are sure that the card is not faulty.
Be well....

How can I tweak firefox to use less of RAM?100MB+ is too much for my system.thanks

Ok,
I have latest updated version of firefox.
I have hp510 laptop with 1 GB of RAM.
My problem is that firefox is really good but uses too much of RAM(100 MB or more) while in usage.
How can I tweak firefox to use less RAM, as my system gets hammered.
Thank you.
Danny

thanks.
I opened my extensions, and all are disabled, except ADBLOCK.
I usually clean my history on weekly basis, sometimes even on daily basis.
When I use firefox, most of the time ther is no other application in use by me (I don't encounter all those back apps for the system).
Most of the time, I have only 2 windows open , very rare there more.
The issue is that even at starting of firefox session I can see in task manager there is minimum 95 MB or charge, without any work done by me.
I usually have charge about 370-390 MB of RAM, but when I open Firefox it gets me up to 500 or more.

2GB RAM too much for 1Ghz Powerbook?

Hi
In order to speed up my G4 17" 1 Ghz Powerbook, especially for Photoshop Elements, I upgraded to 2GB RAM. The Crucial Memory Scanner said that was the max allowable (although I ended up buying Samsung memory from an eBay dealer). My computer seems to be actually working slower now, though it is basically working ok. On looking at the tech spec for my Powerbook from Apple Support I then found this: "two SO-DIMM slots support up to 1GB".
Have I put in too much RAM now (who is right about my memory capacity - Apple or Crucial?), or does it make a difference that I bought cheaper RAM than Crucial or Kingston for example? (Presumably if the RAM was suspect I'd have bigger problems?)
Excuse the scattergun questions - I'm just trying to work out if I'd be better off reinstalling my original pair of 512MB modules, or leave in the 2GB and look at other issues in my computer for improving speed.
Many thanks.

To add to eww's excellent advice, there is a note on my RAM vendor's website page for your PowerBook stating that the 17" G4 1G PowerBook is one of four PowerBooks that uses "bus slewing" and have special RAM requirements.
I recall a couple of years ago there was a little...well, call it a "public disagreement" for lack of a cruder term....among RAM vendors over bus slewing and the right RAM. Crucial was accused in these forums and by other companies of failing to recognize the requirements bus slewing placed on the RAM. However, this seems to have settled down as I see posts here stating more recent Crucual RAM worked. You could call Crucial and ask if the part number you bought supports bus slewing. I'm sure they will make certain you get the correct type from them.
Oops, nearly forgot! Bus slewing is explained in this Apple Technical paper on the 15" 1 G PowerBook. Scroll down about a half page to the section "Processor and Bus Slewing."

Aperture too much for an amateur?

Is Aperture too much program for an amateur? I have used Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS2(still learning)on a Windows machine. I hear really good things about Aperture such as ease of use and not to bad of a learning curve.
In trying to break away from Windows, I would like to have a better program for my photo editing than iPhoto and thought maybe Aperture would be perfect or is PS Elements worth a look for apple? Any thoughts before I shell out any money?
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

What is it you want beyond iPhoto and Elements?
For image editing Aperture is almost certainly easier than the Photoshop products as Aperture is designed just for photography and PS does everything and then some; but Aperture doesn't do local editing.
Aperture is not trivial. You of course can use it right away, but to use it effectively will take some work. I'm moving over from iView MediaPro. I was using IVMP rather than iPhoto because iPhoto was too far behind IVMP when I got interested. I working through the Luna/Long training book, and Long's book. I jumped to Aperture as I had wanted to use more RAW and Aperture made it practical.
If you search a bit in this forum you'll find plenty of (true) comments pointing out that PS and Aperture are complimentary not competitors. For most people Aperture will take care of most of their editing, but PS will be needed for selective editing.
It might be worth waiting for Elements 5 to see what it brings. Since the next round of Creative Suite is due early next year (beta out now), Elements shouldn't be too far behind. Lightroom will be coming along in that time frame too presumably.
Aperture is mostly about organizing images and handling RAW images.
Of course a dedicated amateur can use it, but I suspect if one doesn't use it regularly it might not be as useful. That's because there's so much to it, and much to forget.
iMac Intel Duo Mac OS X (10.4.7)

FCE 4 - too much for average user?

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