Posted by bbbacres@bresnan.net on 03/18/06 18:45

You have lots of good advice from fellow readers, now let me give some.
Learning final cut pro is NOT easy. Its not that any single step is
hard, its just that if you wait any amount of time before revisiting
that step, you lose it. If you throw yourself into FCP for this
project it will work. But prepare for huge amounts of time conquering
little stops. (how do I create a new folder?, how do I move from
browser to canvas). Those things are simple to do once you know them,
but you will have to conquer them each several times at first, hard to
do if you have any time constraints at all. But I do know several
people who were forced into FCP during one project, and they just
fought their way into it. Its a good way to learn, but very
frustrating.

One argument is why choose? A documentary in good taste can have just
straight cuts and dissolves, and almost nothing else, perhaps an
occassional slow zoom onto a still photo. All those things you can do
in Imovie. Why not build the 99% interior of the movie, but then use
FCP for some fancy and production heavy beginning, or for other key
points? You could even hire someone from the local college for that.
For example, have them build you a nice beginning. Have them build
you a "lower 3rd) to put on screen to ID each interviewee. Use them
both. Use what you know for the part it can easily do.

One warning though that no one has mentioned. When you use Imovie, it
does not edit in native HDV, or even native DV for that matter. It
changes things when you download into the Apple Intermediate Codec.
Now in fact, the codec did not cause the image quality loss some
feared. It looks very very acceptable. You download and it converts
to the intermediate codec, you edit, then when you come out of the
computer it reformats the video into DV or HDV. This process is why
Imovies stunningly beat almost every other editing system in the race
to have HDV editing.

I am convinced its a good way to edit. But there is one draw back.
HDV is a "big" signal. It takes up lots of disk space. But get this:
when you transcode into Apple's intermediate Codec, the HDV signal is
made even bigger. Lots bigger. 10 minutes of HDV becomes a HUGE
signal. When you edit in native HDV at least it stays the original
size. This becomes prohibitive when editing as much footage as you.

So the other writers are right. You must 'pre-produce' the video a
first time, then finish it a 2nd time in the good format. If you can
only edit on your Apple because those are your limits (eg paper editing
does not click to you" you could probably download the stuff into
Imovie a little at a time, then quickly use the "share" (compress)
program to make it into a very tiny email Quicktime movie. Those (i
believe) can be imported into Imovie and edited. You might see if when
downloading the footage that first time you can make the time code show
on the video image for your logging. Make the full video, then make
it again, this time with full production skills.

Again, use both editing softwares, why not? Who says you can only use
one?

Bruce

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