iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[cteno4]

Erik,

Both will make movies you can play, only difference is the scope of what 
you can do with the
programs. kind of like mac paint (imovie) vs photoshop (final cut). final 
cut gives you total editing control with all the bells and whistles of a 
professional editing bay. imovie, while a great little program, only does 
the basics of cuts, transitions, titles and limited audio control. both 
will suck video off your dv camcorder with no problems (and back onto it 
if you want to make tapes). if you not working with a dv camera/player 
you will have to spend a couple of hundred for a ntsc to firewire (dv) 
converter box (the dazzle box at about $200 is a fantastic box). if you 
are just doing some simple video presentations that need some edits and 
narration, you'll find imovie will make your pocket book very happy 
(free) vs the final cut prices.

the other gotcha is learning curve. imovie is set up for most anyone to 
be editing with it w/in 10 minutes. final cut, although easier than many 
other professional editing packages, takes awhile to get use to and learn 
all the tricks and techniques even when you only want to do some simple 
tasks. 

one other problem is that final cut lets you do so much you can easily 
get carried away in the editing/effects and spend way more time on 
something that may have just needed a couple of well placed, simple 
cuts... with all the new tools in video editing today at the click of a 
mouse, content is being replaced by effects very quickly (as evidenced by 
all the pbs specials now, unfortunatly--but thats another soap box...) 
and really making the final products look flashy, but loose all their 
meat.

only other thing that might be useful to you is that the newest version 
of final cut has a huge amount of new compression stuff that will let you 
do much more tweaking of your final output mov file compression than 
imovie will. imovie does the basic compressions and a decent job of it, 
so if you're just doing a simple job it may fit the bill. I have done a 
few cdrom and exhibit projects that had movies made from imovie and 
finalcut and they looked fine as quicktimes with it being hard to tell 
which was which.

my suggestion would be to spend an hour or two and try making one of your 
more complicated movies on imovie and see if it works. if it does then 
you have just saved a lot of money and time and wait to buy finalcut when 
you really need it for a project!

best of luck,

jeff



Jeffrey H. Reynolds
6620 Michaels Dr.
Bethesda, MD  20817

301.469.8562

email: cteno4 at earthlink.net
       cteno4 at aol.com