Help w/final cut express

treebeard

treebeard

Active member
i had this in the movie maker cult, but it has not received any responses yet, so i figure this is the best way to get an answer quickly...

so i just got fce, and obviously im struggling a bit. i'll figure out most of it on my own, but i have a few questions that i want answered by someone other than the manual.

1. how do i use livetype? i dont even know where to go to find it

2.how do i use placeholders? the manual said something about them, but i couldnt find how to actually use them

3. is it worth doing a rough edit on imovie 08, then exporting to fce? (theres a video on apple.com showing it, if you dont know what i mean)

4. why do the non-bold effects make me re-render the clip every time i use one? is there any way to avoid this?

5. why is my camera dropping frames the second it starts importing? it never used to do this until today

6. how long did it take you to figure everything out, and is it worth going to a quick class at the mac store?

7. how do you add music?

its the newest version, 4.0, if that helps at all. i really appreciate any help you give me, and i promise +10 karma for any sort of help
 
I can only help you in a few things.

1. Livetype is a separate program, so you wont find it within final cut express, it will show up as a separate program. It should have installed when you installed FCE. Once you find it, it is rather easy to use, just watch a few tutorial on youtube to give you a general idea on how to use it.

7. To import music go to file. import files. and go to the song that you want. It will then show up in the top left box. drag it into the timeline. You will then have to render it.

and to answer one of your other questions, i sometimes use imovie then import it into fce. The footage is easier to work with in imovie because it divides it into the individual clips. I usually put all the clips that I want in the timeline of imovie and delete all the the ones that I don't want. At this point I usually import that project into fce. It just makes it a lot easier to work with your footage instead of sorting through one big clip.
 
and to answer number six
after i made about four edits i could understand the basics of how to use it. There are so many effects that you can do that you never really stop learning how to use it.
I wouldn't recommend going to a class, you would be amazed at how much you can learn through tutorials on youtube, that is how I learned to use it.
 
i personally learned everything in FCP myself. no tutorials or anything. it took about a month or two to be able to use it really comfortably.

and i would recommend saving your mp3 or mp4 files as .mov files before importing to FC. It likes to work with .mov better.

My shit always drops frames. It's not a big deal. You wont notice.

LOLZ. yeah but just fool around with every aspect of it.

AND I personally despise Livetype. I just use text in fc. Most of the shit in livetype is really corny and makes your movies look really amatuer.
 
i never use livetype either. it doesnt really look very good.

for music i always go to the song i want in itunes and convert it to an .AIF or whatever that is and then drag it to my desktop and from there to FC, it works fine and there is no rendering.

just play around with it a bit, make a few silly edits. after a while everything will be pretty familiar.

dropped frames happen.

i dont think there is a way around the rendering problem. just try to get it right the first time and you wont have to fine tune, although thats really hard...

 
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