Editing MKII in Final Cut Express
 

Hi, I'm fairly new to the video editing world and would like to immerse myself incrementally into further expense having got the 5D MKII, Blackbird and Zoom for external audio. I intend to produce a documentary and don't have much need for special effects but was wondering whether I can comfortably get by with Final Cut Express 4 (Mac users please advise). Am I missing anything significant by not getting Final Cut Pro straight off? Have read many reviews, just about all positive but would like to hear from those more experienced. I know one of the key questions is what will I do with the final product. Let's say I want to have it aired on TV? Ambitious maybe but I just want to get an idea of how this software is viewed and where it may be limited. Thanks for any advice.

If you concentrate on making the best possible source material, good video and especially good audio, then make a serious effort to log and store everything so you can always get back to any part of it, you'll make any eventual edit easier and ultimately better. Make sure you keep a backup copy of your original files though.
Although I haven't done it myself I imagine you could use MPEGmediastream
(a free/donation download) to convert the MkII video to something imovie 08 or 09 will like, then do your rough editing there. It is really cheap and you may already own it.
You might consider spending your next few dollars on a way to get good audio to go with a great camera. An off camera recorder like the zoom or similar can be synced with a clap, countdown, or flash. Again, log, backup and store all the audio, you can sync it in the future when you do a serious edit.
The most important element of shooting a documentary is capturing the material when you can, so shoot early, often, and don't forget to log everything.

Thanks Denis. I pretty much have the audio taken care of. I happen to live with 2 people who process audio day and night. I also have a long list of practical matters to think about like you said logging and storing all this stuff...I can see the hard drives lining the back of my work desk now. FCE4 seems a really inexpensive but well featured program, I can't imagine what FCPro does with the difference in price!

FCE has a great price/quality ratio. I don't have a 5D mkII yet (waiting for 25p, listen Canon??).

Only problem of FCE is that it is not possible to edit in true progressive 1080p30, not a big problem if you don't do moves or effects, which would be rendered in frames... Only solution, to work in 720p30!

FCP is a suite of programs and besides FC, you get DVD Studio Pro to make DVDs and Motion to do animation, it has a lot more things than FCE, but costs 7x...

[QUOTE=Only problem of FCE is that it is not possible to edit in true progressive 1080p30, not a big problem if you don't do moves or effects, which would be rendered in frames... Only solution, to work in 720p30!

FCP is a suite of programs and besides FC, you get DVD Studio Pro to make DVDs and Motion to do animation, it has a lot more things than FCE, but costs 7x...[/QUOTE]

Not so keen on effects but don't know what moves are.... and I suppose I could get someone else to do output for DVD after?

This has been fixed as of August 2008 -- the 4.0.1 update added support for full 1920x1080 30p.

The major differences between FCE and FCP in my experience are:

* No proxy file support
* No support for external control surfaces like the full-featured Mackie MCUPRO or the inexpensive Behringer BCF2000
* No multicam editing
* No media manager

There are lots of minor differences, too, like a slightly lower number of undos and video tracks, and some that don't matter for 5D work, like no timecode, RS-422 or ability to export to tape.

Thanks Tramm and Xavier. Good info. I could probably live with most of the differences.
How does multicam editing work?

Hi, Tramm, before answering I fired up FCE to check, after reading your post I rechecked. So I attached my HD easy setup window, I have a paid copy of FCE 4.01... Where is the 1080p30 option???

For Peter, multicam editing in FCP works well, you need a capable machine, able to read and decode several video streams and probably doesn't work well with very compressed codecs as AVCHD... Search in Youtube, there are several tutorials...

Will do. thanks for the ongoing commentary.

I'm not sure -- my FCE 4.0.1 shows the same "Easy setup" options as yours. When I drop a 1920x1080 30 fps file onto the sequence and select to have it change the sequence settings to match the clip, the media pane shows the sequence and clip as 1920x1080 @ 30 fps.

Never tried that, I have to!!!! ;-DD

I only know FCP not FCE but I assume that this part will be the same. You probably need to add that option. Just because there is no matching Easy Setup does not mean that a particular format is not supported. It's very easy to create your own Easy Setups just copy & edit one of the existing ones.

Unfortunately FCE is different in this, you can't make sequences with the audio and video codec you like, as you can do in FCP.