FCP <-> FCE interaction
 

I was wondering if anyone has worked with moving projects between Final Cut Pro (6) and Final Cut Express?

I'm going to be collaborating with someone who only has access to FCE and I was wondering if there's any compatibility issues to work out?

Can he load my FCP projects in it? Any fx, transitions, etc. to avoid if he can load my projects?

Will we have to drop to doing XML exports/imports?

I don't have any experience with FCE so I don't know what to watch out for, but any help before we get rolling on this would be beneficial.

Thanks!

from my experience,
I believe you can go from FCE to FCP, but not from FCP to FCE.
At leasts thats how it was when I upgraded to FCP. my FCE projects read, but I couldn't open a FCP document in FCE. Hope that helps

Good question. I'd be wary and assume that it's only one way conversion, but there is some chance it could go back and forth. However, FCP isn't very good about compatibility-- even a slight update, 5.1 to 5.1.4 gives a message "this project must be updated", if I recall correctly.

FCE and FCP are basically the same program now, with more interaction with the suite [and the suite itself] with FCP. FCP also has a few more plugins that are not in FCE, so you would want to be careful of using those if it did work.

I'd guess, though, that EDLs or XML would be fairly smooth because they are so similar. I tried that with a friend of mine working with Premiere on a PC.... no go. But with FCE, I wouldn't be surprised if it's easy.

Thanks for the feedback, gents. I'll post an update if I can figure out how to make it work outside of the EDLs and XML.

Honestly I haven't kept up with the latest versions of either application recently, but I think there are some major differences. Unless I'm mistaken, FCE can't edit 24p for example. Compare the specs of the two programs here:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/...pro/specs.html
http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/specs.html

Basically the latest FCE is what FCP was before it went to editing HD