Work with DV, HDV, or AVCHD footage — or all three — in a single Timeline, sculpting your video quickly and precisely using pro-level editing and trimming tools. Final Cut Express 4 supports a virtually unlimited number of video tracks, lets you add amazing real-time special effects and transitions, and provides powerful color correction and matting tools.
Main Features
More Powerful Video Editing for DV, HDV, and AVCHD - Capture clips from your camcorder over a single FireWire or USB cable, then use the new Open Format Timeline in Final Cut Express 4 to edit together DV, HDV, and AVCHD material, even if they have different frame rates. Fine-tune your choices with professional ripple, roll, slip, and slide editing functions, either in the Timeline or a dedicated Trim window. And when it comes time to add effects, Dynamic RT lets you instantly preview effects, filters, transitions, and multistream composites in real time without rendering.
A Workflow That Grows with You - Final Cut Express is designed to provide a simple, straightforward workflow. Capturing video, editing clips, and adding transitions or effects are all a click away in the intuitive, drag-and-drop interface. In addition, you can customize the interface by setting window configurations, adding shortcut buttons, and resizing track sizes and asset thumbnails to fit your preferences and streamline your workflow.
Expanded Creative Capabilities - Adding professional finishing touches to your video is possible through fine control of more than 200 transitions, filters, and effects. Combined with compositing, titling, and keyframing, they give you the ability to create visually rich, dynamic video projects. Get ready to expand your creative options too, because Final Cut Express 4 supports third party FxPlug filters and effects, the same plug-in architecture used by Final Cut Studio. And audio is not forgotten, as Final Cut Express provides 99 audio tracks with powerful sound editing tools and more than a dozen audio filters.
More Than One Way to Show Off - Make sure everyone gets to see your finished project. Whether your final product will be output to videotape or QuickTime for distribution over the web, iPhone or iPod, you e sure to find that Final Cut Express delivers the power, quality, and features that make it the ideal choice for advanced moviemaking.
Use Movies Captured from AVCHD Camcorders - With Final Cut Express 4, you can Log and Transfer AVCHD video files quickly and easily to your Intel processor-based Mac over USB. The Log and Transfer window allows you to review and select specific clips you want to transfer, saving you time and hard drive space. Once the clips are transferred to Apples Intermediate Codec on your hard drive, you can start frame-accurate editing in real time, complete with multilayer video, text, or graphic compositing. Want to check your handiwork? Preview it full screen whenever youd like using your primary or secondary display.
Mix Different Formats in a Timeline - Whether you have DV, HDV, or AVCHD content, the new Open Format Timeline in Final Cut Express 4 lets you mix and match clips, even if they use different frame sizes and frame rates. Freely edit a combination of HDV, AVCHD, and DV, including NTSC and PAL, all in real time using the same industry-leading editing and trimming tools found in Final Cut Pro. Set your sequence to an HD resolution and DV clips will be scaled to fit automatically; conversely, if your sequence is set to DV resolution, HD clips can be cropped or letterboxed for a perfect fit.
Expand Your Effects for Visually Rich Looking Movies - Final Cut Express comes with more than 200 transitions, filters, and effects including over 50 new FxPlug plug-ins. These include standard effects like dissolves, wipes, and blurs to more stylized FxPlug effects like Light Rays, Line Art and Insect Eye. When you need even more creative options, expand your effects palette using optional third-party FxPlug effects, the same plug-in architecture used by Final Cut Studio. Many FxPlug effects use your graphics card for accelerated rendering--so the better your graphics card, the faster your FxPlug rendering.
Bring Your iMovie 8 projects into Final Cut Express 4 - Moving from iMovie 8 to Final Cut Express is easy: iMovie projects can be exported directly to Final Cut Express--with all of their cuts and dissolve transitions intact. All you do is open the Final Cut XML document and start using the advanced functions of Final Cut Express to enhance your iMovie 8 projects.
System Requirements
Hard Disk
500MB of disk space
Memory
1GB of RAM
Processor
1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo.