Apple's Final Cut Express HD ($299 direct) is a high-performance bundle that includes lighter versions of three programs from Final Cut Studio—the namesake editor plus titling application LiveType and loop-based music production tool Soundtrack. Though users migrating from iMovie will find the learning curve steep, the only features they'll likely miss are the WAV editor and the noise-reduction tool from Soundtrack Pro. It's not cheap (Adobe Premiere is only $99), but it's still a good buy.
Unlike Premiere Elements, which Adobe substantially remodeled to make more consumer-friendly, Apple simply cut features out of Final Cut to produce Final Cut Express, so users will encounter the same lean professional interface. Apple also supplies the manual on DVD, rather than the helpful paper manuals that ship with Final Cut.
Installation is the normal, polished Apple experience, and users who brave the interface will soon be happily trimming, splitting, and sequencing their clips in the desired order. They'll also be richly rewarded with strong core features such as nested and multiple open sequences, elegant Edit Overlay controls, and up to 99 audio and video tracks. Apple has added full key frame support, which was missing in previous versions, enhancing creative flexibility. Another new feature is Dynamic RT (real time), which ensures that audio and video previews are always shown at the highest quality the computer can produce.
Express converts incoming HDV to Apple's Intermediate Codec (AIC) during capture, mushrooming the data rate to over 36GB/hour, roughly triple that of native HDV. AIC takes up more disk space but is more responsive during editing than HDV's native MPEG-2. I previewed four HDV streams in picture-in-picture windows in real time on my MacBook Pro. This impressive performance means you'll see responsive HDV editing even on lower-end machines.
On the other hand, Apple removed Final Cut Pro's multicam feature from Express, so you'll have to edit multiple streams by hand. Express also doesn't include Compressor, Apple's highly functional batch-encoding tool. But the program can open Final Cut Pro project files, a nice convenience, and rendered our 3-minute test file to DV format in 8 minutes 22 seconds, almost exactly the time it took Final Cut Pro.
The LiveType titling application's libraries of moving textures, fonts, and text effects let beginners quickly create professional-quality titles. The only downside is workflow; to synchronize your title with background video closely you have to export a reference movie from Express, import it into LiveType, create and output your title from LiveType, and import the finished title into Express. Once you import your title into Express, however, round-trip editing simplifies tweaking.
We're not so enamored with SoundTrack, where Apple retained loop-based music creation but removed the WAV editor. That means no access to Apple's powerful noise-removal feature, which is ideal for the lower-quality camcorders most nonprofessionals use and the noisy environments they shoot in.
Final Cut Express's closest competitor is Adobe Premiere Elements ($100 direct), which gets the Editors' Choice for its more consumer-friendly interface, superior color correction, and better file output options, as well as integrated DVD authoring that's similar to iDVD in function. Still, Final Cut Express is a very capable tool, especially considering that Premiere Elements doesn't support HDV, has a less capable (though better integrated) titling function, and can't open multiple projects or sequences. Premiere Elements only runs on Microsoft Windows, and Final Cut Express is Mac-only, though it runs on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.
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