Good substitute for Final Cut Express?

Question

Good substitute for Final Cut Express?

I tried a free month of Final Cut Express over a year ago. When done I found that the version I got If I bought was a newer version. I presume the two versions involved were 3.5 and 4.0. So I must have tried 3.5.

I liked it a lot! It would have been $200 as I recall. Now I find that It's no longer available. It had all the function I want and I cannot afford to pay for Final Cut Pro considering the relatively small amount of "work" I intend to do with it. I've since upgraded to Mountain Lion and it appears I cannot run Final Cut Express on this system. Plus, my iMac is mid 2010 with 4gb memory.

Is there some app out there that can do what FCE did?

One function in particular was very useful to me as a musician -- being able to stretch the audio from my Zoom recorder to match the audio/video from my camcorder.

Thanks for the help.

Posted on Apr 14, 2015 11:31 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 15, 2015 2:34 AM in response to Bruce Delaplain1

Final Cut Express was discontinued by Apple in June, 2011, almost 4 years ago. They replaced both it and the legacy Final Cut Pro with Final Cut Pro-X, which is available for download from the AppStore for $299.99 (USD). It is nothing like the old Final Cut Pro, or Final Cut Express - a totally new app from the ground up.

Also available for Macs in the way of non-liinear video editing is Adobe Premier and Premier Elements, which is currently on a special promotion for $69.99 (USD). Or you can use the full blown version; Adobe Premier, which is available through a subscription fee.

-DH

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Answer 2

Apr 15, 2015 10:59 AM in response to David Harbsmeier

Hello David

Quick question which may be helpful for Bruce:

I'm familiar with the controversy over the original release of FCX. There was great disatisfaction and disappointment because the first release appeared to be more of a glorified iMovie. Many professional features were replaced with templates creating a 'dumbed down' platform, (nothing like FCP).

Many FC Pro users were outraged. Many abandoned FC, and went with Avid.

Is it true Apple admitted to a 'flawed design' with X, and put back a lot of Pro features that were missing?

Thanx

Mike

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Answer 3

Apr 15, 2015 2:19 PM in response to ENIGMACODE

Within 12 months Apple had included most features professionals required and have gone on from strength to strength since then.

If you want to try it free for a month download it from here:-

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/trial/

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Answer 4

Apr 15, 2015 7:40 PM in response to Ian R. Brown

I would like to try it. However, that will have to wait until I have a new computer.

Does it really require (something like) 10 or more GB of memory? I ran Express with 4GB.

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Answer 5

Apr 15, 2015 9:13 PM in response to Bruce Delaplain1

Oops. thought I had changed that. I can't run final cut pro x without upgrading to another OS, which may be problematic for Pro Tools

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Answer 6

Apr 16, 2015 1:19 AM in response to Bruce Delaplain1

It only needs 4GB RAM.

You can quite easily create a small partition on your iMac's hard drive using Disk Utility on which you can install Yosemite and FCP X.

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