Final Cut Pro 5

I've only been using final cut pro for about 8 months now, and in the last few weeks using this book I have learned almost as much as the 7 1/2 months before that. The book is exactly what it says it is: a fcp training book. Just follow each exercise one at a time, and you won't be disappointed. I feel I should comment on what a few other reviewers said though. First, to the reviewer who said something like "Ok if you like computer manuals", that's just wrong. This is nothing like a technical manual. I have a few of those for fcp, and when you use those you really need to know what you're looking for before you can find it. Not the ideal situation when you're new to fcp. And as a matter of fact, this book even says that it is not meant to be used as a reference manual. Instead, it's the fcp training, but self paced. For the user who said it might not be that good if you don't have the time, well, learning fcp is a major undertaking, and one way or another you have to serve your time to really learn the tool. So yeah, you'll spend time with this book. But the great thing is that every lesson starts with a time estimate (usually around an hour). If you ask me that's better than just wading through endless information. Put everything else aside, and focus on the exercise for an hour or so. One last thing, I really love how each exercise builds on the shortcuts used in the previous exercises. I'm a hardcore keyboard shortcut user in every program I use, and this book is really helping me to nail those down for fcp. I'll definitely move on to the next apple fcp training book that follows this one.

I took a Jr. College Class on Final Cut Pro 5 and this was the textbook. The teacher would lecture for an hour and the rest of the time, we worked through the lessons in the book. At the end of the class, we were all able to produce our own short videos. This book is very step-by-step and to be honest, I think that I got more out of going through the lessons than listening to the teacher. I suggest Rick Young's "The Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro 5 for new users and professionals" as a companion book. They both say the same thing, but in different ways. The lessons took me a little longer than the time indicated in each lesson frontpiece, but I sure learned a whole lot about making movies and FCP!

Very powerful hands-on learning tool when combined with the enclosed DVD. Covers all the functions of Final Cut Pro and allows you to neatly learn hands-on. Kudos!

If you are ready to get serious about editing video, this self-paced Apple-authorized guide to Final Cut Pro is the bast place to start. It starts with basic video editing techniques and takes you all the way through Final Cut Pro's powerful advanced features, delivering comprehensive training (about a five day 40 hour concentrated class) in one project-based book. Each chapter presents a complete lesson in some aspect of video editing and finishing with hands on projects for you to complete as you go. All the files used are on the DVD-ROM included with the book. This is the official Apple training manual as used in their classes on Final Cut. As such it is a complete course, normally taught over about 40 hours. This book is not just about the new features. It starts with an introduction to the editing screen and goes through all of the capabilities of Final Cut and of LiveType. On the CD there are three sets of footage: Smithsonian's 'A Thousand Roads," a behind the scenes Motocross film, and a music video. These are used as part of the training.

I just finished this book. At roughly 600 pages I got through it in about three weeks. Featuring 16 lessons, this book lets you know how long each lesson will take (i.e. "Approximately 60 minutes"). Lesson length varies from 60-90 minutes, which makes "one lesson a day" very reasonable/possible. Before I had this book I knew how to use the basic functions of FCP, but I didn't know anything about using FCP's "real" features (Canvas Edit Overlay interface, backtiming, filters, Trim Edits). This book got me through all that rather quickly. I knew more or less what to edit prior to reading this book, but now I know *how* I can achieve certain edits quickly and efficiently now. Another plus is that Diana takes you step by step, throwing in shortcut hotkeys so that the reader remembers them as they go. Helpful shortcut keys are reinforced throughout each lesson, with a short review at the end (makes for a handy reference later). The only problem I had with the book was the lesson on Multicam Editing: I followed the steps, but either there's a discrepancy with my FCP 5 software/interface setup *or* the lesson itself had errors. I was able to side step the problem (later in that lesson there was another method of multicam editing that helped me recover from my standstill) and continue through the book. Glad I waited for this book to come out so I could step throug FCP 5. Had fun with it! Highly recommended if you want to get up and running with this software quickly. My goal is to take Level 1 Certification now that I have completed this book.