Review by Nate

This is easily the best solution for non-professional video editing on a Mac. It’s much more flexible (and in my experience, much quicker to work with once you’ve gotten used to it) than iMovie, and not nearly as expensive as Final Cut Studio. In my opinion Apple has created a very nice balance between versatility and cost with this exceptional piece of software. I’m very happy with it and it has everything I need (at least for now).

I upgraded from FCE 2.0 (I also have FCP 5) and so I don’t really miss the Livetype and Soundtrack content that others are complaining is missing in this set. As far as I can tell, FCE 4 has all I’ll ever need until I make the leap to Final Cut Studio. I am very impressed by the ease with which FCE 4 will capture AVCHD video content and by the fact that Final Cut Express allows me to take all of the footage I’ve captured in other formats (DV, HDV, H.264) with various camcorders and place it all on the same timeline. I had Final Cut Pro 5 and it wouldn’t allow me to do that - I would have had to upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2. What I’ve realized in playing around with FCE 4 is that it has all the functions that I ever did in fact use from Final Cut Pro 5, so I’ve been very happy with it and it will allow me to finish work on a small documentary project that I’d put off because it was such a pain to manage the different file formats in FCP 5.