Apple Final Cut Pro 4.1

Rating:
Summary: Don¿t waste your money
Review: Apple is quickly loosing market share to Avid and vegas ,and this is a quickly produced solution. Final cut follows with the standard Apple policy of falling several years behind the competition and then jumping 6 months ahead only to fall behind with no upgrades for years. After spending several weeks using this program I have gone back to Avid

My recommendation is to stay away from final cut and all apple products. For the same price as this you could buy a PC and Vegas 4.0

Rating:
Summary: Professional, impressive features tainted with complexity
Review: Final Cut Pro 4 is undoubltely the hyped "creme de la creme" of video editing software available from Mac, hence it's expensive price tag. If you are accustomed to ease, instinctive interfaces then you might want to think again when considering the purchase of this product. Although its wide variety of dazzling effects, and features is truly amazing, it's power hungry is definetely not for the faint of heart. For the professionals that have the paitence to accustom themselves to perhaps the most bizzare complex editing interface (i.e. simply having so many features can almost be a negative aspect) then this program is certainly for you. If you are use to feeling confident with an editing program "right off the bat" then consider reading up heavily on the manual and perhaps taking a training course before even using the program, because it's loaded with a myriad features. Although, while working with the program at school I never experienced any crashes or major bugs, I'm sure there are definetely some annoying ones (any editor knows that more complex and abundant the interfaces/features are, the more likely the chance there is for programming errors).

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST OF THE BEST
Review: Final cut pro 4.0 adds a lot of useful features that the version 3 didnt have. This includes soundtrack (create ur own music for royalty free use) and a new title maker that adds animations to your titles. With this a new compression program to make your movies for DVD and a lot of bug fixes from version 3, why would u want any other editing program. I know $1000 sounds a lot, but if you have the cash, this program is better than anything else, that includes those $15,000+ editing workstations as well. Simply put= THE BEST MONEY CAN BUY

Rating:
Summary: Regardless of what you hear...
Review: I have been editing for 20 years. FCP on a Dual 2.0 Ghz G5 is the best editing solution for the money I have ever seen. It blows away the $75k+ systems that I have used for less than a tenth of the price. FCP at less than $1,000 and a G5 at $$$$$$$ is all you need other than a camera. You can make broadcast quality video with this simple setup. $$$$$$$ for computer and software plus $$$$$$ for a camera that will hold up to a $$$$$$$Betacam... give me a break!!

Rating:
Summary: Sorry but it's got more bugs than FCP 3.04
Review: It's true, it has more new features and is a world beater as
far as other editing apps BUT FCP 3.0 is still the biggest
bang for buck simply because it has fewer bugs. While I
believe FCP 4.0 is probably two to three thousand dollars
worth of software combined in one package....it still needs
work. If you are running anything lower than OS X 10.2.5
you will also need to upgrade the OS and Quicktime as well.
My advice is: if you do not own FCP 3.0 then go ahead and
purchase FCP 4.0 because you'll be able to upgrade as soon
as Apple puts out 4.x etc. If you have FCP 3.0 then you might
want to wait until 4.x hits the shelves (assuming it does as
opposed to being a download). As an active editor I am forced
to wait rather than causing a lot of back-ups to safeguard
client's files. Regardless of all this, FCP is still King of Cuts.
For more information cruise the FCP forums and discussion
lists.

Rating:
Summary: Despite the Hype, FCP 4 is a Step Down for Many Power Users
Review: Unfortunately, several time-saving, creativity-enhancing features that I was accoustomed to in FCP 3 were removed for FCP 4. Functional draft renders, my favorite (albeit flawed) feature from FCP 3 no longer exist. This is quite an area of debate, but experienced editors should see why the new (largely useless) rendering system is far inferior to the previous one. The life-saving Shift-F function is also gone, the new "automatic" capturing system makes file management horribly inconvenient, and the online help file has been replaced with a cumbersome .pdf document. Support for Adobe Photoshop files is still poorly implemented. The bundled LiveType program is also much more awkward to use than one might expect from how it's been marketed. (LiveType is not an integrated extension of FCP, but a completely separate--and SLOW--application.) At this point, I feel I am a less efficient editor for having made this upgrade. Why Apple could not build on what they had instead of dropping helpful features is beyond me.