iMovie or Final Cut Pro X?

if you need help deciding between iMovie or Final Cut Pro 10 you're in the right place I'm gonna run through all the pros and cons of both pieces of software and help you choose what's best for you hey there welcome to the video I'm mark brown with editors keys now if you're new to video editing or even if you're a seasoned pro consider subscribing to the channel because that's what we're all about now in this video we're gonna run through iMovie and Final Cut Pro 10 and go through the pros and cons to help you decide which you should choose to edit your videos so let's jump into it so let's start with iMovie now iMovie is completely free and you know what it's really hard to argue with free software so if you've recently bought a MacBook Pro or an iMac you'll find that iMovie will actually already be installed on your computer and if you have an iPad or an iPhone go to the App Store as you can download this app completely free of charge so it's already a great place to start now iMovie is actually quite powerful if you're just looking to produce them fairly basic videos for YouTube then I'm really I think in a lot of cases will do 99% of what you need it's very easy to use and it's very very fast so if you want to upload videos to YouTube it's the best place to start but let's debunk some of the myths about iMovie okay so mark I want to edit 4k video for my iPhone and iMovie just cannot do that this is myth number one I see this all over online and we get emailed about this a lot there's this common myth that iMovie cannot edit or export in 4k and this is not true you can edit 4k video even from your iPhone and you can export 4k straight up to YouTube now there is a little catch to this how do you do it you have to make sure that the first clip that you import into your iMovie project is a 4k piece of footage if you import a low quality photo or a low quality HD bit of video footage then your timeline and your project will just be HD and you'll only see the option to export in full HD so remember if you import the first as a 4k clip then your timeline will be 4k and then you can edit your video and export it in all the glorious 4k Chris penis so whilst we're talking about video quality and export settings let's talk a little bit more about one of the limitations of iMovie and that is aspect ratios now an aspect ratio is in simple terms the sixteen by nine cinema format or the square format that you see on the Instagram feed or Instagram stories which is the portrait mode now if you want to create and edit a video for youtube or LinkedIn or Facebook and you just need that sixteen by nine just kind of regular TV size that you'll see the movie sighs then iMovie is completely fine however if you want to start uploading square videos to say your Instagram feed all you want to do those call instagrams story portrait videos and edit those together you cannot really do this in iMovie as there's no way to actually change the aspect ratio of your project so this is something to bear in mind if you're thinking about iMovie and of course you can do this in Final Cut Pro 10 now the second myth I see a lot of people talking about is color correction and stabilization they say you know I want to edit in iMovie but I just wish I could do basic color correction to improve the look of the video or I want to stabilize my shaky video footage and you can't do that in iMovie again this is not true you certainly can and this is great for a free piece of software you can actually adjust your brightness contrast and some of the basic color correction tools that you'll see in Final Cut are actually here in some ways in iMovie next if you've got that shaky wedding footage or you've taken a little show on your phone and it's not that stable you can still stabilize in iMovie so if you want to edit footage together color corrector a little bit and use stabilization you can do all of this in iMovie so you're probably thinking hey I movie sounds pretty good that doesn't seem to be really any limitations as of yet well there are a couple that are worth noting and the first big one is its limit in video tracks now a video track is the amount of videos that you can layer on top of each other in some cases you may need to do this to add video effects or if you want to say create a shop where there's four or five different video pieces on the same shot to make up say I think Skype call for example you can't really do that with in iMovie so if you're looking to do projects for businesses this becomes apparent this problem becomes apparent very very fast so that's something which is very limited within iMovie secondly is key framing now if you haven't heard of key framing before it essentially gives you the ability to add adjustments to clips as your clips are playing so let's say for example you want to mask the clip out and you want to a shot to come in and kind of take over from another shot then you can't do this in programs like iMovie they're just far too limited you can cut one clip to the next but you can't mask you can't add a keyframe and you can't really add keyframes to audio either so let's say you want to make the music go up and down and higher and lower you can't really do this with in iMovie next let's talk effects and titles so iMovie actually has quite a lot of titles and some really nice effects but they are quite limited and you cannot import new ones so if you're putting out a couple of bits of content a month I think I movie will be just about fun you can of course edit the titles and you can have some very basic titles so it's fine for business it's fine for probably like 80% of youtubers if you get bored of these there's no way of importing more effects or titles into the program as you can with Final Cut Pro 10 the other thing is when you start producing content in any great volume you'll start to see effects in TV commercials or you may just see another youtuber you like who has some kind of transition or light effect and you'll think that would look so good for my videos if you're using iMovie there's a great chance you're not going to be able to do that within the program and you won't be able to go out and buy that plug-in and import it into iMovie either so if you want to do stuff like that then Final Cut Pro 10 is the program for you so they are some of the most common pros and cons of iMovie but what I do like about iMovie is that it's so simple to use I think can be actually one of the best video editors for a lot of creators out there especially if you're just getting started and the great thing about both of these programs being made by Apple is they're quite similar so if you start off with iMovie and you outgrow it you learn it you think okay maybe I need some more effects and filters in there I think it's easier to move from iMovie to Final Cut than it is from Final Cut back down to iMovie so you know start off with iMovie is completely free learn the ropes you know get used to video editing and then you can invest in Final Cut but let me tell you some of the pros and cons of Final Cut Pro 10 so one of the first things you notice when you open up Final Cut Pro 10 is that there are a lot of menus there are a lot of tabs and it can be quite confusing for some people so this is why I recommend you starting out in iMovie it's it's much easier place to start if you're new to the video editing process but what you can do within Final Cut which you can't do in iMovie which we mentioned before is you can create projects in different sizes in different aspect ratios and with different frame rates now a frame rate is important to understand if you want to do slow-motion footage so for example a lot of projects in the UK filmed at 25 P in America 24 P now if you bring in some 60 PS is 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second footage into a 24 25 frames per second time line you can use that footage and create some beautiful slow-mo footage you can do this in iMovie but it's a little bit harder when you don't have full control over your project settings Pro number two is that you can have multiple video channels and audio channels too so you can really do whatever you like to your videos you can add multiple effects you can add multiple instances of the same video and you can even do multicam editing so if you're thinking of doing a a podcast with say 3 or 4 guests and you film at all you can edit it much faster than you can by taking each separate clip and pulling it into iMovie so definitely want for you podcasters next up is color correction and effects so if you have a good camera which can film in raw or hlg if you're on a sony or s log something like that it gives you more dynamic range now when you use a program like Final Cut Pro 10 or even Adobe Premiere you get to dive into that data and you can actually really improve the color correction and the looks of your footage and this means if a shot is overexposed or underexposed you can pull up those shadows or highlights and really get the look you're looking for without damaging the original video file which is really really cool you've also got whole host of transitions of video effects of sound effects audio effects and Apple also include load of sound effects within the program too now I like about Final Cut is you can import more effects so if you go through all of the Final Cut ones that are inbuilt and you find there a bit limiting or they don't do quite what you need there's websites like motion VFX where you can search their website and you can actually download effects that plug straight into Final Cut Pro 10 and then you can achieve some of the sort of high end effects that you may see on your favorite TV programs or movies if you want to link to motion of effects I'll put one down below and that should also give you a better discount on any plugins if you want to check those out next is audio editing Final Cut has a whole host of effects to improve your audio effects so if you're recording outside and there's traffic noise you can get rid of that quite easily if you're recording a piece to camera like I am now there's multiple effects for improving your vocals and your voice to get everything right now of course this comes with a huge learning curve so again if you're new to video editing maybe think about starting with iMovie because even though final can do a lot it can do almost an unlimited amount of effects and beautiful wonderful things for your video you know this is quite a complicated job don't think that you're gonna pick up Final Cut Pro 10 and just because the software can do a lot that you're going to be able to do all of these amazing things instantly there is a huge learning curve when it comes to Final Cut Pro 10 people go to university to learn how to video edit they do this as a full-time job and it's actually quite a highly paid job in the TV and TV and film industry so again don't think you're going to pick up Final Cut Pro 10 because it has all of these effects and features and you're gonna be able to do it all just off the it's going to be a lot of lessons and tutorials and remember check out the other Final Cut tutorials on our channel if you want to learn more about Final Cut Pro 10 but just bear in mind that there is a steep learning curve to the program as opposed to iMovie which is actually very very easy to use now if you are learning Final Cut Pro 10 or iMovie for the first time one great thing is that you can get the editors keys keyboard covers for iMovie and Final Cut Pro 10 and these contain all of the keyboard shortcuts to help you edit faster than you can by just using your mouse or going through menus to find the tools that you need so if you want to link to the editors Keys site for these covers I'll put that link in the description below for you but anyway I hope this video has helped you understand a little bit more about iMovie and Final Cut Pro 10 you know leave me a comment below if you've got any questions at all I know a lot of you are new to video editing there may be something that you think is very very simple and you just can't find the answer to it so if you've got a question for me please leave me a comment below I promise I do get back to every single comment I may take a few days to do that but I will get back to you eventually so thanks for watching and please do subscribe to the channel and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Editors Keys

Views: 126,575

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Id: zVSC68T_6w4

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020