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On the second Thursday of each month, PT SLUG holds its general meeting. Each meeting features a guest speaker, who offers interesting information on Macintosh or related topics. Following the meeting, SLUG members will be available to answer questions. Meetings are at 7:00 p.m. at the Tri Area Community Center. Call Michael McKee 385-3631 for details.
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Mac Programs SIG

Our Mac Programs SIG (special interest group) which meets on the third Friday at the WSU computer lab, covers programs that come free with the Mac, such as Address Book, Preview, iCal, iPhoto, iTunes, Stickies, TextEdit, Widgets, and many more. The SIG will also cover AppleWorks from time to time. For more information contact one of the SIG leaders: Bob Snow: 437-0592 or Francesca Drum: 385-3346
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Digital Media SIG

Our Digital Media SIG is focused on mainly on photography related programs. In this SIG we cover photo enhancement and effects with a number of programs including iPhoto and Photoshop Elements along with elements of digital photography. Other media editing programs like iMovie will get coverage, too. The SIG meets monthly on the fourth Friday at the WSU computer lab. For information contact the SIG leader, Joy Bland 732-4914
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Review: Final Cut Express 4 - Visual Quickstart Guide
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Aug 15 2008
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Final Cut Express 4 - Visual Quickstart Guide

by Lisa Brenneis

Review by Gary Estes

Since Apple has changed their editing technique in the newest iMovie 08, it has been suggested by many that an alternative course of action for those who want more out of movie editing is to upgrade to Final Cut Express. I have done some work in FCE, and I was thinking of doing a SIG on Final Cut Express for those interested in upgrading. I was hoping to find a book that would be simple enough to follow that would be a good course text. This was not that book.

As I was reading this book, I kept turning over to recheck the title. “Yup, still says ‘Quickstart Guide’ “. This is a very informative book and a book filled with lots of illustrations that explains the author’s intentions. But it is, in a word, linear. A “Quickstart Guide”, to me, suggests giving you the bare boned tools to get one started quickly working with the program. This book took 118 pages just to explain terms and set preferences. It took another 109 pages to explain how the interface works. Someone trying to upgrade from iMovie would be lost and overwhelmed by the time they got to the basic editing portion in Chapter Nine. It goes from Point A to Point Z very methodically and seems to exclude nothing.

However, having said all that, I think this book would make an excellent reference guide to have by your computer after you have learned enough about FCE to really start working in it. Because it is linear and methodical, it should be easy to look up some procedure or trick you might want to use as you explore the program and want to learn it’s finer points and shortcuts.

Other than the book not being what I expected, I think that the only real criticism I have is that the illustrations could have used a little journey through a photo editing program before being published. Since these are black & white photos of color screenshots, they tend to be very low contrast and a bit dark. I found myself having to take extra time to really stare at a lot of the illustrations to discern what was being represented.

Final advice: I would buy this book as quite good reference material after I found a really good starter book.

Last changed: Aug 14 2008 at 8:52 PM

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