video editing software

I've used Final Cut Pro since 2003... Media100 prior to that. (Media100 is now distributed by Boris, the graphics people).

At the time, 1999, AVID was the big PC platform software, and Media100 for Mac. (Apple had just purchased the video editing program being developed at Macromedia, and re-named it Final Cut, but it was no where ready to compete with AVID and Media100). I went with Final Cut Express in 2003 when Apple had a promotion where you got it cheap/free if you turned in any old copy of a non-linear package, so I mailed in Premiere on floppy from 1992! I got FCP 3 soon thereafter on a subsequent Apple promotion, and FCP 4.5 HD with OSX Panther.

In 1988 I got my first AMIGA, with native NTSC video, and in 1992 got my first Video Toaster (still sitting on the shelf).

So far in 2005, I have used Final Cut Pro 4.5 HD to edit video for about 125 feature projects. I use Apple DVD Studio Pro 3 for the eventual DVD authoring - single and dual layer.

I use Sorenson Squeeze OSX for making QuickTime files for streaming. QuickTime Pro has an Export to iPod feature, which is handy, but not proprietary for iPod video. The Win version of Sorenson Suite exports Real, WMA, Flash, etc.

Graphics can be done with LiveType, Boris/Grafitti, KeyNote, as well as PhotoShop. One of the neatest things about FCP is that you can import a layered PhotoShop doc, and the layers import as individual video tracks... ripe for animating!

Don't overlook the power of Apple iMovie for video editing!

You can see my work at http://www.DudeLodge.com and http://www.TriangleDream.com

I love Imovie. It's so easy to use. It should suffice for most web based video content. I make my clips at 400x320 and they come out fabulous. I can open them up full screen and see them almost dvd quality in their .mov format.

I used final cut pro one time, It's great for very high end productions but just can't see why anyone with regular clips would use it because of the resources it takes to use.