Final Cut Express and Macbook (not Pro)

A colleague wants to start doing his own rough cut editing, a very good idea in his case. He wants to buy a system as economically as possible.

Does anybody have any experience with:

-Editing with FCE (not FCP) on a 13" MacBook (not MacBook Pro)

-Taking FCE captured media and project files to FCP

In other words, can he do rough cut editing on a small MacBook, and will FCE translate to FCP? Would I have to recapture or can I use his captured files? I, obviously, don't know anything about FCE, but if it will do this then it would be perfect for this guy.

Thanks.
(I currently have a 17" MacBook Pro, 4 gigs, 7200 drive, Apple 23" monitor, remote thin keyboard and trackball, WD 500 gig firewire drives)

Yes, you can open the FCE project in FCP.

No, you do not have to recapture.

The two programs are very similar, and this should work, as long as your version of FCP is not older than his version of FCE. There might be some version juggling required.

Thanks. That solves that problem.

Is anybody editing on the basic MacBook? Not the Pro. Again, the guy would be doing simple editing, no heavy rendering, etc., no need to upgrade. Just off line editing as cheaply as feasible.

we had FCP running on a Macbook in my cutting room recently.

no cutting, as such.
it was used by the director to mark up interviews.

so we were opening projects with bins and sequences,
and he was moving around in the timeline adding markers.
no problems at all.

i don't see why it wouldn't be ok for simple cuts and dissolves editing.


nick