Express vs. Studio?

Hello,

I am debating buying FCP Express vs. Studio. I am involved in a web project with a couple of business associates. It is completely speculative (no client involved). It involves several "talking heads" that we shot against green screen. There will be 12-15 of these clips, running from 30 seconds to 1 minute each. Here is what we need for these clips:

- ability to key in backgrounds
- ability to compress files to be "web friendly" and also able to be sent to phones.
- royalty-free music and background art (does either Express or Studio have this?)
- simple title cards

Footage was shot on a mix of Mini DV and HDV.

In the future, i may use whichever program I buy to cut my reel together (I work mostly as a DP) My DP work exists on a wide variety of formats. Side question - which is the best format to get my material transfered to for ease of editing? Reel won't be anything fancy...some title cards and straight cuts, mostly.

I may perhaps need a DVD menu for when i do this, so users can click around and watch only what they want.

At the moment, I don't have extensive needs for motion graphics, 3D, etc.

Will Express get me through these projects in the short-term? Or should I just go for it, and buy Studio, and "grow" into it?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Whoa. Lots of stuff here...

> It involves several "talking heads" that we shot against green screen.

>Footage was shot on a mix of Mini DV and HDV.

Put these two together and it's not exactly a recipe for success. DV/HDV never keys well, as the color is heavily compressed. Usually green screens are shot on MUCH higher resolution formats.

Also, green screen keying isn't a job for an NLE. You can pull keys, but you'll generally prefer doing the job in software that's more catered towards such functions like After Effects.

>At the moment, I don't have extensive needs for motion graphics, 3D, etc.

Final Cut Studio isn't a fancy motion graphics app. It's really more of an NLE that is catered towards the extended responsibilities of the editor. As far as visual effects and motion graphics goes, Motion is no Flame. You can do titling in Motion, and a bit of the stuff which you would otherwise send to the graphics guy, but you won't be doing no Matrix visual fx with FCS 2 any time soon.

For DVD menus, background templates (pretty simple in Motion)... FCS may be good for your needs, depending on how complicated and how much you intend to customize the backgrounds. Soundtrack Pro has a collection of loops, although it's still a big leap between loops and a stock music library.

Also, you may want to check out the iLife collection, which comes with iMovie and iDVD. Haven't touched either one of them myself though..



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