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7 Things You Should Know

1. What is it?

Final Cut Express is a video editing software that offers much more flexibility than Apple's iMovie or Windows Moviemaker. Offering a more robust toolset and list of post-effects, Final Cut Express affords instructors a range of possibilities for creating simple or sophisticated movies.

2. Who's doing it?

As technology changes, it is nice to keep up with some of these changes. Video editing programs are no different. After learning iMovie or Moviemaker and using it for a while, we see that there are limitations with these packages.  Any student, instructor, or staff member that wants to extend the emotional component of their storytelling can use this intuitive software.

3. How does it work?

Final Cut Express works like other video editing software. One must capture video from a camera, edit the video, add default or custom transitions and titles, images, and then compress the video to a quicktime movie.

4. Why is it significant?

Knowing how to use this software allows the user to customize his or her movie in ways that iMovie cannot.  Final Cut Express offers a chance to work with video editing software that provides more support and has extendable features. It also allows one to upgrade to Final Cut Pro, which holds greater functionality.

5. What are the downsides?

Though this is a quite useful skill to know, iMovie can be used to arrive at the same product. Final Cut Express requires a license, while the iMovie and Moviemaker are free programs available on Mac or PC computers. One common difficulty is using the correct compression among the great deal of choices. It takes some practice and time to output your movie correctly for its mode of delivery.

6. Where is it going?

The ability to use sophisticated software to fully expose the elements of a story becomes more necessary as the complexity of a story increases.  Now, bloggers can turn to this new technology to create video blogs to reach a wider audience. With a Flip camera and a Mac laptop, one can record a short video project, edit it down and upload it onto the web in a matter of minutes.

7. What are the implications for teaching?

As the popularity of Digital Storytelling and narratives continue to gain interest in the educational forum, knowing more powerful software can allow students the opportunity to fully express their creativity with the help of inexpensive yet sophisticated tools.  And though students and faculty might not be editing video in the professional world, one can never know when it might be useful to have these creative and technical skills.