Welcome to Apple's Final Cut Expressa combination digital video editing, compositing, and special effects program. Final Cut Express is based on Final Cut Pro, Apple's wildly popular professional digital video editing program.Final Cut Express is tightly integrated with Apple's G4 and G5 processors, FireWire high-speed data transfer technology, and QuickTime multimedia format. FCE is designed to capture only DV-format video via FireWire, but allows you to export to most QuickTime formats. Final Cut Express provides professional editing functionality in a variety of styles, from strictly drag-and-drop edits to entirely keyboard-based editing.Soon you'll be spending plenty of time working with clips, audio levels, and other editing minutiae, so let's start with the big picture. This chapter provides an overview of Final Cut Express features and tracks a basic FCE project from start to finish. You'll be introduced to the main interface windows used for editing and for creating effects, plus learn how to customize the arrangement of these windows.