Ok, here is my problem: I am a student going to college in a film program and i just got myself a G5 and i want FCP, problem is that while i can get a good student price on the new FCP HD, for some reason i was told by my school to get the older FCP 4, but im not sure how to get FCP 4 at a student price (if i choose to get 4 over HD) cause i can only find fcp hd at the apple site for student pricing? so my basic q is whats the difference between the two and whether i should go with wwhat my school says or with the newer fcp? plus my school is supposed to have enough computers w/ software and stuff for needs so having it is really just a personal choice, i just wanna have some advice on fcp and the difference in the 2 if anyone knows, thanx

umm, FCP HD is just an updated version of FCP 4 (with some tools to help edit in HD with the new HD codec). FCP HD (which is really v4.5) should be completely backwards compatible with v4. Your school is on crack. It's a free upgrade and relatively stabile. If they're on FCP v4, they should be at the latest version of 4 (which is 4.5 ... er 'HD'). The whole 'HD' thing is a marketing ploy by apple. You could edit HD on FCP v1 if you had a fast enough computer.

So, if you're school is still on v4, I'd still get v4.5 because the project files you save will be backwards compatible with your school's version of FCP. As for trying to find FCP v4.0 (if that's what you want to do), I'd try ebay, amazon, and any other used software places.

ohh, and in my humble opinion, you'd be nuts not to get the 'apple production bundle' or whatever they're calling it. Student price for FCP, DVDSP, and Motion is $500. ...well, nuts if you can at all afford it.

all the best