All I know is the one I can afford and the other one--not so much. So what really is the difference between Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express?

here is a handy comparison chart

great choice of software btw, i use FCP3 and it rocks

you do know you can get a good education discount on FCP right?

Yeah, I got final cut pro 4 for 300 dollars, as opposed to.....1000 dollars.

And it's worth every penny

If you can afford to get FCP4 you should... express is really nice, but when you get into a lot of advanced things and want to do a lot of post production work your going to want to have your Three Way Color Corrector and Keyframable filters so you can turn them on and off in a clip or have them slowly fade in. I guess if your just doing a lot of basic to moderate things buy Express but if you wanna really get into a lot of effects and things spend the extra for FCP4. Im sure you can get an educational discount that will cut the price down a whole lot. Plus with FCP4 you get Soundtrack and Livetype... Soundtrack is awesome I love it! Im actually making music for movies with it AND using it to make beats for my rap cd that Im putting out this winter. ( be on the look out for my first video hopefully by october or november ) Hope this helps sorry If i ramble I have a bad havit of doing that.

Thanks for your help, guys. I think I'm going to try to find a student discount for Final Cut Pro.

you can a good discount right from apple. i bet other places (search google for academic software discount) will give you better though.