What's the best way to learn Final Cut Studio?

[TruEsTaR]

Like I said in another thread, I decided on buying the newest version of Final Cut Studio.
It has Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, Color 1.5, Compressor 3.5, and Dvd Studio Pro 4 in it.

My question is, what is the best way to teach yourself FCS? I purchased The Apple Pro Series books on Sound Editing in Final Cut Studio, Motion 4, and Final Cut Pro 7. I also picked Edward Dmytryk's "On Film Editing", Larry Jordan's "Final Cut Pro Power Skills", and already had Gael Chandler's "Cut by Cut".

Is this enough of a starting point alone with youtube tutorials and messing around with my own projects?

A friend of mine who went to college told me it would take me about 1-2 years to learn final cut pro 7 and be decent with editing. My buddy's sister who went to an Ivy league school told me If I worked at it enough and had some natural talent, that I could become good enough to do decent editing in about 4 months. I realize it will depend on a lot of factors, but how long did it take all of you to get familiar with the software? And for some of you, how long did it take to master it?

*note, I have absolutely NO experience editing.

godspeed,

TS

 

[chilipie]

Final Cut Pro does not have native editing support for AVCHD footage. You can use the Log and Transfer window to transcode AVCHD footage to an Apple ProRes codec or the Apple Intermediate Codec during transfer. But the ProRes or AIC video files become even big, even 10 times than the original one. Final Cut Pro does not have native editing support for AVCHD footage. You can use the Log and Transfer window to transcode AVCHD footage to an Apple ProRes codec or the Apple Intermediate Codec during transfer. But the ProRes or AIC video files become even big, even 10 times than the original one.

So it is a nice choice to transcode AVCHD video to other playable or editable video formats. The program I am using is Aunsoft MTS Converter for Mac which natively support AVCHD conversion and editing.

If you're going to recommend your own product, at least be honest about it.