I'm a wedding videographer and I edit with Sony Vegas. I have another editor that wants to work with me, but she uses Final Cut. I own FCE 4 on my Macbook Pro and need to know if I can view her projects that were created in Final Cut.
I don't want her to have to take the time to render out the final video and then have me ask her to make changes. I guess I need to decide on the best work flow for this situation.

I think that one of the big differences is 24p

Does your friend have FCP and you have FCE? You cannot go this way, you cannot open a FCP project in FCE. You can open a FCE project in FCP but once you save it, you can't go back

To go back and forth you both need FCE or FCP; always best to have versions closest in release time to each other.

If this is the case, then you need the project file and the scratch disk with media on it to open it on your puter; without the captured media on a hard drive, when you open the project file the clips will all be offline