finalcutpro
Latest
Final Cut Studio on sale again via Apple telesales, video editors worldwide breathe sighs of relief
If you're one of the many Final Cut Pro users unhappy with Apple's latest version -- and you haven't been lured into Adobe's open arms -- today brings good news. According to MacRumors, Cupertino will continue to offer the previous, discontinued version via telephone sales. Calling 800-MY-APPLE and asking for Final Cut Studio (part number MB642Z/A) will net you Final Cut Pro 7, Motion 4, Soundtrack Pro 3, DVD Studio Pro 4, Color 1.5 and Compressor 3.5 for $999, or $899 for qualified educational customers. That's a far cry from the $299.99 for Final Cut Pro X, but if you're interested in, say, opening legacy projects or outputting to tape, you might grudgingly pony up the extra dough.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Five: Trimming and Closing Thoughts
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Part 5 is the final installment. So today I had to go back to a multicamera FCP 7 project and, truthfully, it was quite a relief. I realized that part of that relief was the familiarity of knowing how the program would react when I did certain things. Do you remember when you were learning the difference between rippling an edit and rolling it and you were never sure which was the right one? That's a little bit how I feel with Final Cut Pro X. I'm getting a little more comfortable, though, comfortable enough to start talking about things that I kind of like. Let's talk about trimming, for instance. In X, there is only one trim tool (shortcut: T). Hover to the left of an edit and it ripples left; hover to the right of an edit and it ripples right; hover in the middle and it rolls; hover over the center of a clip and it slips; hover over the center and hold option, and it slides. And yes, you can click and type a number or use the keyboard to nudge. How much time do you spend going back and forth between trim tools in FCP 7? Another nice touch is the Precision Trim Editor. I've always hated FCP's Trim window and never used it, and this is a big improvement. Double-click an edit and it jumps into a mode where you see two filmstrips, the A side above and the B side below. The parts of the filmstrip that are not in the sequence are dimmed. But the important thing is that you can see the frames in the clip beyond the edit point, and to extend an edit you can just "skim" to its location and click and it ripples the edit. So if your objective is to extend an edit right up to the point where Indiana Jones cocks his head, this makes it pretty easy. It reminds me a little of Avid's Transition Corner Editor, which I love, only you don't have to apply an effect to use it. Complaint: often, when I'm adjusting pacing, I like to ripple the last cutaway, which opens up a gap on V1 and that way I get a little "air" between clips. In FCP X that doesn't work, because you can't ripple a clip on a connected storyline past the end of its primary clip -- it just rolls over the next primary clip. To do what I want in FCP X, I need to add a "gap clip" of 10-15 frames on the primary storyline and then I can extend the last cutaway over it. Maybe I'll find a better way, but right now I don't like it. Second complaint: split edits. A split edit is where the audio and video don't cut at the same time. In FCP 7, this was very easy to achieve: make your audio cut where you want it, and then use the rolling edit tool to move just the video edit forward or backward. Because FCP X treats video and audio as a single clip, it takes more work to achieve a split edit. The FCP X manual's instructions for creating a split edit could only have been written by somebody who had never used one in a real project: they suggest using a ripple edit, it takes five steps, and the result will not be what you want. Thankfully, it's not actually that hard to do it the right way in FCP X! After you make the audio cut, you just have to select the clips on either side, choose "Expand Audio/Video" to separate the audio and video, choose the trim tool and roll (not ripple!) just the video. You might say "that doesn't sound so much more difficult than FCP 7," but I might split a hundred edits a day. It gets really grating when something you do very frequently is just a little more difficult. Another positive change: exporting out of FCP X is a vast improvement over FCP 7. It has always driven me nuts that you cannot save a Custom Quicktime export setting in FCP. How many times did I have to set H.264, 2000kbps, custom size 640x360, AAC @ 320kbps, over and over and over. I know you could "Send to Compressor," but I don't like having to go to another program to do it. I will say that Compressor 4 looks very speedy and promising. Now, in FCP X, there's a Share menu that allows you to "Export Using Compressor Setting." That's the ticket! You can also send directly to YouTube, Vimeo, and even CNN's iReport. What's missing, though, is that FCP 7 ability to export multiple sequences at once. For instance, I might be working on a project that has 11 different scenarios. Before, I could select all 11 and batch export them. Now, those 11 sequences all need to be separate projects, so you'd have to open and export them one after the other. Or maybe you can just drag the project files from the Finder directly into Compressor? I guess now it's time to study up on Compressor as well. The piece is almost finished, and I'm very relieved and anxious to go back to FCP 7. All in all, I would much rather have done this project there. I don't think that's just inexperience talking, or the discomfort of having to learn something from scratch. There were things that I didn't do on this program at all because I just couldn't figure out a way to do them. I wanted to add some transitions, for example, but first you need to get the two clips on either side of the transition into the same storyline. I don't like that, because once again it's an example of how FCP X often adds another step to a process and makes it take longer. And often I would select the adjacent clips and press command-G to link them into a storyline so I could add a transition, and it simply wouldn't happen. I don't know if that was a program error or user error, but it was very frustrating. So I just gave up and didn't add the transitions. Which brings me back to where I was on day two: the "magnetic timeline" is cute, but it keeps me from making the sequence I want and therefore it really has to go. It reminds me a little bit of when Apple was introducing FCP 1.0 and Steve Jobs showed us how we could take a clip from the Viewer and drop it on this beautiful transparent overlay in the Canvas to choose insert/overwrite/replace/etc. and the crowd went, "oooooooh." But who edits that way? Maybe you'll say I didn't give it enough of a chance. That might be fair. I just played around with it for a few days. But the truth is that we have an editing paradigm that works for us in FCP 7. It's not enough to show us that if we completely rethink our workflow then we can do the same things in FCP X as we can in FCP 7 with a couple of extra steps. What can we do that's more efficient, faster, better? Yes, the infrastructure is improved; yes, the 64-bit implementation and background rendering mean things will be much faster... if we can still figure out a way to tell the stories we want to tell. In conclusion, I think if Apple's FCP X team really is serious about wanting professionals to use this program -- and maybe they're not, and that's okay -- we will need to see it go back to a track-based editing metaphor, at least as an option. If that happens, I can't see why I wouldn't use it eventually. I don't really care about the feature set: they can always add multicam and OMF export and whatever else, and I'm sure they will. But if they add those features while retaining the current editing paradigm, it will still be very difficult to use professionally. Film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and the representations of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Four: Gaining Perspective
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. I thought the next installment would be on trimming, but I wasn't able to write it, because FCP X failed to save all the work I did yesterday afternoon. You may have heard that there's no "Save" command in X. This is true. It just instantly saves everything you do, just like Google Docs (and just like most applications will do on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, in a few weeks). Unlike Google Docs, it seems that sometimes it completely fails to do this. Sigh. Apparently there have been other reports of FCP X failing to save, as well, so it's not just me. I'm actually less upset about this than you might think. I'm not thrilled about it, of course, but I've been down this road before, back in 1999, with a new product called Final Cut Pro that professionals did not want to use because it didn't have a lot of features that professionals needed. Like, for example, multicamera editing. From my perspective, FCP X is a totally new product that I'm testing out, and many of you have cheerfully watched me messing up as I did that; thank you for pointing out my mistakes. I don't expect X to instantly replace FCP 7. So if it doesn't have some features I regularly use, or it crashes or screws up on a project that wasn't that critical to begin with, that's not the end of the world. In fact, it's kind of expected. And having to redo the edits helps me master the program. Furthermore, we all need to realize that FCP 7 is at the end of its road. As Apple moves its hardware and OS forward, at some point in the not too distant future that hardware and OS will not support FCP 7 and its legacy code, and so anybody who sticks with it for too long will get hosed. I suppose there is a small chance that Apple will announce that they're abandoning FCP X and will go back and just port FCP 7 to Cocoa exactly as it was, but I'm not seeing it. [Keep in mind that there are plenty of shops still running legacy versions of Final Cut on Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.4. –Ed.] But there are some things about the way FCP X is structured that make it unusable for certain projects. For instance, as I've mentioned, the lack of defined tracks is a significant problem. On a long project, I will segregate certain types of audio on certain tracks -- for instance, all the sound effects might be on tracks A5 and A6. The reason for this is that if the producer listens to the mix and says, "all the sound effects are too loud," I can easily find them all and lower them by 2dB. On FCP X, I guess I would need to do this using the Timeline Index. I'd tag all SFX with the keyword "SFX," and then search for that in the Timeline Index and select all those clips and lower their audio. I would be very reluctant to undertake, say, a 90-minute documentary in FCP X unless I knew for sure how this was going to work. And so are all my colleagues. When I first posted my FCP X experiences, my editor friends ripped me apart for appearing to defend this program too much! And a program that sometimes silently fails to save your work could be more powerful than any edit system in the world -- I'm still not going to adopt it if I can't trust it. So I think we are all thinking about our options now. You can tell us that we're just too stuck in our ways to see the power of this awesome new program, but I've been doing this for decades now. In my career, I've already switched platforms three times: from linear editing to Avid and then to Final Cut Pro. This would not be my first paradigm-shift rodeo. But many editors are thinking that if they have to make a change, FCP X is not their only option. In fact, the alternatives are eagerly courting FCP editors with some pretty aggressive cross-grade pricing. Option one is to jump ship to Avid Media Composer. You could go to Media Composer today if you wanted; if not having to learn a new interface is a priority for you, its interface is pretty much frozen in carbonite, so if you used it in 1992 (I did!) you can use it today. It has all those features that FCP X doesn't. If you're a single-editor shop and you've got $2500 (or even $995) in your software budget --- just buy MC and be on your way. If you don't know how to use MC, now would be a good time to invest in learning it (there is a 30-day free trial of MC, which is not an option with FCP X). It's a great program. Option two is Adobe's Premiere. I'm of two minds about Premiere. Don't let me stop you from buying it (or trying it), but if you weren't using it yesterday, why was that? Did it suddenly get better than FCP 7 overnight? I think that Adobe is in kind of a bind with that program. For years the Premiere market mainstay has been hobbyists. As a result, even though I think Adobe really want to make it a professional product, there are places where they are afraid to change it because they think their installed base will rebel -- just like Apple's just did. So Premiere, for me at this point, is a prosumer program with some professional features tacked on, even though Adobe is making a full-court press to convince FCP users to give it a try. [Premiere does have native support for RED and many other formats that FCP X lacks, and if it's bought as part of the Production Premium bundle you get the advantage of dynamic linking with After Effects straight from the timeline. Premiere also will roundtrip import/export (or at least try to) your FCP 7 projects so you can choose the editor that works best for what you're doing; FCP X will not. –Ed.] It's worth mentioning again: both Avid MC and Adobe Premiere allow 30-day trials of the application, which is crucial for effective evaluation and figuring out if the app works the way you want to work, rather than you having to change gears to work the way it thinks you ought to. Final Cut Pro X's price point of $299 is a big improvement over the FCP 7 pricing, but it would be even better with a 30-day trial in the mix; better still if FCP 7 remained available through the transition period, instead of dropping off the price list like a hot potato. Other than standing pat for the next six months to see how FCP X evolves, the remaining option is to give FCP X a chance. Start learning it now, on the understanding that Apple will probably make big changes. Plus, even if you decide in a year that it's not the right solution for you, if you're truly a professional, it's likely that at some point somebody will ask you to use it or teach it or something, so you might as well start at least considering it now. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Three: Media Management
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Today, we discuss media management in FCP X, or the complete lack thereof. So far this is the most frustrating thing about this program. Like many FCP X features, it's designed to keep you from screwing up, and as a result will no doubt screw you up royally. First: understand that what we've been calling a "Project," FCP X calls an "Event." You make a new Event, import footage into it, organize footage within it, and try not to think about slowly aging aliens being held captive in Alaska on a really stupid TV show. I guess we all failed that one. FCP X also makes a corresponding Event folder on your internal drive [or on any other drive you have connected –Ed.]. If you like, when you import files you can tell it to copy them there. The nice thing about this is that it will happily let you start editing and do the copying in the background, and the transcoding as well if necessary. Now, my first thought was, wow! That's awesome! But I have to admit my next thought was, damn! There goes my last coffee break excuse! The trouble here is that you have no real control over where this Event folder is. It seems to always go to your username>Movies>Final Cut Events on your internal drive, which of course is a horrible place for your media. It's like Avid, except that on Avid at least you could choose what freaking drive to put everything on. Here you don't even seem to have that. [Matt's first impression here was incorrect. It is possible to import media directly to an Event on any attached drive, to move Events with drag and drop in the library, or use the File menu's Move command to move the Project and the Events together. FCP X's media management approach is so different from FCP 7 that many pro editors, like Matt, are not sure where to begin. –Ed.] So you might think, okay, I'll just tell FCP X not to move my media to the Events folder, I'll organize it myself. Except if you have to transcode it (think XDCAM), or render it, all those files will go there automatically. How annoying is that? As it turns out, not nearly as annoying as this: move or rename a media file, and it's lost forever. FCP X has no Reconnect Media command. That's right, one of the things you hated most about Avid has now been adopted by Apple. And it's worse than that: modify the file externally and FCP X won't be able to find it! Yes, folks, bring a file into After Effects, add some zip zap zoom, save it back to the exact same location with the same filename and your super-advanced editing system will pretend it's offline! Now for some sort of good news. There has been a lot of press about how you can't move projects around. This doesn't seem to be true. You can create a Project (which is what we've all been calling a Sequence), select the project, choose File>Duplicate Project, and have FCP X copy the entire project and its associated Event (meaning all its associated clips) to another drive. I did this successfully. [You can also simply move the Project + Events, rather than creating a Duplicate project. –Ed.] In fact -- bonus -- it does this in the background too. So you can keep editing while it moves your files anywhere in the universe! And if you do that, then your Event and Project get to be on whatever drive you want. If you transcode or render anything, those files will go to that drive. So it seems to me that as a workaround we might want to do something like create an Event, import one file, create a Project, duplicate it to the proper drive, and then import the rest of the footage. It seems to me that this would totally work for networked editing, because FCP X will find all Events and Projects on any drives connected to the system (without even rebooting, thank you). So there's a big plus. One thing that really worries me about this whole Event/Project thing is that the terminology itself seems pretty revealing. Apple says this is a professional product, but the terminology is clearly from iMovie and so are the keyboard shortcuts. Doesn't that say that it's more important that iMovie users feel comfortable with this product than FCP 7 users? Tomorrow, for the Fourth of July -- the fourth installment in this series: trimming. I think you guys are going to like most of what you hear on that subject. Stay tuned. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed.
First-Person Final Cut Pro X, Day Two: Learning the Ropes
First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of one pro editor's week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Since my traumatic first day, I've been cutting a small project in FCP X. It's growing on me in some ways and driving me bonkers in others. The good news is that, unlike last night, I don't think I'll wake up tonight with night sweats after having feverish nightmares about my editing software. Basic editing is not that different. I kind of like the new "skimmer," which is kind of like a second playhead, and you can make a three-point edit just like you used to. I need to get re-accustomed to some basic functions here. For instance, you can "overwrite," "overwrite just audio," and "overwrite just video." That could be a plus, because frankly, patching is a pain in FCP 7 and doing it from the keyboard was always awkward. The trick is that I only found those last two commands when I tried to reprogram my keyboard, because they're not on any menu and I couldn't find them in the docs. So I suspect there's a lot of things that are in the program, but to use them you'll have to reprogram your keyboard. I took a couple of minutes and reprogrammed as much of my keyboard as possible to vaguely resemble FCP 7. I found a lot of things that I thought weren't there: the scopes, for instance. I've never been so happy to see a waveform monitor! I have to say that the magnetic timeline's "primary storyline/connected storyline" paradigm just does not work for me yet. The concept is this: think of a documentary. The interviews are your "primary storyline," and the music, titles, and B-roll are your "connected storylines." In theory this is very cool, because a particular piece of B-roll is "connected" to a particular piece of interview in a particular place, and you can reorganize the interviews and the associated B-roll comes with them. In practice it's really annoying. It assumes that you always have a block of footage that starts and ends with a cut-in video and audio simultaneously, which I actually almost never do. If you use a B-roll clip to "bridge" two interview clips, is this clip connected to the end of the A clip or the beginning of the B clip? What about the music? If I connect it to the first clip in a montage, and then I decide I want to swap the clips around, the music winds up in the wrong place. Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it. Right now I feel like I'm dragging a lot of things around in a really imprecise way and it makes me uncomfortable to feel like the project is more or less what I want rather than exactly spot-on. The magnetic timeline also irritates me because I'm a strong proponent of track discipline. If I put something on V2, it's there for a reason. But in the magnetic timeline, items on subordinate tracks just jump up and down all over the place. Your music might be towards the top here and towards the bottom there. I suspect that in a complicated project, it will become impossible to find a given element. Something I really like: auditions. You can put a clip in the timeline, and then put an alternate clip in the same place. Then you can swap out your "picks" very easily. Imagine having two very different reaction shots on take 2 and take 3, or two voiceover reads, and being able to have them both in the timeline simultaneously. That could be very useful in session with an indecisive client. Something I despise: the loss of Reconnect Media. Not having that on Avid was one of the worst things about it, and losing it on FCP hurts. A file suddenly went offline for no reason -- I hadn't moved it -- and I was just hosed. That sucks. Professional film & video editor Matthew Levie is based in San Francisco; he produced and edited the documentary Honest Man and writes Blog and Capture. First-Person Final Cut Pro X is the unvarnished story of his week-long introduction to the new Final Cut. Note that all opinions and assessments of FCP X expressed here are Matt's own, not TUAW's, and that any misconceptions or misunderstandings of FCP X features represent Matt's hands-on first reactions. –Ed. Part III coming up: more on media management.
Adobe lures unhappy Final Cut Pro X users with half-price video editing tools
To say the latest version of Final Cut Pro wasn't well received, would be a major understatement. Well, Adobe hasn't wasted any time taking advantage of consumer discontent, and is now offering dissatisfied users of Apple's video editing software a 50 percent discount to make the switch to its alternatives, Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 and CS5.5 Production Premium. If you're not feeling the latest iteration (or any version) of Final Cut Pro or Avid's Media Composer, the offer stands through September 30th. And here we thought Apple and Adobe had buried the hatchet. Full PR after the break.
Adobe's new "switcher" campaign targets frustrated Final Cut Pro users with 50% off
Adobe didn't waste anytime trying to capitalize on customer dissatisfaction with Apple's new Final Cut Pro X. Professional users are unhappy with the lack of Pro features like multiple camera support in the latest version of Apple's video editing software. In response, Adobe has kicked off a new "switcher" campaign that highlights ten reasons why the professional video editor should switch to Adobe Premiere Pro CS. It's also offering a whopping 50% off on Adobe Creative Suite CS5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5 for those who own Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer. The media software giant is throwing down the gauntlet and aiming straight for those unhappy Apple customers. Anyone out there going to give in and switch to Adobe?
Apple posts Final Cut Pro X FAQ following backlash, promises multicamera support and other updates
Though Apple took to the pages of The New York Times last week to respond to a chorus of criticism about Final Cut Pro X, it's clear the company is going to have to go a little further in assuaging videographers who were alarmed to learn that the built-from-the-ground-up software omits certain key features found in Final Cut Pro 7. The outfit has posted an FAQ page on its site, which answers oft-repeated questions, yes, but also reassures users that some -- but not all -- of these features are on the way. Specifically, Apple promised that multicamera editing is coming as part of the "next major release" and that XML exporting is on the agenda, too. Additionally, volume licensing for orders of 20 or more will be available "soon," while an update this summer will allow you to use metadata tags to categorize audio tracks by type and then export them from Final Cut Pro X. Still, you're going to have to get used to the fact that you can't import old FCP files without data loss-- and don't expect updates for tape-based editing, either. As always, hit that source link for the full spill.
Apple posts Final Cut Pro X FAQ
In what seems to be an attempt to address the widespread controversy over the recent release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple has posted a FAQ on its site to address some of the concerns that have been raised thus far. Designed to answer the biggest questions that professional editors have raised over Final Cut Pro X, Apple has given very few straightforward "no" answers to questions regarding the video production suite's "missing" features. One of the few "no" answers regards importing projects from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X. Apple claims the change in product architecture prevents "translating" projects from the old format into the new one. Many other answers either explain how to accomplish tasks that may have confused users accustomed to the old interface. A fair number of the FAQ's points address questions by saying, "Not yet." As an example, professional editors have been up in arms over Final Cut Pro X's inability to support multicam editing, but Apple says support for this feature is coming "in the next major release." XML exporting will also be offered soon; Apple will release APIs "in the next few weeks" that will allow third-party developers access to the new XML in Final Cut Pro X. Final Cut Pro X has been one of the most controversial Apple software products in recent memory. It's unclear at this early stage if this FAQ goes far enough in addressing the concerns of the "pro" community to which the suite is supposedly targeted, but it's at least obvious that Apple is aware of users' concerns and working toward addressing some of them in future updates.
Apple product managers respond to Final Cut Pro X criticism
During our call to discuss Final Cut Pro X earlier this week, an Apple product manager boasted about the product's low price, media management, and ground-up redesign. Unfortunately, when starting from scratch, developers seem to have overlooked a few features that professional users have come to depend on, prompting widespread backlash -- both on internet forums and even on Apple's own App Store, where the $300 download-only app currently has a rating of just 2.5 stars (out of five), including nearly 500 one-star ratings. (Note: you must purchase the app before submitting a rating or review.) The New York Times spoke to product managers about these issues, which include an inability to import old FCP files, no multicamera editing, no support for RED cameras, and no ability to specify QuickTime export settings, among many others. Apple says there are (pricey) workarounds available, or fixes on the way for all but the first issue, but head over to the source link for the full rundown at NYT.
Conan's editors really love Final Cut Pro X... or maybe they don't (video)
The web is abuzz with talk of Apple's new slimmed-down, low-cost Final Cut Pro X, but Cupertino's beloved video editing platform has also caused quite a stir among professionals, who note its lack of features and glaring absence of backwards compatibility. Conan O'Brien's editors have already downloaded the new app, and threw together a segment for last night's show highlighting some of its new features. Jump past the break for a clip of Final Cut Pro's 90 seconds of fame, or warm up that credit card and head over to the Mac App Store to give it a spin for yourself. Just don't dump Final Cut Pro 7 yet -- you'll need to have it around to open legacy projects, output to tape, utilize multiple editing sequences, and access Photoshop layers, along with one or two other tiny omissions.
Apple discontinues Final Cut Express, reportedly ends Server too
Now that some Tuesday's Final Cut Pro X is available, additional details about Apple's pro video edition solution are available. Engadget has confirmed with Apple that there won't be a boxed (studio suite) version of Final Cut Pro X. Instead, it will only be available for download through the Mac App Store, alongside separate purchases of Motion (US$49.99) and Compressor ($49.99). Also, there will be no special upgrade price for owners of previous versions of Final Cut Pro, but with the new price point, it's hard to really complain about that. Finally, Engadget confirms that the days of Final Cut Express are over -- it's either iMovie or Final Cut Pro X from Apple. AppleInsider corroborates these claims, but adds Final Cut Server to the list. According to "a person familiar with Apple's retail operations," AppleInsider reports that Final Cut Server has been discontinued as of June 21.
Final Cut Pro X launches, $299 in the Mac App Store
Apple's professional video editing/production flagship app has been rebuilt from the ground up and repriced for the Mac App Store. Final Cut Pro X is now available for $299.99 via the store, and the accompanying Motion and Compressor apps are $49.99 each. This pricing represents a dramatic drop versus the previous edition of the suite. FCP X is a completely new version of the editing app, with the new Magnetic Timeline (trackless editing) and clip connections to link effects/title elements to primary footage. Your raw videos can be tagged with keywords, collected, analyzed and organized easily with the new content management library tools. The app's internal plumbing has been overhauled to make it 64-bit, entirely Cocoa, fully parallel and all-around faster (it now leverages the GPU for effects and can render in the background). The full feature list will take days or weeks for video pros to digest, and there's going to be a substantial learning, workflow and implementation curve for anyone planning to move edit operations -- so FCP X isn't going to change the world overnight. We're checking in with leading Xsan integrators for their reactions to the news. Still, with a $300 buy-in, the opportunity for would-be editors to level up to professional tools is cheaper than ever. Apple's press release below. Show full PR text CUPERTINO, California-June 21, 2011-Apple® today announced Final Cut Pro® X, a revolutionary new version of the world's most popular Pro video editing software which completely reinvents video editing with a Magnetic Timeline that lets you edit on a flexible, trackless canvas; Content Auto-Analysis that categorizes your content upon import by shot type, media and people; and background rendering that allows you to work without interruption. Built on a modern 64-bit architecture, Final Cut Pro X is available from the Mac® App Store™ for $299.99. "Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "We have shown it to many of the world's best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped." "I'm blown away by what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro," said Angus Wall, Academy Award-winning film editor. "Final Cut Pro X is incredibly modern and fast, but most importantly it lets you focus on telling your story in the most creative way, while it actively manages all of the technical details." At the heart of Final Cut Pro X is the Magnetic Timeline, a trackless approach to editing your footage that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them, while other clips instantly slide out of the way. You can use Clip Connections to link primary story clips to other elements like titles and sound effects, so they stay in perfect sync when you move them. You can even combine related story elements into a Compound Clip that can be edited as a single clip. The groundbreaking new Auditions feature lets you swap between a collection of clips to instantly compare alternate takes. Content Auto-Analysis scans your media on import and tags your content with useful information. Final Cut Pro X then uses that information to dynamically organize your clips into Smart Collections, so you can easily find the clips you want by close up, medium and wide shots as well as media type and the number of people in the shot. You can also tag parts of clips with Range-based keywords to add custom search criteria to your media. Completely rebuilt from the ground up, Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit app that takes full advantage of the latest Mac hardware and software so you never have to wait for the next edit, even if you're working with 4K video. Final Cut Pro X uses multi-threaded processing and the GPU on your graphics card for blazing fast background rendering and superb real-time playback performance. Additionally, a ColorSync-managed color pipeline ensures color consistency from import to output. Final Cut Pro X also includes powerful tools for audio editing and color correction, and is complemented by two companion apps, Motion 5 for professional motion graphics and Compressor 4 for advanced media encoding, available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 each. Pricing & Availability Final Cut Pro X is available today for $299.99 from the Mac App Store. Motion 5 and Compressor 4 are available today for $49.99 each from the Mac App Store. Full system requirements and more information on Final Cut Pro X can be found at www.apple.com/finalcutpro. Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.
Apple Final Cut Pro X now available on Mac App Store
At last! Just as promised, Apple's long-awaited Final Cut Pro X is now available on the Mac App Store for just $299.99, meaning keen editors can immediately grab hold of this suite to crack on with some real-time 4K video editing. Of course, this is assuming that you have a 64-bit Mac rig with beastly specs in the first place -- check with Apple to make sure that you're all set to go. Accompanying this major software release are Motion 5 and Compressor 4 kits, both of which will cost you an extra $49.99 each, so make that roughly around $400 for the full monty. Press release after the break, but we guess you folks are already busy trimming clips on that magical Magnetic Timeline, so good luck in next year's Oscars. Update: We spoke to Apple and confirmed that there won't be a boxed version, upgrade pricing, or "Express" version available. Individual users can purchase a single license to use on multiple machines that they own, while business users will need to purchase one license per machine. Volume education pricing is available for purchase by institutions only.
Apple says "stay tuned" for other Final Cut Studio apps, shows The Loop screenshots
At the FCPUG SuperMeet at NAB yesterday, Apple unveiled Final Cut Pro X, the latest iteration of its non-linear video editing application. The new version includes such features as color management, background rendering, improved keyword and metadata support and a magnetic timeline that lets you move clips around without trim collisions with other clips. Apple confirmed the application would launch in June for a rock bottom price of US$299. Talking to The Loop, Apple also confirmed that this NAB presentation was just a sneak peek of Final Cut Pro. The Cupertino company promised there was more to come for the other applications in the Final Cut Pro Studio Suite, which include Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro. Speaking of sneak peek, The Loop was able to get its hands on some official screenshots of the application in action. We embedded one above, and you can point your browser to The Loop's website to get a closer look at the UI of this upcoming version of Final Cut Pro. Anyone looking forward to June so that they can get their hands on FCP X?
Apple announces Final Cut Pro X, rebuilt from ground up with 64-bit support (update: $299 in June)
Apple's just announced Final Cut Pro X at NAB, and Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos is demonstrating a beta release as we speak. The "rebuilt from ground up" video editing suite -- which now shares a similar look and feel with iMovie -- will be shipped with 64-bit support to finally make use of more than 4GB of RAM, as well as handling 4K clips on 8-core editing rigs (by way of the Grand Central Dispatch feature on OS X Snow Leopard). Most notably, though, is that this new FCP will always be rendering instantly in the background, meaning you can edit on the fly much like you do on iMovie! There's also a whole stash of other new features: editing before media ingest, magnetic timeline, people detection, instant color matching between clips, smart collection of media based on custom keywords and people, auto image stabilization on import, and many more. Itching to get your hands dirty with Cupertino's new video tool? You'll be able to download it from the Mac App Store in June for just $299. Update: @robimbs has just posted a video of Randy Ubillos' wrap-up at the show. We've got it after the break.
Final Cut Pro X announced at NAB SuperMeet
As widely rumored, Apple's Peter Steinauer took the stage at the SuperMeet during NAB in Las Vegas to introduce the latest version of Final Cut, Final Cut Pro X. The new video editing app (last revised in July of 2009) adds full 64-bit compatibility with a full rewrite of the platform. Final Cut Pro X will be shipping in June. You can download it via the Mac App Store! And the price? US$299 -- that's truly astonishing. (We don't yet know if that's just the editor itself, or also includes the capabilities of Motion and Color... but we're inclined to believe the former.) The new version includes improved media management and improved image quality built on "modern foundations," with top-to-bottom color management and a new look. FCP X features resolution-independent playback all the way from SD up to 2K and 4K formats. It now leverages Grand Central Dispatch to take advantage of all cores on the Mac plus the GPU. The crowd goes wild, especially as Steinauer suggests that the ever-popular render bar will now be a thing of the past. Other new features (via @fcpsupermeet and Photography Bay)...
Avid offers $995 crossgrade to Media Composer for Final Cut users
Are you a Final Cut Studio user? Have you looked at Avid Media Composer and wished you could afford it? Regardless of whether you feel Media Composer is better or worse than Final Cut Pro, it's still a popular editing platform that brings not only prestige but also the potential to pick up more work from clients that want or need their editors to be using Avid. If you're in that camp, now might be the perfect time to add Media Composer to your toolbox. Until June 17, Avid is offering a staggering crossgrade deal to Final Cut Pro users: US$995 for the boxed version. While that may still seem expensive, it's a huge discount from the regular $2,495 price for the boxed edition (or $2,295 for download only).
Dear Apple, here's our Final Cut Studio wishlist
Today the NAB exhibit hall opened, and just about everyone in the video world is showing off the hot new stuff they've been waiting to announce to video professionals from around the world. Apple, however, is notably absent again this year, choosing instead to make an announcement tomorrow evening at the Final Cut Pro Users Group SuperMeet. As rumors of a long awaited update to Final Cut Studio started circulating, we asked you how the new version needed to change. While some commentators defended Final Cut Studio enthusiastically, most of us feel that an update is long overdue despite our affection for Apple's professional video suite. Some users have already jumped ship because their needs are better filled by alternative editing applications, while other users plan to give Apple a chance to meet all their needs with a new update before deciding to explore other options.
Talkcast tonight, 10 PM ET: Pro video preview from NAB
It's Sunday night, and that means talkcast time! This week, as the NAB convention kicks off in Las Vegas, we look ahead to the highly-anticipated next step in pro video editing from Apple. Yes, the rumor mill around Final Cut Pro is percolating with extreme prejudice, so there's no better time to bring in our editor friends and colleagues (including our own Chris White) to talk about what we can expect and what we might wish for in the next FCP/FCS version. Our special guest tonight is John Foster of KnowTech.tv. We'll also tackle the news of the week plus your questions and comments -- and if there's time afterward, there's always the TUAWTF aftershow (never recorded, often regretted). To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or download the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the TalkShoe Web button on our profile page at 4 HI/7 PDT/10 PM EDT Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (yay for free cell phone weekend minutes!): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Blink or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here (if you like Blink, the pro version is available in the Mac App Store). Talk to you tonight.
