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FIRST LOOK: Apple Final Cut Studio 2

Friday 20 Apr 2007 - 09:33

You don't have to spend a lot of time in Hollywood to find instances where Apple's Final Cut Studio is being put to use in film- and TV-production. And, given the latest changes to the updated editing suite announced earlier this week, analysts aren't expecting Final Cut's popularity to fade any time soon.

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Unveiled last Sunday by Apple at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas, Final Cut Studio 2 introduces a number of changes to the applications that make up the video-production suite. And even though the update lacks an overhaul to the included DVD-authoring tool – including the inability to burn Blu-ray discs – analysts say Apple has a likely hit on its hands, thanks to the addition of features and capabilities that will let editors manage their projects from start to finish in Final Cut.
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"A lot of Apple

Final Cut Studio 2 features updated versions of the Final Cut Pro editing application as well as the Motion motion-graphics application, the Soundtrack pro audio-editing tool, and the video-compression app Compressor. The US$1,299 suite also introduces a new colour-grading and -correction program called Color.

No Blu-ray support

Remaining unchanged from the last version of the suite is DVD Studio Pro, which remains at Version 4. Apple says it decided to focus on enhancing other applications in the suite over the DVD-authoring software.

"DVD Studio Pro is already an incredible product, and our customers told us they were more worried about distribution, so we completely overhauled Compressor, said Rob Schoeben, Apple's vice president of applications marketing.

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However, the lack of support for burning Blu-ray discs -- one of the two competing formats to replace DVDs -- in its pro application suite stands out considering Apple is a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association, which makes the company

"I can imagine for their main clientele of movie studios, it would be important for them to be able to make Blu-ray discs," said NPD's Swenson. "It's important to have Blu-ray -- if not the studios will use someone else's product. It would be a real deal breaker if they didn't have any HD support."

"It's a hole," agreed Roger Kay, president of the market-research firm Endpoint Technologies. "Some buyers might wait or use something else in the meantime."

DVD Studio Pro is not completely without HD burning support -- the application supports the competing HD DVD format.

But the way analysts see it, the Blu-ray omission is far outweighed by the things that were added to Final Cut Studio. Take the addition of Color, which Apple touts as putting a logical task-based colour grading and finishing workflow in the hands of every Final Cut Pro editor.

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The primary colour correction in Color includes advanced colour correction tools such as gamma, lift and gain adjustments, as well as custom R, G, B and luma curves, and the secondary colour correction provides the ability to isolate specific areas of an image with soft-edged mattes and custom-shaped vignettes.
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"Editors expect their workflow to be affordable, accessible and powerful," Schoeben said. "It

According to Swenson, the addition of applications like Color will draw even more creative pros to the platform. "Having more pro-level apps will attract new customers and keep more creative pros on the platform," he said.

Another offering unveiled at NAB is Final Cut Server, a new product aimed at creative professionals that need to deal with massive amounts of digital content and shrinking production schedules.

Final Cut Server is a scalable server application that supports workgroups of any size, according to Apple. The server includes a cross-platform client that enables content browsing, review and approval from within a studio or over the Internet.

Final Cut Server will cost $999 for 10 concurrent users or $1,999 for unlimited users.

"Final Cut Server is the really interesting story," Swenson said. "For other competitive products you would have to pay $20,000 to $30,000 for a few users. Apple is really trying to change the economics of post production."

Jim Dalrymple

For more information see the Apple Web site.

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