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Posts tagged with "FCP X"

Final Cut Pro X Hands-On Video and Software Updates

Following this morning’s release of Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5 and Compressor 4 in the Mac App Store,  YouTube user Matt’s Macintosh has posted a first 10-minute video hands-on with FCP X, available at $299 as digital-only download. The video, which we’re embedding after the break, highlights some of Final Cut Pro’s new functionalities such as the revamped iMovie-like UI, magnetic timeline, new effects, as well as the additional content Apple has already made available for FCP X users via Software Update. Furthermore, the author of the video notes how real-time rendering allows to import, edit and play clips in seconds without any waiting as in the previous versions, and how text effects look like a combination of iMovie (undoubtedly a source of inspiration for the FCP X team) and Motion.

Check out the video below.

Update: direct links to the additional content download mentioned in the video:

Final Cut Pro X Content

  • Sound Effects: Over 1300 rights-free sound effects installed into the Audio Browser of Final Cut Pro X.
  • Audio Effect Presets: Additional preset effects for the Space Designer plug-in.

Motion 5 Content

  • Motion Templates: A variety of professionally-designed, customizable templates.
  • Motion Library Content: Animated vector graphics, backgrounds, template media, sample Motion projects, and royalty-free still images.
  • Motion Sample Media: Clips and images for use with Motion Help examples and tutorials.

ProApps QuickTime Codecs

  • Apple Intermediate Codec
  • Apple ProRes
  • AVC-Intra
  • DVCPRO HD
  • HDV
  • XDCAM HD / EX / HD422
  • MPEG IMX
  • Uncompressed 4:2:2

Apple has also published a database of cameras compatible with Final Cut Pro X here with the following notes:

  • Final Cut Pro X is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPod touch (4th generation).
  • Final Cut Pro X is compatible with most MiniDV tape-based camcorders using DV and HDV formats, which use a FireWire (also known as IEEE 1394 or i.LINK) cable to transfer video.
  • If you have imported video into iPhoto or Aperture from a digital still camera, you can drag compatible video clips from iPhoto or Aperture directly to an Event in the Final Cut Pro X Event Library or a project in the Timeline.

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Apple Releases Final Cut Pro X On The Mac App Store For $299

UPDATE: Final Cut Pro X is now available in the Mac App Store, as well as Motion 5 and Compressor 4.

Apple has just issued a press release noting that Final Cut Pro X will launch sometime today on the Mac App Store for a price of $299.99 with Motion 5 and Compressor 4 also out today for $49.99 each.

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.

Some of the new features of Final Cut Pro X include a vastly improved video editing experience, completely rebuilt to feature a “dynamic editing interface” including what Apple dubs a ‘Magnetic Timeline’ which lets editors assemble shots simply and quickly with no unwanted black gaps in the timeline. In a similar vein clips can now be connected so that as you move one clip to a new place on the timeline, all the other connected clips (such as music or audio effects) stay synchronized with the clip. Compound Clips is another new feature that lets editors combine a group of elements (clips, audio etc) into just one clip that can easily be moved around on the timeline.

Another cornerstone feature of FCP X is vastly improved media organization, starting with support for many more formats of video. Content is now automatically analyzed with FCP X organising your footage into preset kinds of footage including whether or not there are people in the shot (and whether it is just one person or a group), whether it is a wide or closeup shot, whether the footage is stable or shaky and so on. There is also support for keywords which can be applied quickly to any piece of footage, combine this feature with the content auto-analysis and you can find the shot you need nearly instantly. Other key points of interest include ‘Smart Collections’ allowing users to organize clips without having to physically move the file and direct access to content libraries such as Aperture and iPhoto.

As had been expected, performance is also a huge area of improvement for FCP X, off the bat there is support for the 64-bit architecture and then there is resolution independence (4K footage is now supported), improved GPU utilization, background processing and a shared render engine between Final Cut Pro, Motion and Compressor. Some final points of note are that FCP X comes with a large variety of video effects, including the standard ‘Film Grain’ and ‘Cartoon’ to many others. There are also title sequences and bundled audio effects that are royalty free.

Motion 5 which is also available from today from the Mac App Store for $49.99 which is Apple’s motion graphics tool that has been redesigned, adds new templates, simplified chroma-keying and similarly takes advantage of 64-bit architectures. Compressor 4 is also available for $49.99 in the Mac App Store and has seen some modest improvements and feature additions, most notably is again support for 64-bit architectures and GPU utilization. Curiously both Motion 5 and Compressor 4 mention Blu-Ray recording - perhaps a Mac accessory could soon allow direct Blu-Ray recording, or perhaps new Mac Pros.

You can purchase Final Cut Pro X in the Mac App Store for $299.99, also available in the Mac App Store is Motion 5 for $49.99 and Compressor 4 for $49.99. FCP X requires at least 2GB of RAM (4GB is recommended), an OpenCL-capable graphics card or an Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later, 256MB of VRAM and at least 2.4GB of disk space. For a full run down of new features be sure to check out the Final Cut Pro X page on the Apple Website.

Jump the break for Apple’s full press release.

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Unofficial Final Cut Pro X Announcement Videos Now Online

Apple hasn’t posted an official video of yesterday’s Final Cut Pro X announcement at the Supermeet in Las Vegas (and some say it likely won’t), but as noted by MacRumors two unofficial videos has surfaced on Youtube showing the entire presentation. The video are in good quality, audio is decent and they can be viewed in 720p.

You can watch the videos below. More screenshots of Final Cut Pro X were posted this morning, as well as confirmation from Apple to “stay tuned” about other apps of the Final Cut Pro suite coming in the future. Final Cut Pro X will be released at $299 on the Mac App Store in June.
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New Final Cut Pro X Screenshots, Apple Says “Stay Tuned” For Other Apps

Last night, Apple officially announced a new version of Final Cut Pro during the Supermeet in Las Vegas, Nevada. As you might have read in our liveblog and announcement post, Final Cut Pro X has been completely rebuilt from the ground up to be as revolutionary as the first version of FCP released in 1999: full Cocoa, Core Animation, Grand Central Dispatch and 64-bit support, iMovie-inspired menus for easier navigation and media management, a whole new underlying engine that – according to people who saw the demo yesterday – makes the timeline incredibly fast and responsive. With keyboard-based nesting, magnetic timeline, background processing and automatic people and media detection on import, Apple aims at revolutionizing Final Cut Pro.

As announced yesterday by Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos on stage, Final Cut Pro X will be released at $299 in June. Final Cut Pro went under a major price cut (it used to be sold at $999), and it will also be available on the Mac App Store – like every new Apple desktop app nowadays. But last night, many immediately wondered whether the lower price and Mac App Store distribution would lead to the demise of Final Cut Express (widely regarded as an “iMovie for Pros”, lacking many of the functionalities of Final Cut Pro) and boxed copies of FCP. Furthermore, Apple made no mention of all the other Final Cut Studio apps last night such as Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor, Color and DVD Studio Pro. On Twitter, I speculated Apple could release them as standalone apps in the Mac App Store or – when they don’t make sense as apps because they’re basically “extensions” to Final Cut – as in-app purchases within Final Cut Pro X itself.

An Apple representative, speaking to The Loop, seems to confirm the theory that other apps will be released alongside FCP X:

Apple on Wednesday introduced Final Cut Pro X, but there was no mention of the other applications in the suite of video apps.

“Today was just a sneak peak of Final Cut Pro, stay tuned,” an Apple representative told The Loop.

The Loop has also received a series of high-res screenshots, one of them you can see above. We should know more about Final Cut Pro X in the coming weeks (Apple hasn’t posted a press release, or updated its website with a sneak peek) as Apple gets ready for a June launch, presumably during or soon after the WWDC.

 

Apple Announces Final Cut Pro X, Coming In June

Update #1: Final Cut Pro X will be released in June and it’ll be available through the Mac App Store. No mention of Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Express today. [via]

As widely expected, Apple just introduced a new version of Final Cut at the Final Cut Pro Supermeet during NAB 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Touted as “revolutionary as the first version” from 1999, Apple introduced the new Final Cut Pro X saying that every major broadcaster and film maker nowadays relies on FCP for their video editing needs.

Basing on live updates coming from attendees at NAB 2011, Final Cut Pro X has been built from scratch, and it’s entirely 64-bit. It’s based on technologies like Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, Grand Central Dispatch and it focuses on image quality. It features a resolution independent timeline up to 4K for scalable rendering – in fact, it appears the old render dialog is gone entirely as the app uses the available CPU to keep files always rendered. FCP X allows you to edit while you’re importing thanks to its new engine, and it’s also got automatic media and people detection on import, as well as image stabilization.

Apple is promoting the new FCP X as a complete and total rebuild. Smart collections look very similar to iMovie, and overall there is a feeling Apple has borrowed some UI elements from the iLife application to make the general design more accessible, even for professionals. For instance, Apple has brought “single keystroke nesting” to Final Cut Pro – a new functionality that allows you to group chunks of media into a single clip in the timeline. The “inline precision editor” allows you to make edits by revealing media with an iOS-like menu.

More details from liveblogs:

- “You can view the media in the browser in a film strip type view. You can completely customize how you view media prior to the timeline.” - robimbs

- “4 window setup is now kind of truncated in 3 windows. The browser has the viewer built into it.” - robimbs

- “Auditioning: collect options during edit, choose later (simplifies versioning). This is loosely similar to Logic’s feature for grouping” - fcpsupermeet

Some notes of interested from Photography Bay:

10:33: Randy Ubillos, Chief Architect, Video Applications on stage. Demo FCP X live now. Beta version. “We hope it behaves.”

10:35: Audi R8 commercial spot cut on FCP X…

10:36: Demo’ing it live now. Showing off the keywording ability of the sections of the clip instead of the whole clip.

10:37: Offers filmstrip view for content. Looks just like iMovie’s functionality.

10:38: You can highlight sections of content in the filmstrip view and add keywords that way. The keywords show up as items in event library. Selecting those keyword items brings up just those sections of content. Looks like subclips, but it’s not.

If the new FCP X is still in beta, there’s shouldn’t be a product launch (or press release) coming today. Several attendees are reporting on Twitter the new timeline is very, very fast and are also mentioning an iPad app being demoed on screen. With background processing and the possibility to use all cores on powerful machines like a Mac Pro, Apple has focused on improving the reliability of Final Cut’s timeline by making sure to clips can be accidentally “destroyed”. The redesigned UI with a touch of iOS here and there and “magnetic timeline” should – basing on what we’re hearing from people at NAB – dramatically improved navigation and organization of large chunks of media.

FCP X features instant render in the background that doesn’t affect editing, also with 1-click instant color matching. Color correction, for example, has been built right into the timeline, enabling users to, say, distribute a “Ken Burns Effect” with a single swipe. Apparently there’s a lot of animation going on with windows, and attendees are reporting that – judging from the demo – Final Cut Pro X is incredibly fast in every task and processing that’s been done on stage.
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