DMN Kevin McAuliffe

With all the new features in Motion (and across the the whole studio), $299 is a very affordable upgrade price

Star Wars Episode 1 and Apple's new Final Cut Studio have something in common, and that is the hype. Final Cut Studio has been hyped for more than a year, and every time someone blogged about its release coming up, nothing happened. Well, mid-way through July, Apple snuck Final Cut Studio (not called 3, just Final Cut Studio) onto its website, and needless to say, the tidal wave began. Every blog outlet, and writer out there was quick to jump on the band wagon to talk about, in many cases, that they were disappointed with what Apple has served up with Final Cut Studio (FCS).

Much like The Phantom Menace, there was no way it could have lived up to the hype. The previous version of FCS was announced on April 15, 2007 at NAB, and this incarnation has been more than two years in the making, and let me say that I am very happy with what Apple has done. Not only have has Apple brought improvements to almost all the applications, the engineers have fixed a whole bunch of things that didn't work right, and for me, the biggest improvement in the bundle has to be Motion 4. Let's take a look at what Apple has done to bring Motion even closer to the spotlight.

Installation
The first thing that you NEED to be aware of is that FCS requires both Leopard and an Intel-based Mac to run. Sorry PowerPC'rs, you are out of luck on this one. The installation time might vary depending on how much you want to install. If you are looking for just the bare bones (applications), it should take about 5 minutes to install. If you are looking to install all the content (Motion templates, Soundtrack Pro SFX/Music, etc), then be prepared to wait anywhere up to an hour for the installation process to finish. Also, depending on when you are reading this article, make sure that the first thing you do after installation is head over to the Apple drop-down, and do a "Software Update," to make sure that your software is the most recent version (as of August 09, there are no updates yet for FCS). Don't feel as though you need to install all the content when you install FCS. This extra content can be installed at any time. read more...