Videomaker by John Burkart

Apple released a new version of Final Cut Studio today. You can see what’s new here.

While we haven’t had a chance to get our hands on the new version yet, on the outset it looks to be a fairly uninspiring release. Let’s be clear though, Final Cut Studio is an amazingly powerful package for the money, but for my impressions I’m limiting the discussion only to the upgrade between Final Cut Studio 2 and this release, not to the whole suite itself. Lets breakdown the changes involved since Final Cut Studio 2.

Final Cut Pro 7: The addition of new Pro Res codecs to the mix is welcome in terms of versatility. The iChat compatible video collaboration tool is fantastic, and I can see using this in my everyday workflow almost immediately. Easy export is a nice presentation of the sometimes cumbersome compressor interface, and the new speed controls look very intuitive to use. However there are no new native editing modes other than AVCIntra, meaning you still have to do a time intensive transcode for your AVCHD, and XDCAM footage. Media Management still hasn’t changed substantially, and I believe that the differences between Final Cut 6 and 7 are certainly more evolutionary rather than revolutionary. If I had to give it a grade off of the specs shown today, it would be a C. read more...