ProVideo Coalition Kevin P. McAuliffe

With all the editing programs and packages on the market today, deciding on which one is right for you can be difficult and confusing. I thought I would take a look and list my top ten reasons why you should either switch to Final Cut Studio 2 or make it your first choice when buying for the first time!

10. SMOOTHCAM AND THE INTRODUCTION OF BACKGROUND PROCESSING

Anyone who has used Shake will be familiar with SmoothCam. It was designed to, as the name says, smooth out camera bumps and shakes in your footage. Most people might look at this and think that it is not really that big a deal, but believe me, it is. Why you ask? SmoothCam not only lets you smooth your footage out, but it introduces a new feature to Final Cut Pro that let’s you process the effect “live” in the background. The way the effect works is that once you add it to your timeline, FCP immediately starts analyzing the original clip to see what is happening inside the frame. Keep in mind, if the shot you captured was an hour long, it will process the whole hour long clip. In most cases, with anything that needs processing or analyzing, you would need to stop and wait for it to finish. Not anymore! Now, Final Cut Pro will analyze while you are working. Once you hit play on your timeline to see what you are working on, the analyzing will pause, and once you stop playing to do effects work, titles, etc, it will keep processing until it is done. read more