Earlier this week, Apple announced a significant update to Final Cut Studio, with updated versions of its bundled applications, including: Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color and Compressor. Apple has also dropped the price $300 from the previous release, bringing the price down to $999.Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing announced: "With 1.4 million users and 50 percent of the market,* Final Cut Pro is the number one professional video editing application, The new Final Cut Studio includes more than 100 new features and dramatically expands Apple's ProRes family of codecs so editors can work in the studio with the highest quality video or on location at low bandwidths."
Significant changes to Final Cut Pro include:
- New ProRes Codecs
Support for mobile editing at low bandwidth
Easy export (Allows users to continue working while encoding is being performed)
iChat Theatre
New Alpha Transitions
Native AVC-Intra support for the latest high quality Panasonic cameras.
Final Cut Studio is Apple's Emmy award winning, flagship video editing software, which is used in the movie industry worldwide. Final Cut Studio has 1.4 Million users worldwide and 50% of the market.
As far as I concern, Final Cut is or was made from the same development code since the beginning of Adobe Premiere. I don't know if they still sharing the same code.
To add to what you said, Color was originally Final Touch until Apple bought the company. That application alone retailed for $25,000 and is now part of Final Cut Studio which retails at $999;great value for money given it can now roundtrip at 4k resolution.
Means editing in 4k with small file sizes!
Sweet!
I see a lot of companies saying 'looking for final cut editor'. It's slightly insulting as I am an editor, not an editing platform, they all work, they all get the job done, and for the most part they are compatible with each-other. Most films do at some point pass through an Avid machine. At one point i was set up to do all my cutting in MC, and the color correction person was able to grab my project from me and color correct it in FCP.
Now my main reason for using Media Composer is that it runs in both Windows and Mac environments, the UI is more intelligently laid out and the keyboard commands make sense. I honestly sit down at a FCP system and it takes me about 5min to do some things that would take maybe 5 seconds in Media Composer.
For that 50% of the market statement at the end of the write-up you did I must add this recent news tidbit. Professionals prefer Avid Media Composer.
American Cinema Editors (ACE) Board Honors Avid Media Composer with Its First-Ever “ACE Technical Excellence Award” - Distinguishing It as the Preferred Choice of Acclaimed Editors July 7th 2009
http://www.avid.com/us/pressroom/ACE-honor...or-editors.aspx
Though I don't disagree at all. If anything, it's a good thing that there's something as good and well-received as Avid sharing the market with FC.
Unfortunately, the FC-using masses...
Well, let's just say that 'understanding the importance of competition in a healthy industry' is not something you find every day in Appleland. Your average FC user would be perfectly happy seeing all competitors go up in a fiery inferno, leaving Final Cut with a monopoly.
It's another example of that weird parent-of-a-high-school-football-player mentality that seems to pollute every issue involving two or more choices.
/just remember, FC is far more affordable, isn't bundled with expensive hardware, and gosh darnit, it's just more accessible! You know, the exact same pro-PC argument branded irrelevant by the Apple community
With Avid, the hardware is not required (Media Composer), sometimes I don't use the hardware, and I'm actually considering selling it so I can make the jump to 100% HD(capture/playback to ext-monitor) a little easier on my wallet.
My MC was $100 more than FCP, I got very lucky with the timing. Someone had won it, and was getting rid of it on craigslist of all places. Needless to say, my total price was 50% less than it should have been.
I may have opened a can of worms there, but really they're both decent platforms, though Avid a tad more professional, which in turn does make it less accessible in terms of cost. They did cut back the MC price to make it a little more accessible.
We were considering Apple + FCP as a cheaper alternative at an Animation company I worked at (which will remain nameless), but their(FCP's) media management system just wasn't up to snuff for CG Animation.
I can open another can of worms in stating that I saved another $2000-3000 by buying a certified Apple Mac instead of a Certified PC. =) I was shocked by this, and it inevitably led to my taste and conversion from Apple hater to Apple admirer. I use my Mac for creative stuff, and my PC for gaming. All is well in the world for apple fans.... I hope I didn't/don't spark any silly debates.
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