NAB Diary: Sunday
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3:30 p.m.
Well I made it. Fortunately, DMN’s Charlie White was able to attend the Apple press conference, and he shared some good news with me.[an error occurred while processing this directive]Apple is releasing Final Cut Pro 4.0.
My pre NAB prediction came true! With over 300 new features, this looks like a sure shot. The one that I am most happy with is that the new version of Final Cut Pro will include a copy of Cinema Tools for free. New support in Cinema Tools include change lists and ink numbers for those working in 34mm and 16mm formats. It is no surprise when Panasonic made an appearance to show of the integration between its products and FCP 4.0.
Another improved feature is the RT Extreme, which allows real-time previews on an NTSC or PAL monitor when connected via FireWire or external breakout box. FireWire support now includes FireWire 800, which is part of all new Apple systems. AJA was there showing off the Kona card and how well it integrates with Final Cut Pro 4.0.
Final Cut Pro 4.0 also has new high-quality 8- and 10-bit uncompressed formats, full 32-bit floating point per channel video processing and three new integrated applications – Live Type for advanced titling, Soundtrack for music creation and Compressor for full featured batch transcoding. I didn’t get to see these for myself, but Charlie White says, “They look very impressive.” I’ll get to see all of this close up on Wednesday and report it back to you right here. My first impression of Soundtrack is that it seems a lot like Sonic Foundry’s Acid program, which is great for those of us who don’t have time to hire a band.
Speaking of audio, there are some new editing capabilities that allow you to do keyframe thinning, multi-track audio mixing, and multi-channel audio output and listen to those in real-time.
There is a lot more on this, and I’ll tell you more on Thursday, but for now, the most important thing is this… Final Cut Pro 4 will be released in June. There is no change in price; Apple will still be selling it for $999. This is an incredible bargain, considering Cinema Tools itself used to run an extra $1000. Two great applications for the price of one. For those of us who already own an FCP system, the upgrade to FCP4.0 will be $399.
Apple also unveiled DVD Studio Pro 2.0, which is a completely rebuilt DVD authoring system. This new version purports to have better interface and authoring capabilities. Again, I’ll have more on this later in the week, but for now my only hesitation is that this rebuilt interface means one thing… DVD Studio Pro 1.5 users are going to have to relearn an awful lot. This announcement of a redesigned system comes only a week after Adobe announced their new DVD authoring system. Could this be why Adobe is not going to release their DVD authoring system version 1.0 on the Mac? This live and let live approach may be the reasoning between Adobe’s recent PC v. Mac issue on their website.
Avid
My next stop is the Avid event at the Hard Rock. We’ll see what their answer to Apple’s unveiling is in a short while.
Oh… want to hear what makes my trip even better? My room is number 666, just perfect for the Sunday I have already had.
Tune in tomorrow for even more great news from Sin City!
When not working deep in the labs of the DMN Central Division testing the latest and greatest software/hardware products Stephen Schleicher can be found at the local university teaching a few courses on video and web production. He can be reached at schleicher@mindspring.com. You can also visit him on the web at www.mindspring.com/~schleicher
Source: Digital Media Online, Inc.
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