Apple has introduced a new version of the Final Cut suite at the Final Cut Pro Supermeet during NAB 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The latest version of the hugely popular video editing software adds support for 64-bit processors and can now take advantage of more than 4GB of RAM.
Apple says Final Cut Pro X has been rewritten from the ground up, with support for 64-bit, a user-interface redesign, and a whole host of new features. The software takes advantage of core Mac OS X features like Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, and Grand Central Dispatch to speed up and fine-tune performance.
In addition to a complete UI overhaul, Final Cut Pro X boasts a newly designed floating point linear color system, up-to-4K-resolution-independent playback, a magnetic timeline for keeping audio and video in sync, Compound Clips for easy video nesting, non-destructive color balancing, automatic audio cleanup, and Smart Collections for organizing clips.
The new software has additionally borrowed a trick or two from Apple’s consumer-level video editing software, iMovie: It now supports full background rendering—“the render dialogue is gone!” said Apple video architect Peter Steinauer—and an inline precision editor. It also sports the same automatic face detection (single or group) as iMovie or and the ability to identify shots (medium, wide, or close-up).
Features
* Now 64-bit, with OpenCL support
* All editing native – no transcoding (for supported formats incl. H264, I assume)
* New UI (screenshots forthcoming) with “magnetic timeline” and new clip sync method
* Resolution independent playback system
* Handles up to 4K
* Uses Grand Central Dispatch to utilize all your cores
* Fully color-managed (ColorSync)
* Media ready for editing immediately – but stabilization, audio and shutter correction, shot detection and preliminary color balancing automatically applied during ingest
* Timecode-based keywording within clips
* Collections and “smart” collections of media based on metadata and analysis, presented in iMovie filmstrip style
* Auto-syncing clips via audio waveform analysis (very nice if it works as advertised)
* Automated color-matching between clips
Final Cut Pro X will be available this June from the Mac App Store for $299.
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