At this year’s NAB, Apple introduced Final Cut Pro 4, a major upgrade of Apple's editing software for film, HD, SD and DV. Packed with more than 300 new features, Final Cut Pro 4 introduces RT Extreme, for real-time compositing and effects, powerful new interface customization tools, new high-quality 8- and 10-bit uncompressed formats and full 32-bit floating point per channel video processing. Final Cut Pro 4 also includes three completely new integrated applications: LiveType for advanced titling, Soundtrack for music creation and Compressor for full featured batch transcoding.
Final Cut Pro 4 features high-quality, software-based 8- and 10-bit uncompressed formats and 32-bit floating point processing and is the only nonlinear editing, compositing and effects package that scales smoothly from DV through SD, HD and film.
RT Extreme is an enhanced software-based, real-time effects architecture that scales smoothly with processor speed to support an increased number of simultaneous real-time video streams and hundreds of real-time effects. RT Extreme allows software effects to be viewed in real-time on an external broadcast monitor when connected via FireWire or an external breakout box.
LiveType enables users to create dynamic, animated titles quickly and easily. LiveType includes LiveFonts, a new approach to text animation in which every character of a font is a separate animated movie. With support for DV, SD and HD formats, LiveType allows users to quickly and easily create sophisticated, professional-quality animated text and graphic effects.
Soundtrack automatically matches audio loops regardless of tempo and key, providing real-time arranging and mixing. Soundtrack is fully integrated within Final Cut Pro 4, supports Final Cut Pro 4's new score markers for perfect synchronization, includes a library of thousands of music loops and sound effects and supports AIFF, WAV and ACID files.
Compressor, a new batch transcoding tool that comes bundled with both Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 2, lets users batch and export directly to multiple formats including MPEG-2 for DVD, MPEG-4 for streaming media or any supported QuickTime(R) format. Compressor includes watermarking, real-time preview and 30 high-quality filters and effects, providing an ideal platform for high volume or repetitive encoding tasks.
Final Cut Pro 4 provides developer extensibility through a new XML interchange format and FireWire-based I/O framework. This new standards-based composition and metadata interchange format, combined with a new import/export plug-in API, allows developers to create tools that integrate Final Cut Pro 4 into a wide range of production workflows.
For more information visit www.apple.com.
