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Final Cut Studio

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Final Cut Studio is a professional video and audio production suite for Mac OS X from Apple Inc., and a direct competitor to Avid Media Composer in the high-end movie production industry.

Components

Final Cut Studio contains six main applications and several smaller applications used in editing video. The major applications it includes are:

• Final Cut Pro 7 – "real-time editing for DV, SD and HD"
• Motion 4 – "real-time motion graphics design"
• Soundtrack Pro 3 – "advanced audio editing and sound design"
• DVD Studio Pro 4 – encoding, authoring and burning.
• Color 1.5 – a new color grading application adapted from Silicon Color's FinalTouch.
• Compressor 3.5 – a video encoding tool for outputting projects in different formats.

Additional applications included are:

• Cinema Tools 4.5 – tools specific to film processing.
• Qmaster 3 – a distributed processing tool.

History

Final Cut Studio was introduced at the National Association of Broadcasters in April 2005. It is the successor to Production Suite, and added new versions of all the Production Suite applications, as well as a 'new' program, Soundtrack Pro, which is really a new version of Soundtrack, formerly included with Final Cut Pro. In January 2006, Final Cut Studio became the only way to purchase any of the individual major applications. In March 2006, Apple released the Universal Binary version as Final Cut Studio 1.1.

Release history

Marketing

Final Cut Studio has been placed as an all-in-one production workflow because of its integration of film, motion graphics and audio post-production tools in one suite. It is analogous to the iLife suite, which is aimed at consumers, insomuch as iMovie is the consumer counterpart of Final Cut Pro; GarageBand 3 is a consumer version of Logic; and iDVD is the cut-down version of DVD Studio Pro. Like Motion, iMovie includes Core Image effects that can be applied in real time.

High Definition

In the Macworld Conference and Expo 2005, Steve Jobs – CEO of Apple – declared 2005 to be the "Year of HD". To this end, the HD features of Final Cut Studio were emphasised, such that a little HD logo was placed on the box for each individual Studio application, as well as the Final Cut Studio box.

Final Cut Pro supports nearly all High Definition formats (HDV, DVCPRO HD, AVCHD, and uncompressed HD) and Soundtrack Pro and Motion can import these formats too, where they can be played back on an external monitor. DVD Studio Pro supports the HDDVD 1.0 specification. See DVD Studio Pro.

Packaging

The design for the packaging and websites for each application are consistent to a demonstration video shown at the product's introduction at NAB 2005. This video also includes reference to Shake 4 – a high-end digital compositing application that integrates with Final Cut Pro but is not included in Final Cut Studio.

Case studies

To market the Studio components, Apple compiled a set of case studies of real-world users of the applications. For Final Cut Pro, they used Bunim-Murray Productions' uses of the program in their The Real World reality television show. For Soundtrack Pro, Walter Murch became their advocate – a film editor and sound designer who worked on Cold Mountain and The Godfather. For Motion, Apple used the example of Mekanism and their creation of a TV spot designed to persuade young people to vote. And for DVD Studio Pro, the example of Relevant was used, who used the application in a unique, interactive movie called Backwoods to Brooklyn.

Integration

The applications are designed to integrate as a suite, to form a workflow. In particular:

• Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported to Soundtrack Pro for audio tweaking or music scoring
• Final Cut Pro sequences can be sent to Compressor, for encoding in an external format
• Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported for Motion, for motion graphics overlays, or LiveType, specifically for title overlays
• LiveType projects can be opened in Final Cut Pro without needing to be exported first
• Motion projects can be incorporated into DVD Studio Pro menus without needing to be exported first
• LiveFonts from LiveType can be used in Motion.

Final Cut Pro and Motion also integrate directly with Shake, a digital compositing package, also from Apple.

See also

• Non-linear video editing
• List of video editing software
• Comparison of video editing software
• Shake (software)
• Final Cut Server

External links

• Official Final Cut Studio home page