Promising to intensify competition in Hollywood’s editing space, the anticipated new 64-bit version of Apple’s Final Cut Pro is now available for just $299.99 from the Mac App Store.
Final Cut’s customer base, which ranges from hobbyists to professionals, is the largest in the editing market with more than 2 million users, Apple claims. Rivals include Avid’s Media Composer and Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
In Hollywood, Avid’s Media Composer remains the tool of choice among members of honorary society American Cinema Editors, according to the latest ACE member survey.
With the new features in the latest Final Cut Pro X editing software—which includes a ‘magnetic timeline’ that Apple describes as a trackless approach to editing to let users add and arrange clips wherever they want them—Apple seems focused on expanding its impact in the professional market.
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Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vp of worldwide product marketing, said in today’s announcement: “Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro (which launched in 1999). We have shown it to many of the world’s best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped.”
Also in the announcement from Apple, Academy Award winning editor Angus Wall (The Social Network), said in a statement: “Final Cut Pro X is incredibly modern and fast, but most importantly it lets you focus on telling your story in the most creative way, while it actively manages all of the technical details.”
In addition to faster editing, Apple highlighted new features include ‘content auto-analysis,’ developed to automatically scan and categorize content upon import to then organize clips into ‘smart collections;’ as well as background rendering.
Final Cut Pro X was first previewed to an enthusiastic crowd in April at a FCP User Group’s SuperMeet held in Las Vegas the same week at the NAB Show. It has been roughly two years since there has been a new version of the software.
Also today, companion apps Motion 5 for motion graphics and Compressor 4 for media encoding are available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 each.
Final Cut Pro was previously available for $1000 as part of a software bundle.
