Apple Final Cut Studio (Mac DVD) Review

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(More customer reviews)This rather heavy box contains Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2, DVD Studio Pro 4 & Shake 4 and lots and lots of books (my kind of packaging). My old Final Cut Pro 4 books have lots of places bookmarked with stickies. I know that you can use the help menu on the computer but for those of us who do like to curl up with a good manual I was in heaven. The box has a total of eight books. Five of them are for Final Cut Pro the others are for Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro and DVD Studio Pro 4.
You have to invest both time and hard drive space for this software. I didn't install all of the extras that came in the box, but I did install quite a bit. To install all of the bells and whistles you would need about 41GB. I installed partial which used only 21GB which is still a hard drive hog.
While there were many great programs that came in the box I will only focus on Final Cut Pro 5.
What comes new for Final Cut Pro:
- "Multicamera Editing Using Multiclips". This allows you to group together multiple clips as separate angles and switch back and forth between the clips in real time. You can have up to 128 angles but only the first 16 can be played back in real time. This worked great for my multi-camera projects.
- You can now capture, edit and output native MPEG-2 HDV video plus 720p30, 720p60, 1080i60 & 1080i50 formats. Using supported USB or FireWire you can import and export native DV, DVCPRO & DVCPRO 50 footage from Panasonic P2 cards all without any generation loss.
- Apple Professional Application Integration has a new "Send to Menu" which allows you to select one or more clips in your project and open them in other Apple Pro applications such as Shake 4, Soundtrack Pro and Motion 2.
- You can embed Motion and LiveType projects directly into your Final Cut projects and edit them like any other clip in your timeline.
- You can also process audio in your Final Cut project using Soudtrack Pro by editing nondestructively or destructively using the Waveform Editor. When you make changes to Soundtrack audio that is embedded in a Final Cut project the audio in your Final Cut project is updated immediately.
- Interface Enhancements, allow you to now change the text display size in the Browser and Timeline. A new customized keyboard layout for real-time multicamera editing is also included. Plus new button bars for common workflows like Multiclip, Media Logging & Audio Editing.
- Rendering of "Still Images" & "Generator Performance" are now rendered to a "Constant Frames" folder which is stored in the current "Render Files" on your scratch disk which helps playback performance significantly.
- RT Extreme & Real-Time Playback: allows you to manually adjust the video quality (high, medium or low) and playback frame rate (full, half, quarter) to reduce CPU load so you can increase the number of simultaneous real-time effects.
Dynamic Real-Time Playback: Where Final Cut can automatically adjust video quality, frame rate or both on a frame-by-frame basis during playback thus allowing you to get the best real-time performance.
Limiting the Data Rate of Real-Time Playback: Is useful when you have more video streams that your hard disk is capable of playing back. This would be helpful to those who media is stored on a (SAN) storage area network or if your scratch disk has a low data rate, such as 4200 rpm which is the case with some PowerBooks and portable FireWire drives.
Unlimited Real-Time Playback Enhanced: If you choose the "Unlimited RT" option from the RT pop-menu in the Timeline you can preview more effects than previously available. The engine has been enhanced to support playback for effects that were previously unplayable, such as Motion & LiveType clips.
- Audio: MIDI Control Surface Support allows you to precisely control fader levels and pan settings simultaneously, instead of adjusting faders one at a time. You can control whether or not audio beeps are heard when unrendered audio tracks are played back.
- Log and Capture: You can now capture up to 24 audio channels at the same time. The Log & Capture window allows you to choose which audio channels you capture and whether audio channels are captured as mono channels or stereo pairs.
- Scratch Disks, Xsan & Network Support: The Directory & File Permission supports scratch disks on storage area networks such as Xsan. All UNIX file permissions are obeyed, allowing you to carefully control read & write access for multiple Final Cut Pro editing systems connected to the SAN.
Each time Final Cut is opened it searches any computers on your LAN for easy setups, plug-ins, window & keyboard layouts, button bars, etc... Which allows you to install settings and preset files in only one location and share them with all other editing systems on the network.
Capture Now no longer preallocates disk space so now media files grow as they are written and there is no longer a waiting period before Capture Now operation begins.
- Media Management: There is a faster reconnect feature to your media files. You can also reveal a clip's media file directly in the "Finder". The Media Manager can process the latest supported video formats, including DVCPRO, HD, HDV & IMX.
- Film Editing and Cinema Tools: Clips in Final Cut can be linked directly to a Cinema Tools database. So whenever you make changes to your Cinema Tools database you can update the associated clip in Final Cut.
You can import "Telecine Logs" directly into Final Cut and associate the clips with a Cinema Tools database that is created automatically. Final Cut Pro supports feet + frame units in the Timeline ruler and timecode fields throughout the application.
As with most programs today there are many ways of getting help. With Final Cut you can use the onscreen help menu or one of the 5 manuals that ships with the program. Personally I like to use the manuals.
The program itself has a bit of a learning curve. If you have used other editing programs before you will pick it up fairly quickly. I was a heavy PhotoShop user before I started using Final Cut and I noticed that many of the concepts are the same in how things are laid out and how there are many ways to get to the same point according to your work style.
The first book "Getting Started" is a great book for someone that has not used the program before. It gives great insight on the Post Production process and how to best keep your work flow efficient:
- Planning is the first thing you should do before you start shooting or at least before you start editing.
- Setting up your editing system should only have to happen once when you first start working on your project. For most systems today you just have to attach your video camera to your computer and you are ready. I have my system setup with my digital camera, connected to a dedicated TV which is attached to a stereo VCR/DVD combo.
- Logging, capturing & importing: This step is mostly style driven. Some people prefer to dump all of the material off their tapes onto their hard drive instead of going through the tape before hand and just "logging" in what you would like to have in your project. I usually go through my tapes in front of my TV with my laptop and get the time codes and make a description of the scene. Next "Capture" your footage. I just go to the in and out points and capture just the images I want. By just capturing what I want I save on hard drive space. You can also "Import" QuickTime movies, audio and graphics files, such as a music track from a CD, a still image, or a layered Photoshop file.
- Editing your project this also can vary according to your style. You can drag all of the clips into the Timeline then start cleaning them up and adding transitions or you can clean them up as you pull them in. Me I drag what I need into the Timeline, fine tune, add my music then add my transitions.
- Mixing & sweeting audio this is where you can clean up your dialogue (you know when the annoying plate clatter at that important point in a presentation), add sound effects, music or voiceover and make adjustments to the mixing levels to make a more harmonious sound to your audio. You can set Final Cut to default to Sound Track Pro for additional audio editing. I love working in Soundtrack Pro because I can view my project in a mini-screen as I add the music to the sections I want.
- Adding effects and titles can be very time consuming which is why it's a good idea to have most of your project laid out and almost done before you start adding the effects. You can change the speed of a clip, create a motion clip, adjust your colors and many other touches to give your project that polished feel of a professional.
- Outputting and distributing your project is your last step. Final Cut Pro provides you with a variety of output options. You can create a video tape or export it to a DVD authoring program such as DVD Studio Pro or another DVD program or you can make a mini movie and place it on the web.
When you open Final Cut for the first time you will be prompted to choose and "Easy Setup" which will determine how Final Cut works with your editing system. Go to "User Preferences" where there are six folder tabs to chose from.The first tab is "General" this is where you can setup the number of "Undo's" you would like (we all LOVE undo) how many "Recent Clips" you would like to be displayed, setup your "Real-time Audio mixes, how often you would like to have a copy "Auto Save" and many other things that affect the general feel of your workspace.
Editing is the...Read more›

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Final Cut Studio puts everything professional editors need to elevate production values in a single box. These products are fully integrated into a powerful, all-purpose production suite. Among its many features: Powerful new multicamera editing, native HDV support, precision editing tools, scalable real-time effects processing, advanced real-time color correction, image manipulation filters and audio control surface support. Includes Final Cut Pro 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion 2 and DVD Studio Pro 4.

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