Introduction
Final Cut Pro is Apple's award-winning professional video editing, effects and compositing software for broadcasters, educators, web producers and professional videographers. It's a full-featured program designed -- and priced -- for users with sophisticated needs.
The standard configuration of Final Cut Pro (referred to as FCP hereafter) displays two editing windows side-by-side and a "timeline" allowing you to drag and drop clips, transitions and other materials for positioning and editing. There are, however, a number of alternate configurations possible, including custom setups, which can be saved and later recalled. The editing windows fit most comfortably on a screen (or two) with at least 1024x768-pixel resolution; however, the windows will automatically resize to fit smaller displays, and, under Mac OS X, FCP3's windows will leave space for the Dock.
The editing windows have the same sort of brushed aluminum look as does Apple's QuickTime player and iMovie application. These FCP editing windows feature several tabbed dialogs, providing rapid access to various video, audio, filters and motion options. A large number of additional options for capturing video, marking segments and modifying sequences are available via drop-down menus.
The program is able to capture video directly from i.LINK/Firewire Digital Video cameras and supports device control options for FireWire, Sony LAN-C, VISCA, RS-232, RS-422 and other common device control protocols. We tested the program using the Apple FireWire option. with it, you can simply press the various buttons on the screen corresponding to the Play, Stop, Fast Forward and Rewind buttons on the VTR and the unit is controlled and displays full-motion video in the left-side editing window. From this preview, you can grab shots and add them to the "bin" of clips from which you will assemble your final movie.
Version 1
Version 1.x of the program was surprisingly unsophisticated -- and occasionally downright awkward -- in a number of ways. It lacked the ability to detect scene changes and automatically clip captured sequences into individual segments. This is a feature found virtually all other recent video editors, including Apple's low-end iMovie2 and even the ultra-basic Windows Movie Maker on That Other Platform.
Version 2
FCP Version 2, fortunately, added this feature and addressed many other minor annoyances, with better titling tools, improved media management features (including the ability to replace media in the timeline with other clips or stills) and a new audio peak meter.
It also delivers substantially improved performance in some areas -- Apple claims rendering is 30 to 70 faster. However, we are troubled by numerous reports at Accelerate Your Mac and the 2Pop message boards that suggest that, even on high-end Macs with lots of RAM, FCP2 sometimes drops frames. This seems to occur no matter whether the system is running the QT5RT extension (included on the FCP2 CD) or the standard Apple QuickTime 5.0.1 extension. The same machines are typically able to capture without dropped frames using FCP 1.2.5 and QuickTime 4.1.2. Interestingly, some users report that FCP 1.2.5 also drops frames when QuickTime 5.01 is used -- suggesting that QuickTime 5 may be the source of the problem. (FCP2 cannot use QuickTime 4.x.) To date, Apple has not acknowledged whether there is, in fact, a problem lurking here.
As well, some users report that, when running versions 1 or 2 of FCP under Mac OS 9.x, they find that large video clips have odd file-size listings when viewed with Sherlock2, sometimes beginning with a negative number and displaying an incorrect QuickTime document size. Fortunately, the Finder's Get Info dialog shows these super-size files correctly.
The program's interface is similar in many ways to that of Adobe After Effects. Controls, usually consisting of a slider or rotary dial with numerical readout, allow you to zoom in or out, rotate, crop, distort, and otherwise manipulate the source video. You can also apply motion blur effects, drop shadows and other effects. As with After Effects, the ability to set keyframes allows these effects to be animated over time. These effects must then be rendered -- a time consuming process unless extra-cost hardware (detailed below) is present to handle the task. You can "render All" or just render the sequence you are working on.
We recently had the opportunity for some hands-on time with Final Cut Pro 2.0 and the Matrox RTMac real-time effects card. This complex and sophisticated package deserves a more in-depth review than we are able to present here initially, but we will add to this and include links to other information in the months ahead.
The Mac version of the Matrox RT card differs from its Windows-based sibling in that the Mac version works with your existing Mac card. The machine on which we tested the package included an NVIDIA GeForce 2MX card; it also works with the ATI cards shipped with some Macs. By contrast, the PC version of the Matrox RT2000 includes a special AGP graphics card (based on a Matrox G400) a loopback cable and a PCI card that connects to "BOB," a breakout box providing composite, audio and S-video input connections.
RT = Real Time Effects.... maybe
It is worth noting that not all effects are accelerated by the RT card. Inside Final Cut Pro 2.0, the filter menu shows accelerated effects in bold face to signify support for real-time processing. These include standard cross-dissolve effects, plus some fancy transitions such as diamond-iris effects and similar scene-splitters. However, changing the opacity of a mask or applying a blur causes the system to revert to software-based rendering, which is definitely not a real-time affair.
There are a few areas where version 2 could stand improvement. The inclusion of Boris Script Ltd. 1.0, a "lite" version of Graffiti, a titling plug-in from Boris FX is nice, but it serves to illustrate just how anemic the built-in titling tools in FCP are without it. Rendering to FireWire requires the use of Apple's not-so-quick QuickTime-based DV codec. The audio features were beefed up considerably in FCP version 2, but are still far more limited, for example, than those available in Sonic Foundry's Vegas Video for Windows. The program's audio processing features are simplistic but serviceable, lacking multichannel mixing and automation features present in Adobe Premiere, Vegas Video and other competitors. You can, however, save audio and video to separate files, and save the 48KHz (better than CD quality) audio in a format suitable for importing into DigiDesign's ProTools for the Mac -- providing what is likely to be more than enough power for all but the most the finicky audiophile.
Apple in August 2001 updated Final Cut Pro to 2.02. An Apple TIL document notes numerous bug-fixes and improvements.
Version 3
If you want to run FCP under OS X, you'll need at least version 3, announced at DV Expo in Dec. 2001. (FCP 3 also runs under Mac OS 9.2.2.) QuickTime 5.04 Pro or newer is included and required. FCP3 doesn't take advantage of any of the graphical user interface niceties of Mac OS X. It looks and runs pretty much the way it does under Mac OS 9.2.2.
There are, however, enough substantial improvements to version 3.0 that it is the first version we can wholeheartedly recommend. A QuickView option delivers render-free previews of segments of your production up to 10 seconds long on any G3 or better hardware; for those with a configuration able to support the program's real-time effects (i.e., Mac systems equipped with G4 processors; see Apple's FCP tech specs for details), additional real-time preview functionality is available. (We've also seen some third-party FXscript hacks that allow RT previews on otherwise unsupported machines, albeit with some dropped frames.)
There's also an interesting OfflineRT feature that captures video in a low-res proxy format. With it, you can transcode and store 40 to 45 minutes of DV video per gigabyte of disk space, edit the video then apply the timecode-accurate edits to the standard or HQ DV data later. (MacCentral has details....) When editing is complete, the programs sends commands to the FireWire-connected DV video source, captures the required high-res footage, and assembles the final video. It's worth mentioning that this offline functionality is not available when importing video clips from disk; in that case, the QuickView preview is the only option.
The titling capabilities in version 3 are substantially beefier, too. (We'll describe these in a future update to this article, after we've had more time to explorer them.) See Apple's Final Cut Pro 3 web page for details....
The package includes a hefty manual (nearly three inches thick!), a quick-reference card, key stickers and the usual assortment of license and warranty papers.
Other Real-Time Options
Interestingly, Final Cut Pro 3.0 disables its built-in real-time effects support if it detects the presence of a Matrox RTMac card in the system. While this is not necessarily a bad thing (as software-based previews are irrelevant anyway, when you've got a hardware card providing real-time output of full-quality video), it does present a bit of a dilemma for owners of the RTMac, as does the current lack of OSX drivers for the RTMac (Matrox says it is working on this....)
The user interface is enhanced with several new features. There's a new "split" timeline that displays different colours to show whether an effect is possible in real-time or whether it requires software rendering. Below it, a separate line shows the status of audio tracks. The software still isn't up to the task of editing pro-quality audio, but at least it can export media tracks in the high-end standard OMF format.
Final Cut Pro is available online through The Apple Store (www.apple.com) and through authorized Apple resellers for US$999.
AppleFinal Cut Pro 3.0.1, released on Feb. 27, 2002, corrected a bug that could cause some dual processor computers to unexpectedly quit if the Internet System Preference pane in Mac OS X contained only partial information. Subsequent updates addressed other bugs. At this writing, Final Cut Pro 3.0.4 has been qualified for use with QuickTime 6.0.2 and Mac OS X v10.2. Users running earlier versions of Mac OS X should continue to use QuickTime 5.x. Apple's website has details.
Version 4
Final Cut Pro 4, due in June 2003, adds a number of a number of new features, including:
Upgrades from versions 1, 2, or 3 are US$399 (for the record, this is an increase over the $300 and $250 upgrade prices Apple charged for the last two versions); the full version of Final Cut Pro 4 is US$999. A DVD drive is required for installation. Apple's website has details...
Conclusion
FCP has been updated several times since the program's initial release in 1999. It's maturing nicely. Version 4's integration of DVD output options and incredibly nifty animated titles, objects and textures give the program a significant leg up on other Mac or PC-based alternatives. Still, despite an "Easy Setup" feature (introduced in version 2.0) that makes the program much easier to set up and configure, casual users may find the program's advanced feature set bewildering. Unless you are familiar with -- or willing to dig in and learn about -- concepts like Edit Decision Lists and SMPTE Time Codes, Final Cut Pro may be too much of a good thing. For those who find this to be so, Final Cut Express may be a better choice.
For more information on Final Cut Pro, see www.apple.com/finalcutpro/.
For Further Reading
More Reviews:
Full Review: Apple Final Cut Pro 2.0 - ZDNet (and printer friendly version)
Getting started with FCP: Is Final Cut Pro right for me? ...what I really wanna do is direct - Los Angeles Final Cut Pro User Group
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