Apple Has HD to Burn In Amped-Up Final Cut Studio

Filling in the remaining gaps in its suite of post tools, Apple demoed Final Cut Studio running on the “Tiger” or 10.4 version of its OS X at NAB. Upgrades in FCP, Motion and DVD Studio Pro are combined in the $1299 package, along with a brand new audio editing and sound design app called Soundtrack Pro.

Scaling from DV to uncompressed HD editing, Final Cut Studio leverages a G5 to get every last bit of performance out of it. The package, which ships in May on the heels of the Tiger release (April 29th at 6pm local time), gives Apple a complete HD platform capable of slurping up major HD formats all the way through burning to DVD in high def.

In Final Cut Pro 5, Apple gives editors a handful of the things they've been asking for, namely multicam editing (up to 128 sources), multichannel audio (up to 24-bit/96 kHz), and faster preview due to dynamic scaling of frame rates and image quality. Add to that native editing of XDCAM and HDV and support for PD and, the ice-cream topping on this hot dessert, real-time playback of uncompressed HD effects.

The company raises the stakes with Motion 2, which, thanks to 32-bit float rendering, can now handle film resolution and scale down to 8-bit. Inspired use of MIDI allows animation to be handled rhythmically through a keyboard or faders.

Apple's engineers dig deeper into audio to deliver Soundtrack Pro, a non-destructive waveform editor that incorporates 50+ plug-ins from Logic Pro 7 and sports an integrated mixer with control surface support to make audio editors feel more at home.

Last, Apple leverages the H.264 portion of the MPEG-4 spec to allow DVD Studio Pro 4 to burn HD. The authoring app was previewed at the show with a prototype Toshiba HD DVD player.

All of the pieces of the Final Cut Studio package are also sold separately: FCP 5 ($999), Motion 2 ($299), Soundtrack Pro ($299) and DVD Studio Pro 4 ($499).