Apple Upgrades Professional Video, DVD Products

The Cupertino-based computer maker unveiled the redesigned products, Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 2, on Sunday at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) expo in Las Vegas. Final Cut Pro 4 includes more than 300 new features, while DVD Studio Pro 2 has been totally rebuilt, the company said.

Supporting DV, SD and HD video formats as well as film, Final Cut Pro 4 adds the RT Extreme effects architecture, enabling realtime compositing and effects; new interface customization tools; high-quality 8-bit and 10-bit uncompressed formats; XML Link, a new XML interchange format; a new FireWire-based I/O framework; and an updated Cinema Tools application, which previously was sold separately. The upgrade also offers full, 32-bit floating point-per-channel video processing--a first for an editing system costing less than $100,000, Apple said--plus three new integrated applications: LiveType for advanced titling, Soundtrack for music creation and Compressor for full-featured batch transcoding.

Apple described DVD Studio Pro 2 as a "completely new" product. The DVD creation software includes a revamped user interface, which the company said is easy for Final Cut Pro and iDVD users to navigate; new, professionally designed templates that also can be customized; a new menu editor that lets users devise their own menus by dragging and dropping content; new timeline-based track editing, which allows users to work faster and more efficiently by providing a linear view of clips, audio and other assets; and the new Compressor tool (also in Final Cut Pro 4), which features a new MPEG-2 software encoder.

Final Cut Pro 4 is scheduled to ship in June at a list price of $999 ($399 for the upgrade). DVD Studio Pro 2 is slated for release in August at a price of $499. Apple said it also has reduced the price of DVD Studio Pro 1.5 to $499, and registered owners of that product can upgrade to DVD Studio Pro 2 for $29.95.

Also at NAB, Apple introduced Shake 3, an update of its compositing and visual effects software. Shake 3 brings new Mac OS X-only features such as Shake Qmaster network render-management software and unlimited network-rendering licenses, enabling visual effects artists to distribute rendering tasks across a cluster of Apple Xserve rack-mount servers or Power Mac G4 desktops. The update also includes new visual-effects features, such as motion-tracking and realtime broadcast preview, for Linux and IRIX users.

Shake 3 for the Mac OS X, Linux and IRIX platforms is due to ship in June. The Mac OS X version with unlimited render licenses will cost $4,950, and the Linux and IRIX versions will cost $9,900, with annual maintenance priced at $1,485. Existing Shake for Linux, IRIX and Microsoft Windows customers will continue to have the option of double their number of existing Shake licenses at no additional cost by migrating them to Shake for Mac OS X, Apple said.