NEW Final Cut Studio in 2009
I have been reading a 'lot' about the impending death and/or sell off of Apples Pro Software and it needs to stop!!!! 
I predict we will see an all new Final Cut Studio in 2009 and it's going to be a competition killer all over again!
Reasons to suspect an Apple Pro Bomb is in the works:
Apple publicly announced that 'Phenomenon' the successor to Shake is due 2008
They just added 'Color' to the suite
Final Cut Server was just delivered
Pro Users have a lot of money to spend (on Hardware too!!)
What we would like (and are likely) to see:
* New Final Cut Studio designed to make use of Snow Leopard (Grand Central & Open CL)
* Phenomenon - The Successor to Shake (AND Motion?)
* DVD Studio Pro with full Blu-Ray Support inc Advanced Interactivity
* Compressor (Grand Central and Open CL should work nicely here)
* Color with Native OS X Interface
* Soundtrack Pro - Any Ideas on Features ???
What do you guys think?
I predict we will see an all new Final Cut Studio in 2009 and it's going to be a competition killer all over again!
Reasons to suspect an Apple Pro Bomb is in the works:
Apple publicly announced that 'Phenomenon' the successor to Shake is due 2008
They just added 'Color' to the suite
Final Cut Server was just delivered
Pro Users have a lot of money to spend (on Hardware too!!)
What we would like (and are likely) to see:
* New Final Cut Studio designed to make use of Snow Leopard (Grand Central & Open CL)
* Phenomenon - The Successor to Shake (AND Motion?)
* DVD Studio Pro with full Blu-Ray Support inc Advanced Interactivity
* Compressor (Grand Central and Open CL should work nicely here)
* Color with Native OS X Interface
* Soundtrack Pro - Any Ideas on Features ???
What do you guys think?
Comments
Pro Users have a lot of money to spend (on Hardware too!!)
Funny joke.
What we would like (and are likely) to see:
* New Final Cut Studio designed to make use of Snow Leopard (Grand Central & Open CL)
* Phenomenon - The Successor to Shake (AND Motion?)
* DVD Studio Pro with full Blu-Ray Support inc Advanced Interactivity
* Compressor (Grand Central and Open CL should work nicely here)
* Color with Native OS X Interface
* Soundtrack Pro - Any Ideas on Features ???
What do you guys think?
Sounds pretty good to me though I'd like to see Final Cut + Shake + Motion as one application. I'm not a fan of switching between different apps. If I need to work on a piece of footage, it would be nice to have the timeline with multiple audio tracks and controls alongside the effects controls.
What's the point in using optical-flow retiming in Shake for example if it's done separately from your complex audio setup? You just have to sync it back up again.
I was kinda hoping for this stuff in 2008 though. So far Jobs' 'off the charts' prediction for 2008 doesn't seem to be happening soon. It won't be so much as 2008 is off the charts but December 2008, which just isn't quite the same thing.
Quad MBP with a good GPU + CUDA + Snow Leopard + Phenomenon + SSD would pretty much be a dream come true for me. Apart from the 2 USB ports of course
I believe the next FCP (and iMovie) will offer some sort of user-friendly tie-in with AppleTV.
I have been reading a 'lot' about the impending death and/or sell off of Apples Pro Software and it needs to stop!!!!
I predict we will see an all new Final Cut Studio in 2009 and it's going to be a competition killer all over again!
Reasons to suspect an Apple Pro Bomb is in the works:
Apple publicly announced that 'Phenomenon' the successor to Shake is due 2008
They just added 'Color' to the suite
Final Cut Server was just delivered
Pro Users have a lot of money to spend (on Hardware too!!)
What we would like (and are likely) to see:
* New Final Cut Studio designed to make use of Snow Leopard (Grand Central & Open CL)
* Phenomenon - The Successor to Shake (AND Motion?)
* DVD Studio Pro with full Blu-Ray Support inc Advanced Interactivity
* Compressor (Grand Central and Open CL should work nicely here)
* Color with Native OS X Interface
* Soundtrack Pro - Any Ideas on Features ???
What do you guys think?
I am a pc guy and looking at porting over to the mac. Apple has come a long way with their toolset, and I have been continually impressed with their software innovation. I wish they would focus more on the software and less on the hardware, since their pro hardware in many ways is a giant price gouge and in many instances is not worth it. It would be super nice if OS X snow leopard was standalone and available for custom pc builds but that will probably never happen. I will admit though that their systems are attractive and easy to tweak.
Regardless....With FCP Studio I personally dont mind the seperate apps. But I would agree, there should be some sort of embedded connection between video/imaging assets and their corresponding audio sequences.
Final Cut Pro is tough as is and am eagerly awaiting to see what else they add to it. My guess, for all of their creative pro tools, is that they are going to improve the performance of all considering the implementation of the Nehalem processing architecture, mixed with the lower bandwidth consuming OS/snow leopard. With the new configuration there is much better memory managment and scaling, and the graphics cards are looking fairly sick too. I used to be an nvidia guy but they are getting too expensive for me, and the new pro-sumer ddr5 ATI Radeon card is looking quite attractive.
Being a 3d novice and professional (I work in game development in Montreal) the software I am interested in using for content creation is all available for the mac platform with most of it utilizing its true 64 bit multi-threaded architecture. The stuff I do not have I have researched and understand that it will run fine on Bootcamp.
I agree that blue ray support should be encorporated into dvd studio.
As far as Shake/motion goes, I am hearing the rumors of "phenomenon" and hope they are true, after all this is 2009 and it was supposed to be released in 2008. I imagine apple to be intelligent with their builds and releases and will respect their production timelines when it comes to development and delivery. It would be interesting to see what they do with it. I hope it is a node based compositor with some of the behavioral functionality of motion and motions pre built libraries. I also hope there will be vector motion blur support to facilitate a post motion blur process for animation and fx. Wire removal tools and Foundry plugin support would be a plus as well but I am probably asking a lot from that. I hope it will compete with Autodesk toxic who recently is about to release a compatible Mac OS version.
Recently with Zbrush and Houdini going to the mac I am completely interested. I used to be a softimage guy (and I use maya at work) but autodesk is price gouging on their poor update to softimage 7.5 and after using Houdini for the past couple of months I am seeing that nothing else can really compare to its nature, flexibility, re-usability, and workflow.
I disagree with changing apple color to its native os X interface scheme. Its current format is perfect, in fact in my professional opinion, I prefer a darker interface color scheme for doing work, especially when it comes to color grading. I do not need a bright silver interface straining my eyes while I am trying to gauge the proper/perfect color spectrum and signal. I also hope that apple color is configured to support all resolutions of footage and file formats. I have heard rumor that as of now it only supports 2K images. I will admit I have not looked into this further and am not sure of the truth of this, maybe some of you can confirm the validity of this statement. Looking at other color grading tools however color is in a unique position, especially when it comes to its inherit price range in comparisson to the multi-thousand dollar competing solutions. I am a starving artist who likes to do art and maybe make a few dollars here and there. I am not a huge studio, but would like access to the same pro level tools as anyone else. I feel apple has really come forward with this to make people such as myself happy.
It would also be nice if there was an asset management system that supports all file types associated with the production suite and enables you to edit/modify any type of file with an auto update in everything else.
I would like to see a raster and vector imaging program to compete with photoshop and illustrator as well. With full alpha, paint, layers, and hdri support for the raster program.
Now I really am asking alot. hee hee.
I would like to see logic incorporated into the FC suite as well.
thats my two cents, gotta get back to work. ciao guys.
I am praying for a fcs upgrade this year. Now that I'm doing so much work from tapeless cameras, I need better support and a better long and transfer interface, and that's just to start. I really hope they pull through.
Yes we're pretty much on the backside of the switch away from tape and to faster ingest methods. I'm going to go out an quite a sturdy limb here but I think the next Final Cut Pro is going to take cues from iMovie '09 (don't scream yet) in regards to realtime EVERYTHING.
People can complain all they want about features or perceived lack thereof but few things beat the creative exposion that comes from realtime features. I used to think it was about supporting a million different codecs (HDV, XDCAM, AVCHD, AVC-Intra etc etc etc) but now I realize that while that support is indeed necessary for many the area that Apple seems to be moving rapidly in is taking a bunch of disparate codecs into the funnel and moving them to 10-bit ProRes HQ where they can deliver beaucoup realtime features.
I know editors hate having to transcode but with tapeless ingest the process could be pretty automated. Another thing is the roundtrip support. Since we're waiting for a big Logic Studio update as well I hope that this has allowed Apple to take Soundtrack Pro and Logic Studio and improve their roundtrip support (Motion too).
We're right on queue
April 2005 Apple introduces Final Cut Studio
April 2007 Apple introduces Final Cut Studio 2
When you think about it Final Cut Studio was all about the supporting cast. FC got ProRes 422 and mixed format timeline but the stars were Color, a new STP and Compressor.
I think we see the focus go back to Final Cut Pro. I don't expect a radical new UI but I expect something significantly enhanced. We may see phenomenon but I'm starting to grow skeptical and judging from the Shake to Nuke refugees I'm not the only one. Apple will have to show me they can deliver a Shake successor.
I want to see more hardware control as well. This is a step in the right direction.
Like a Tangent grading controller and further integration with Euphonix and Apogee hardware
I think it's time for a big jump forward.
Sad.
No new version of Final Cut Studio, no Grand Central Dispatch optimized FCP, Compressor, Color, etc....
Sad.
We got one last year. Final Cut Studio 4 comes out this year, and the interface unification comes out with Final Cut Studio 5. If you don't like what's offered, wait or buy something else.
We got one last year.
Yeah, but it seems like FCS is standing still while others are making significant progress (Premiere and new version of Avid). That was a nice update with some useful features but little improvements in terms of stability and speed enhancements. Compressor 3.5 , as useful as it is, is slow and buggy, for example.
Final Cut Studio 4 comes out this year, and the interface unification comes out with Final Cut Studio 5.
I certainly hope so, but Apple has given absolutely no (or little) information to corroborate your road map.
If you don't like what's offered, wait or buy something else.
Not that simple. (1) I'm tired of waiting. (2) Our entire production/workflow is built around FCP, Compressor, & Color, so "buying something else" would entail a lot more work than simply "buying something else".
One more year without a significant update and FCS will truly be in a sad state of affairs:
1. FCP: not multi-threaded, 32 bit, compare features to new versions of Premiere/Avid.
2. Entire suite has not been updated to take advantage of Apple's own technologies (GCD, OpenCL)....etc.