Apple Updates Professional Video Lineup

BlueGecko writes "Amid surprisingly little fanfare, Apple today updated their entire professional video lineup, including DVD Studio Pro 2 (including a greatly improved menu editor and improved compression abilities), Final Cut Pro 4 (enhanced real-time editing, more customizable workflow, and an improved titling interface), and Shake 3--the first version of Shake to be Mac OS X-only and now sporting enhanced rotoscoping tools and the ability to work directly with Photoshop layers. Combine this with Logic and you've got an entire professional movie studio on your Mac."

Comments

Final Cut Pro

[deadsaijinx*]

is by far my FAVORITE video editing software. in fact, that is the ONLY reason I use a mac (please don't hate me for that). However, I really don't think that these improvements warrant an upgrade (hey, it's an expensive product). In fact, I can hardly tell the difference between FCP2 and FCP3. Maybe I'm just ignorant, or retarded, but I can't actually tell the difference when using the product. Maybe that's a good thing though, Mac is all about streamlining their software for perfect integration. Anywayz ... kinda lost my train of thought ... oh, yeah. Anywayz, Their DVD software is only mediocre, nothing really superb about it. Nothing really wrong with it either. Ok, then we have shake. Looks a lot like combustion from Discreet (3dstudio max people) but i haven't used shake before (I'm on a budget, okay) so I really can't say too mush about it. But lets look at the bright side, it runs in OSX (first time i read that i thought it sed osex) and the slashdot crowd should probably appreciate that. Personally, I'm happy chugging along with OS9 and the dual 1ghz mac I use FCP on. Moral of the story, apple does ONE thing very well, and that thing is Video editing.... i wish FCP was released for winders (or at least linux. I mean, if it can run on OSX, then its only a jump, hop, and skip away from Linux, Right?)

Re:Hah!

[dhovis]

I remember reading somewhere that a lot of video production houses use iMovie for "video storyboards". Rather than drawing cartoon style storyboards, they go out with a cheap digial videocam and film the basic scenes they want and assemble them in iMovie to show customers what they have in mind.

When they film the final product, they use Final Cut Pro.

Shake 3 GUI

[Erik K. Veland]

I'm surprised they didn't change the user interface of Shake to better match Final Cut Pro. Just lightening the grey and changing the tabs to match FCP4s would do a world of difference.

Yes, this is probably not a priority in a production tool like this, but Shake looks really out of place on a Mac OS X system.

Re:logic

[Graymalkin]

Compared to their Mac user base Emagic's PC user base is extraordinarily small. It is unfortunate for them to have to either switch platforms or audio programs but like the Mac community has known for years, you can't expect the low volume (thus low revenue) product to remain in production indefinitely. A large percentage of those PC users will likely switch to Macs which is what Apple would like while others will stick with what they have and then switch applications. In the end you'll likely see only about 15-20% of Logic's users switch to other applications.

Re:An Honest Comparison

[dhamsaic]

You do realise that practically nowhere offers gigabit ethernet plugin at the wall, not even at work? It's mostly for wiring up server farms etc. I seriously doubt your computer can consistantly give a gigabit of throughput anyway...

Even if you could only do 2x the throughput of standard 100Mbit, it's still 2x faster. For those of us that have enough machines with gigabit ethernet to warrant having a 10/100/1000 switch, well... that extra speed is pretty fucking sweet.

Choice of hardware: Dell: everything Apple: little

Put your money where your mouth is and back that up. I doubt you can find many external devices (scanner, USB/FW hard drive, camera, etc) that don't work on a Mac, and the internal stuff (video cards, etc) are negligible since we're talking about laptops.

Comparing a decidedly middle of the road Intel processor with the high-end Mac CPU is hardly fair is it.

Fastest G4 CPU: 1.42 GHz Fastest P4 CPU: 3.06 GHz for a ratio of ~2.16 Referenced G4 CPU: 1 GHz Referenced P4 CPU: 2 GHz for a ratio of ~2.00 (In other words, his comparison was relatively fair and accurate with regards to CPU.)

Re:An Honest Comparison

[tshak]

Because Laptops are more proprietary in nature, Apple can compete a little better on price as opposed to desktop "boxes". The ~$600 price difference is not bad considering the quality of software, screen size, and clean hardware design of the Powerbook. I would like to correct you with your "debateable" processor analysis. This is a problem with many Mac only users - they believe the mhz myth inversly ("G4's are always faster no matter how fast the AMD/Intel counterpart). I would also like to point out that price/performance differences are usually smaller on the highest tier of the product segment. Compare medium range laptops (and esp. desktops) and the gap is much wider.

But back to my biggest gripe - your comparion of CPU's. There are many applications where even a P3 can beat a G4 Clock-for-Clock. G4 excels in areas like Photoshop where Altivec makes a huge difference. Remember though, that Intel's SSE2 marginalizes the differences in speed gains that Altivec receives. Although P4's leave a lot to be desired (I'm an AMD fan), based on what I've seen I think it's more accurate to compare a ~1.5Ghz P4 to a 1Ghz G4.

I'm not saying that this extra performance makes the Dell a better computer. My point is that it's not definitely not a marginal or arguable difference in speed, and many people run applications that will easily tax a 1Ghz G4 such as myself. I just bought Sony w/an Athlon XP2000+ and 512MB RAM for ~$1500. And yes, I have firewire and 10/100 (I don't need 1000, so why pay for it?) and USB2.0 and a CDRW/DVD combo (no DVD-R). Sony makes very clean an elegant laptopts - they don't quite match Apple's hardware design, however.

So no, the processer is not a little slower on the G4, it's significantly slower. If you don't need that extra speed and have an extra $1K+ to spend, then the Apple is great from an overall value. For me, the value just isn't there because some of my software simply won't run properly on such slow hardware. And for half the price, I have a machine that has the power I need.