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Out of the Box
Apple Demos Final Cut Studio to MPEG Members
by Michael Kunkes
 Final Cut Pro 5. Courtesy of Apple |
A group of 35 members gathered at the Guild’s training center in Hollywood on the evening of May 4 for a first look at Apple’s Final Cut Studio, just released at NAB 2005. Right at the outset, picture editor Sharon Franklin, who put together the event, called for a show of hands. Twelve owned some version of Final Cut Pro; six were using it professionally, three on features and the rest on TV and documentary shows. Four people were working in high-definition (HD) post. However, if things go according to Apple’s plan, those numbers are likely to go way up, way soon.
Final Cut Studio is nothing less than Apple’s big leap into the pro HD video production and pro audio markets. What the company calls a “true production studio in a box” replaces last fall’s Production Suite, which had many of the components of FC Studio but without the ease of integration of video, audio and effects that defines the new package. At the heart of Final Cut Studio is Final Cut Pro 5 (FCP 5), complemented by Soundtrack Pro, an all-new sound editing and design application; Motion 2, Apple’s real-time (RT) motion graphics application; and DVD Studio Pro 4, the first commercially available DVD authoring software with batch and network encoding, allowing editors to easily author DVDs without having to be a programmer.
Final Cut Pro 5 has been upgraded to support all major HD formats, including native HDV, DVC-PRO HD and fully uncompressed HD, as well as DV, standard definition (SD), and all film formats down to 16mm. A new IMX codec allows for native editing from Sony’s XDCAM, and direct support for
Panasonic’s P2 media provides editors with high-speed, tapeless transfer of all DVC-PRO video formats, and uncompressed HD effects can be viewed in real time. There is direct integration with Cinema Tools, new three-way color correction tools and an automator feature that allows editors using Tiger OS to vastly increase the complexity of scriptable applications. In addition, The restrictive two-channel audio in previous versions of FCP has been expanded to 24 channels of 24-bit, 96 kHz multi-track audio with audio control surfaces.
The big news in FCP 5, which drew loud applause at the Guild gathering, is multi-camera support, which allows editors to cut from up to 128 sources, with RT playback from up to 16 sources at one time. Multi-clip sequences also can be easily created for better RT timeline management. This instantly makes the program ideally attractive for sitcoms, sports, reality TV and even Internet content.
“Multi-cam editing is something that Final Cut Pro users have wanted for years, and they have implemented it very well,” says Franklin, a freelance picture editor who co-founded San Francisco Cutters, a Bay Area FCP usergroup. “Also, the fact that you can now see key code in FCP is very cool, because that is something Avid users were previously accustomed to seeing. It just provides an additional measure of security when you can see that the keycode number that FCP is displaying is matching the burn-in on your tape.”
Apple’s 3 Big Issues
With the introduction of Final Cut Studio, Apple has addressed the three issues
that it needed to in order to enter the pro market: Storage (through an optimized
X-SAN storage area network), Multi-channel Audio and Multicamera Support.
“We keep the individual editor in mind with everything we do, focusing
on each editor’s unique workflow in a completely open project architecture,”
says Kirk Paulsen, Apple’s senior director of market development, professional
products. “We firmly believe that the next generation of editors is
going to do a lot more than just cutting.”
The entire package sells for a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,299. Separately, Final Cut Pro 5 has a price tag of $999, Soundtrack Pro is $299, Motion2 is $299 and DVD Studio Pro goes for $499. For educators, the per-seat price for the studio package is $399 for a five-seat or more volume license, and a three-year upgrade and maintenance program is $399. With this aggressive pricing structure, Apple is obviously aiming its sights on an entirely new generation of editors.
The timing would seem to be right. Upwards of 16 million consumers have purchased HD televisions in the US alone, and seven million homes are subscribing to some kind of HD service. Apple’s market research suggests that there will be 60 million homes with HD sets by 2010, 40 million of which will be subscribing to HD service. “There is obviously going to be a huge demand for content, and anyone involved in editorial is going to have little choice in the matter; they will have to produce in HD,” says Paulsen. “FCP can also run uncompressed HD on a desktop machine with stock components, which many people in the industry thought they would never see until the end of the decade.”
 Alan Edward Bell. Photo by Kristin Eaton |
Picture Editor Alan Edward Bell, an FCP user since version 1.0, recently used version 4.5 to cut the September release of Little Manhattan for director Mark Levin, the first feature to use the new DVC-PRO HD codec. He has had the chance to see and be impressed by a lot of the new features in FCP 5.
“First of all, X-SAN has changed how an editor and an assistant work on a show. Now, they can actually work together on the same media in the same space, with one person having write access and the other read-only access,” he explains. “It’s something that’s been in the Avid world for a while; sort of what Mediashare was to Avid five years ago. The biggest thing they need to do is to come up with a solution for outputting tapes in standard def. Of course, there’s a lot that’s in the FCP world that we don’t have in Avid––mainly, cheap, affordable high definition––and that’s the bottom line.”
Rick Blue, along with editor John F. Michel, has cut the last two seasons of NBC’s Scrubs on FCP (see Editors Guild Magazine NOV-DEC 04). He says that if all goes well, the show plans to implement Final Cut Studio when the summer hiatus is over and season five begins. “It’s been a steady progression; we’ve gone from an integrated offline/online situation, to networking the show with X-SAN last year,” he said. “What really blew my mind was when Apple showed us a pre-release of the program’s multi-cam feature, and they were demo’ing it on a firewire drive. It was amazing that it was handling that much data, because part of our MO at the outset was to find ways to untether ourselves from the traditional cutting room and work off-site. We can even tap into the OS to use iChat AV to conference and have the output of the cutting room on-screen as well. So the logical thing for us next season will be to set up a workflow where we can edit in full resolution.”
Sound-Minded
With Soundtrack Pro, Apple has given FCP professionals a flexible application
for creating, controlling and fixing audio, with numerous restoration functions
and round-trip workflow. A key feature is an innovative Waveform Editor that
allows users to instantly re-order, bypass or change any edit, effect or process
through a series of “action layers.”
In addition, a series of intuitive find-and-fix features allows for automatic or manual quick fixes of background noise, pops, clicks and hums, which can save money on the front end before going to pre-mix. Sound editors will be familiar with the support for the Mackie control surface protocol, which will allow them to use hardware faders and knobs for more tactile, non-mouse control over mix parameters.
 Waveform Editor. Screen grab from Apple's Soundtrack Pro, a new addition to the Final Cut Studio package, which, among other features, includes 24 tracks of audio editing. Courtesy of Apple |
The package has over 50 plug-ins, including space designer, a match EQ function (which allows mixers to take an “EQ print” and match reverb and EQ on ADR sessions), dialogue editing tools, pitch alteration, easy return-to-sample selections and a terrific time stretch tool. Also featured is linear phase EQ with over 50 EQ values included, over 5,000 Apple loops for adding depth to musical elements and a license-free menu of 1,600 foley and other sound effects, all of which adds even more versatility. Any track can be sent to either analogue or digital consoles, and audio EDLs can be generated to capture ProTools sessions.
 Track Editor. Screen grab from Apple's Soundtrack Pro, a new addition to the Final Cut Studio package, which, among other features, includes 24 tracks of audio editing. Courtesy of Apple |
“Waveform editing is the one thing that Soundtrack Pro has over Avid hands down,” Bell says. “Even in the FCP timeline, you can cut with waveforms very easily. If you’ve ever tried to do this in the Avid world, you spend most of your time just waiting for these things to re-drive every time you move the cursor.” Bell is also a fan of the control surface automation and multi-tracking capabilities. “You can listen to more than eight tracks at one time,” he adds. “What more could you want?”
“We do a lot of music and sound work on Scrubs, so I am looking forward to working with Soundtrack Pro,” says picture editor Rick Blue. “On one hand, my job first and foremost is to creatively cut a show, so I don’t know if I also want to be an online house and everything else. But on the other hand, FCP offers assistants an opportunity to step up and extend their territory.”
Support Concerns
 Rick Blue. Photo by Willa Mamet |
One issue of concern is support. “Final Cut Pro is a terrific tool, but frankly, the only way a show cut on FCP is going to work is if you get the right editor,” claims Bell. “Apple will promise you whatever you need, but they are not set up to support us the way we need to be supported. When you have an issue, you need to be able to talk to someone immediately, not wait a day or more for a call back from a marketing guy who just passes your question onto someone else.”
Bell says he is always trying to get Apple to listen to Hollywood’s needs. “They need a team of people who directly liaison with Hollywood,” he says. “Because right now, using FCP on a feature is a whole different paradigm from Avid, which had the same problem in the early ‘90s––but they hired certain people who knew what we wanted. I just think Apple can do much better.”
Blue was lucky on Scrubs. “Right from the start of our planning for the full implementation of FCP for season three, we told the engineering people, ‘We can’t go in blind. You’re either going to support us or it’s not going to work, and we won’t be able to sell it to our bosses,’” he recalls. “We have a pretty liberal working environment and we needed a conduit with an open dialogue.”
Blue was fortunate. First of all, Apple hired as an assistant Tim Serda, who was on the original Macromedia Final Cut team. The show also struck an alliance with Ramy Katrib, co-founder of Digital Film Tree, who worked with Walter Murch, ACE on the FCP-edited Cold Mountain.
“It’s a good symbiosis. We were one of the first network shows to give them visibility,” Blue explains. “They had 22 episodes a year where we could give them feedback and they could see their product working in the field as it went through the post cycle. But the average guy is not going to have Apple to call. If you don’t have a great support system, you have to create one yourself at this stage.”
Bell feels that the sky’s the limit now for Final Cut Pro. “I wouldn’t limit it to any one kind of project or another,” he says. “You can digest all your information into the computer in any format or resolution you need. You can simply cut anything with it. And while that’s one of the things that makes it so wonderful, it’s also one of the things that makes it potentially complicated for people to use. But ultimately, it’s HD, it’s affordable…and it’s a no-brainer.”
Michael Kunkes is a freelance editor and writer specializing in animation, production and post-production. He can be reached at writermk@sbcglobal.net.
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