Final Cut Studio Technology Preview

At IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) in Amsterdam earlier this month, Paul Saccone from Apple Inc. presented a technology preview of upcoming features for Final Cut Studio.

Since I could not attend IBC and Apple rarely talks about future products, I contacted Paul and asked him to summarize what he presented so I could share it with you. Here is his reply.

We did a Technology Preview of an upcoming version of Final Cut Studio. I mentioned our intent to support AVCCAM from Panasonic (we’ll support AVCCAM devices – the 150 family – and the metadata extensions Panasonic has defined).

Then I demonstrated some improved support for RED. You will be able to take Redcode RAW files (4K) and edit them in FCP. FCP will do an on-the-fly decode to 2K for editing. When you pass them to Color, it’s still working on the same 4K source files (but in a 2K project, of course). We now support Redcode RAW controls to the Primary In room in Color. This is roughly the equivalent of having the RAW fine-tuning controls we provide in Aperture for dSLR users. You have an incredible amount of latitude to adjust things like gamma, temperature, exposure, etc. All in a way that does not affect the image quality. From Color, you can render out a 2K project (DPX files for film out, ProRes for mastering back to tape, etc.).

The beauty of it is that you don’t need to do any conversions on capture, and you now have RAW controls for image adjustments. Oh, and we preserve all of the Red metadata throughout the workflow too, of course.

The one thing Paul stopped short of announcing was WHEN these new features would be available. Still, its nice to have something specific to look forward to.