Apple Updates Final Cut Pro, Motion, and Compressor

This afternoon (Tuesday) Apple updated all three of its professional video applications. While most of the fixes are in the “performance and stability” category, a few new features are worth mentioning:

• Video monitoring – especially for multicam work – is more responsive
• The default audio setting for new projects was changed from Surround to Stereo (yay!)
• Compressor can now run on a monitor-less workstation – think Mac Mini.

All updates are free and available through the Mac App Store.

As a note, there has been a significant bug which prevents many third-party plug-in developers from porting their software to FCP X. I’m checking with my contacts to see if this bug has been resolved with this update.

Here are the full release notes.

Final Cut Pro X (version 10.0.4)

Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.4 improves overall stability, performance, and compatibility including:

• Improves image quality and responsiveness of broadcast monitoring with compatible third-party PCIe and Thunderbolt I/O devices.
• Improves performance of multicam syncing and editing.
• Adds language support for Simplified Chinese.
• Adds a Share option for 1080p video on compatible iOS devices.

Final Cut Pro version 10.0.4 also addresses the following issues:

• Assigns default audio channel setting for new projects to stereo.
• Includes multicam metadata in XML project export.
• Fixes an issue in which video superimposed over a background with an alpha channel could appear differently in Viewer before and after render.
• Fixes an issue that caused some titles to be rendered again after each application launch.

For more information visit www.apple.com/finalcutpro/.

Motion 5 (version 5.0.3)

Motion 5.0.3 improves overall stability and performance including:

• Improves loading time for projects.
• Improves performance of text editing in the Canvas.
• Fixes issues with Fill Opaque enabled in images converted to Drop Zones.
• Resolves a stability issue that occurred when deleting all characters with the Transform Glyph tool.
• Corrects the pixel aspect ratio display of Anamorphic clips.
• Improves speed of Save Current Frame.
• Resolves a stability issue when adjusting motion blur controls in the Project Properties Inspector.
• Resolves a stability issue when modifying media files while Motion is running in the background.

For more information visit www.apple.com/finalcutpro/motion.

Compressor 4 (version 4.0.3)

This update adds functionality and improves overall performance including:

• Ability to run Compressor as an encoding node on a Mac without a monitor.
• Fixes an issue with exporting when logged in as an Open Directory user.
• Improves performance when encoding mp4 and AVI files.

For more information visit www.apple.com/finalcutpro/compressor.

Larry