04-06-2003, 04:36 PM

Source: Spymac

Apple releases FCP 4, Shake 3 and DVD Studio Pro 2

During a Sunday-afternoon press conference at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event, Apple announced Final Cut Pro 4, DVD Studio Pro 2 and Shake 3 for Mac OS X.

"Packed with more than 300 new features, Final Cut Pro 4 introduces RT Extreme, for real-time composting and effects, powerful new interface customization tools, new high-quality 8- and 10-bit uncompressed formats and for the first time in an editing system costing less than $100,000, full 32-bit floating point per channel video processing." Final Cut Pro 4 is available now and costs $999 ($399 upgrade). Visit Apple's FCP page for more information.

In addition to FCP, Apple announced the highly anticipated DVD Studio Pro 2. "With professionally designed and fully customizable templates, an innovative new menu editor, timeline-based track editing and a new world-class, software-based MPEG-2 encoder, DVD Studio Pro 2 is a must have application for every Final Cut Pro editor, as well as any professional who creates DVDs for a living." DVD Studio Pro 2 will not be available until August 2003 and will sell for $499.

Finally, the $5000 compositing and effects solution, Shake 3, has been announced. "Shake 3 includes new Mac OS X only features such as the Shake Qmaster network render management software and unlimited network rendering licenses which allow visual effects artists to easily distribute rendering tasks across a cluster of Apple's Xserve 1U rack servers or desktop Power Mac G4 computers for maximum performance and efficiency." The Mac OS X version may seem pricey, but its Linux counterpart retails for nearly $10,000. More information available on Apple's Shake 3 page.

04-08-2003, 12:56 AM

Now I have to find a few pennies to upgrade my copy of Final Cut Pro, even with the education discount.