The wait is over. Apple has officially unveiled Final Cut Studio 2 and has updated a number of key components that any regular user of Final Cut should find useful. This includes Color, Apple’s new professional color grading software. Here is a summary of most of the major features, although even with everything listed below there are still some things left out:

Final Cut Pro 6

• You are now able to edit multiple video formats on the same timeline in real time. Mix HD with SD, framerates, even NTSC and PAL.
• A new format called ProRes 422 (i.e. “4:2:2″) has been introduced, which will give uncompressed HD quality at SD sized files.
• SmoothCam will smooth any shaky shots you might have in footage but works with dollies, pans, and zooms.
• Motion 3 and Color are now heavily integrated into Final Cut. Sending content back and forth is much easier.
• FxPlug filters are now usable along with the standard filters included.
• Audio controls have been improved with new Normalizing and Gain controls along with better support for 5.1 surround sound.

Motion 3

• Better integration with Final Cut Pro.
• Vector-based paint strokes, built-in 3D text behaviors, and easy point tracking and match moving.
• Audio behavior allows you to easily synchronize animations to audio by tracking frequencies and having the animation respond in real-time.

Soundtrack Pro 2

• New interface design.
• New surround sound panner to view a a visual representation of the surround sound field.
• Integration with Final Cut Pro allows you to update your Soundtrack Pro project to match the video edit.
• New Lift & Stamp tool lets you match EQs in two different audio clips with ease.
• “Take” management allows you to take bits and pieces (words and phrases) from your best takes and combine them into one take.
• Better support for podcasting.

Color

• Allows you to make primary and secondary color adjustments to any video project up to 2K resolution.
• Preview results in any resolution in real time.
• GPU-accelerated processing allows RGB output in 4:4:4 with 32-bit float processing.

Compressor 3

• New streamlined, customizable interface
• More formats now supported including Apple TV, Blu-ray and HD DVD.
• Easily place watermarks on footage
• Qmaster lets you distribute encoding processes across a network.
• Supports Telestream Episode Pro plug-in for output to broadcast-specific formats.

DVD Studio Pro 4

• Create DVDs in SD or HD formats with ease.

Apple Final Cut Studio 2 will begin shipping in May.

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