With the close of a record-breaking NAB just one week ago, the buzz about Apple’s news and announcements have yet to settle. While NAB had well over 108,000 registered attendees from all over the world, it was obvious what everyone was excited about, especially in the south hall. A few buzz words AJA, Apple, Red. These companies truly stole the show.
But part of the fun of NAB is seeing the little guys, the guys that may become something. Ironically, last year I remember visiting Silicon Color, and Proximity. Both of these companies had some really cool products that worked with Final Cut Pro. This year they didn’t have booths, well I guess after Apple acquired both companies they did. Silicon Colors technology is now the new Color program in Final Cut Studio 2. And Proximity’s technology will be found in Final Cut Server, later this summer.
So how did we fair in our predictions for the new Apple products, lets take a look.
We said a new Mac Pro would be out around NAB, but not necessarily at the show. Looks like we hit that nail right on the head. The 8 core Mac Pro was released prior to NAB.
We predicted a number of things for Final Cut Pro 6, I think we did really good:
- Support for more HD formats – Yes (the ProRes 422 codec)
- Support for beyond HD formats (digital cinema cameras and so on) – Yes (Support for RED and so on)
- Additional RT support – Kind of
- Multiple codec playback, same timeline, in realtime – Yes!
- Improved asset management – With Final Cut Server
- High end color grading tools – Yes (Color)
As far as the rest of our predictions, well not so good, but close. We didn’t think that Final Cut Extreme was going to happen. However we were slightly on with Final Cut Server, but missed just a little to the right. No preview of Phenomenon, but a lot of Shake features were added to FCP and Motion. And nothing new from DVD Studio Pro, this one is still a bit of a shocker, but the whole HD-DVD Blu-Ray thing still has a way to go.
We will soon be able to see how well all of these new features work in reality, and with upgrade prices starting at $499, it is going to be hard to resist. Apple has now managed to cram an entire, high end, post-production facility into one small (maybe not all that small) box.
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