Final Cut Studio is a discontinued suite of professional

video production Video production is the process of producing video content. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard drives, SSDs, ...

and

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording indivi ...

made by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

for the Mac. The suite competed with Avid Media Composer for the high-end movie production market. It first went on sale in 2005. In 2011, after the release of Final Cut Pro X, Apple discontinued Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express, and Final Cut Server. Upon its discontinuation, Final Cut Studio was no longer on sale in Apple Stores or on Apple's website, but was still available through Apple's phone sales. Its three primary applications

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, a ...

Motion In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an o ...

, and

Compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

, are still actively developed, and available on the

Mac App Store The Mac App Store (also known as the App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" eve ...

. As of 2017, Final Cut Pro 7 no longer runs on macOS High Sierra or later; it can be patched to run on recent versions of macOS, though this is not supported by Apple.

Components

Final Cut Studio version 3 was released on July 23, 2009. It was the final release upon discontinuation of the suite and contains six main applications and several smaller applications used in content creation. *

7 – "real-time editing for DV, SD and HD" *

4 – "real-time motion graphics design" * Soundtrack Pro 3 – "advanced

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

editing and sound design" * DVD Studio Pro 4 –

encoding In communications and Data processing, information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter (alphabet), letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes data compression, shortened or ...

, authoring and burning. *

Color Color (or colour in English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-our, -or, see spelling differences) is the visual perception based on the electromagnetic spectrum. Though co ...

1.5 – a new

color grading Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast (vision), ...

application adapted from Silicon Color's FinalTouch. *

3.5 – a video encoding tool for outputting projects in different formats. * Cinema Tools 4.5 – tools specific to film processing. *

Qmaster Apple Qmaster is a system made by Apple Inc. that provides automation, automated work distribution and processing for high-volume projects created with certain Visual effects, digital visual effects software packages: Shake (software), Shake, May ...

3 – a distributed processing tool. The applications are designed to integrate as a suite, to form a workflow. In particular: *Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported to Soundtrack Pro for audio tweaking or music scoring *Final Cut Pro sequences can be sent to Compressor, for encoding in an external format *Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported to Motion, for motion graphics overlays, or LiveType, specifically for title overlays *LiveType projects can be opened in Final Cut Pro without needing to be exported first *Motion projects can be incorporated into DVD Studio Pro menus without needing to be exported first *LiveFonts from LiveType can be used in Motion. Final Cut Pro and Motion also integrate directly with Apple's discontinued Shake, a digital

compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live action, Live-action shooting for compositing ...

package.

History

Production Suite is a

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

compilation by Apple used for

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

editing. Production Suite contains

HD, DVD Studio Pro 3, and Apple Motion. The compilation's component applications were announced at the

National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a Industry trade group, trade association and lobbying, lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasting, broadcasters in th ...

in April 2004, and the compilation was released in August 2004. Final Cut Studio was introduced at the

in April 2005, as the successor to Production Suite. It added new versions of all the Production Suite applications:

, DVD Studio Pro and Motion. It also introduces a new application, Soundtrack Pro, which is a new version of Soundtrack, formerly included with Final Cut Pro. In January 2006, Final Cut Studio became the only way to purchase any of the individual major applications. In March 2006, Apple released the Universal Binary version as Final Cut Studio 1.1.

Release history

Marketing

Final Cut Studio has been positioned as an all-in-one production workflow system because of its integration of film, motion graphics and audio post-production tools in one suite. It is analogous to the

iLife iLife is a discontinued software suite for macOS and iOS developed by Apple Inc. It consists of various programs for media creation, organization, editing and publishing. At various times, it included: iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, an ...

suite, which is aimed at consumers, insomuch as

iMovie iMovie is a free video editing software, video editing application made by Apple Inc., Apple for the Mac (computer), Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad. It includes a range of video effects and tools like color correction and image stabilization, b ...

is the consumer counterpart of Final Cut Pro;

GarageBand GarageBand is a software application by Apple Inc., Apple for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or Podcast, podcasts. It is a lighter, amateur-oriented offshoot of Logic Pro. GarageBand was originally released for ...

3 is a consumer version of Logic Pro and Soundtrack Pro; and

iDVD iDVD is a discontinued Mac (computer), Mac application made by Apple Inc., Apple, which can be used to DVD authoring, create DVDs. iDVD lets users design DVD menus (like a main menu and chapter selection menu) and burn movies, slideshows, and ...

is the cut-down version of DVD Studio Pro. Like Motion, iMovie includes

Core Image Core Image is a pixel-accurate, near-realtime, non-destructive image processing technology in Mac OS X. Implemented as part of the QuartzCore framework of Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Core Image provides a plugin-based architecture for applying filt ...

effects that can be applied in real time.

High Definition

In the Macworld Conference and Expo 2005,

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

, former CEO of Apple, declared 2005 to be the "Year of HD". To this end, the HD features of Final Cut Studio were emphasized, such that a little HD logo was placed on the box for each individual Studio application, as well as the Final Cut Studio box. Final Cut Pro supports nearly all High Definition formats ( HDV,

DVCPRO HD DV (from ''Digital Video'') is a family of codecs and tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. It includes the recording or cassette formats DV, Mini ...

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around cam ...

, and uncompressed HD) and Soundtrack Pro and Motion can import these formats too, where they can be played back on an external monitor. DVD Studio Pro supports the HD DVD 1.0 specification. See DVD Studio Pro.

Packaging

The design for the packaging and websites for each application are consistent to a demonstration video shown at the product's introduction at NAB 2005. This video also includes reference to Shake 4 – a high-end digital compositing application that integrates with Final Cut Pro but is not included in Final Cut Studio.

Case studies

To market the Studio components, Apple compiled a set of

case studies A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...

of real-world users of the applications. For Final Cut Pro, they used

Bunim-Murray Productions Bunim/Murray Productions is an American entertainment production company based out of Glendale, California and owned by French television media conglomerate Banijay Entertainment since 25 March 2010. Considered as a pioneer in the reality televi ...

' uses of the program in their '' The Real World''

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...

show. For Soundtrack Pro,

Walter Murch Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an American film editor, director, writer and sound designer. His work includes '' THX 1138'', ''Apocalypse Now'', '' The Godfather I'', '' II'', and '' III'', '' American Graffiti'', '' The Conversation ...

became their advocate – a film editor and sound designer who worked on '' Cold Mountain'' and ''

The Godfather ''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American Epic film, epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling The Godfather (novel), 1969 novel. The film stars an ensemble cast inc ...

''. For Motion, Apple used the example of Mekanism and their creation of a TV spot designed to persuade young people to

vote Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representative ...

. And for DVD Studio Pro, the example of Relevant was used, who used the application in a unique, interactive movie called ''Backwoods to Brooklyn''.

References

External links

* {{Apple MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc. Video editing software for macOS