Edible Apple

In a press release issued today, Apple announced the arrival of the long-awaited Final Cut Pro X – a massive update to Apple’s popular video editing software that Steve Jobs promised, via email, would be worth the wait.

Touted as the most popular video editing software for Pros, Apple writes that Final Cut Pro X “completely reinvents video editing with a Magnetic Timeline that lets you edit on a flexible, trackless canvas; Content Auto-Analysis that categorizes your content upon import by shot type, media and people; and background rendering that allows you to work without interruption.”

Better yet, and long desired, Final Cut Pro X is 64-bit. It’s currently available from the Mac App Store for $299.99.

“I’m blown away by what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro,” Academy Award-winning film editor Angus Wall explained in Apple’s press release. “Final Cut Pro X is incredibly modern and fast, but most importantly it lets you focus on telling your story in the most creative way, while it actively manages all of the technical details.”

At the heart of Final Cut Pro X is the Magnetic Timeline, a trackless approach to editing your footage that lets you add and arrange clips wherever you want them, while other clips instantly slide out of the way. You can use Clip Connections to link primary story clips to other elements like titles and sound effects, so they stay in perfect sync when you move them. You can even combine related story elements into a Compound Clip that can be edited as a single clip. The groundbreaking new Auditions feature lets you swap between a collection of clips to instantly compare alternate takes.

Content Auto-Analysis scans your media on import and tags your content with useful information. Final Cut Pro X then uses that information to dynamically organize your clips into Smart Collections, so you can easily find the clips you want by close up, medium and wide shots as well as media type and the number of people in the shot. You can also tag parts of clips with Range-based keywords to add custom search criteria to your media.

Also available today are Motion 5 and Compressor 4, the former being a professional motion graphics app and the latter an advanced media encoding app. They’re available for $49.99 from the Mac App Store.

via Apple