Rare Apple Final Cut Pro 2.0 - M8276Z/A What is Final Cut Pro 2.0? Fnal Cut Pro, Apple’s pro-level video-editing software, was a hit when it debuted in 1999. Compact and elegantly designed, it replaced many high-priced Avid turnkey systems in Mac-based editing suites. However, what Final Cut Pro lacked was speed. Unlike Media 100 or Avid systems, Final Cut Pro had no hardware component to provide real-time rendering of video. Nor did it take advantage of the G4’s Velocity Engine (AltiVec) or earlier multiprocessor Macs. So you’d rip through the editing process and then watch your clients twiddle their thumbs while the final render bar crawled along. No longer. In Final Cut Pro 2.0, Apple has solved the sluggishness problem with a transparent real-time QuickTime architecture. Install an optional real-time video-processing card — such as Matrox’s RTMac... or Pinnacle’s forthcoming real-time version of CineWave... — and Final Cut Pro 2 will fly through video jobs that used to take hours. We put Final Cut Pro 2.0 through its paces on both a stock Power Mac G4/400 and a new dual-processor Power Mac G4/533 with an installed Matrox card. With the Matrox card, cutting DV, rendering stock transitions, and compositing three video layers happened instantaneously. You can view and output camera moves, cropping, scaling, and shadow effects, all of which previously took minutes or hours to render, without the lengthy rendering process. Final Cut Pro 2.0, now optimized for AltiVec, also ran faster than its version 1.2 on our bare-bones G4/400. The whole app felt snappier, and we saw a significant speed gain — about 25 percent — when we rendered the same project in both versions. There are scores of improvement tweaks throughout the app. For example, you can set parameter defaults (resolution, frame rate, and so on) when you install Final Cut Pro 2.0, or use the all-in-one Easy Setup dialog box to change default settings later on, instead of entering basic parameters in several different windows. You can also save and trade settings files — an important feature if you routinely edit media from dissimilar sources or work with other editors and want to ensure that everyone is using the same settings. Organizing clips is more intuitive using the new Media Manager. Version 2.0 seeks out and reconnects media files with a Find button in the Reconnect Options dialog box, making it hassle free to find and relink missing clips and files. You also have more ways to tag, flag, and annotate clips for customized tracking. Too bad Final Cut Pro still doesn’t organize Capture Scratch files properly — it dumps them into a new folder with each capture session, rather than allowing you to specify a single Capture Scratch folder for each project. Apple was smart in building compositing and keyframing capabilities Into Rnal Cut Pro, negating the need to launch Adobe After Effects for dally tasks like adding or multiplying layers, superimposing flying titles, or creating a basic matte. The improved keyframing tools have more options for numeric input, allowing you to move, scale, and spin any clip and generate motion blur. The text generator, formerly one of the weaker features, boasts a new, high-quality outlined text generator with animatable attributes like opacity and edge softness, plus new Scrolling, Crawl, and Typewriter text-motion generators. Final Cut Pro 2 ships with lots of effects filters and satellite apps, including Commotion DV (a subset of Pinnacle’s roto-and-paint heavyweight, Commotion 3), Maxon’s Cinema 4D GO (a light 3D version of Cinema 4D XL that creates flying 3D logos), Boris Script LTD (a plug-in character generator that expands Final Cut Pro 2's own titling tools), and Terran’s Cleaners EZ (for compression). Most of these are minimally useful, so save your paycheck for the full versions. Rnal Cut Pro 2 also supports most After Effects filters. While Final Cut Pro 1.x’s audio tools weren’t in the same league as its video tools, version 2.0 fixes past problems (for example, with setting relative gain for selected clips or an entire track) and resolves a number of other shortcomings. However, Apple still has more work to do. For example, the colorful new peak meter gives better feedback on the master stereo audio level, but we’d prefer to see a peak meter for as many individual tracks as we liked. Fortunately, Apple has improved compatibility with external solutions for audio work. You can output Final Cut Pro 2.0 audio tracks in OMF (Open Media Framework) format for import into Digidesign’s ProTools for audio postproduction or use Bias’s Peak DV (included), which supports VST plug-ins. A few other beefs: We experienced a couple of crashes while rendering with the dual-processor G4/533; whether this is a real Final Cut Pro issue, a problem with QuickTime 5, or some issue with the multiprocessing code, we’re not sure — but this is a point-zero release, after all. Also, Final Cut Pro 2.0 is not Mac OS X compatible — meaning you can’t even run it in the Classic environment. Apple promises an OS X upgrade, but didn’t announce a target date as of press time. Version 2 solidifies Final Cut Pro’s position as the leading video-editing solution for the Mac. If you edit for a living with Final Cut Pro, upgrade and buy into an RT hardware solution. You’ll recoup your investment in no time. Anzovin, Steve, Anzovin, Raf. (July 2001). Final Cut Pro 2.0. MacAddict. (pgs. 44-45).