Final Cut Pro

Final Cut provides a powerful editing environment with drag and drop control.

iMovie is cheap (free for download) and easy to get started with by even the most basic user. Apple’s Final Cut Pro is the exact opposite. It’s $999 price tag and range of features is enough to make anyone pause. There are so many keyboard shortcuts built into the software that my copy included a number of labels for my keyboard. For the professional video editor, a keyboard labeled for Final Cut will feel like the “old days" of dedicated editing systems.

For a relatively new piece of software, Final Cut Pro has a long history. First developed at Macromedia, the product was picked up by Apple and redesigned to fit the emerging Apple video style. Like it’s iMovie sibling, Final Cut Pro is geared to FireWire camcorders. In that mode, input and export of video is meant to be a breeze. But I found that it worked reasonably well with my rapidly aging Pinnacle Systems miroMotion DC30 card.

The Best of Both Worlds
At $999, Final Cut Pro is definitely more expensive than its closest competitor, Adobe Premiere (approximately $579, street price). But then again, Final Cut Pro intends to be much more. Mixed in with all of the editing features is an attempt to match many of the special effects capabilities of Adobe After Effects (approximately $599, street price for the standard edition). The effects integration is convenient but it also contributes to the learning curve of the application.

This all-in-one threat has not been lost on Adobe. Priced separately, their digital video applications add up to more than the price of Final Cut. To answer the challenge, Adobe now offers a bundle of Premiere and After Effects for $995.

Streaming Features?
In the area of streaming, Final Cut Pro is at a disadvantage. As a new product, support for streaming options is more limited than the much older Adobe Premiere. Premiere has gained built-in support for many streaming formats (like RealMedia) and tools (like Media Cleaner Pro) right within the application. True, Premiere’s built-in streaming support is often limited by how much effort the software publisher has put into the particular plug-in. But Final Cut Pro does not currently support much more than usual QuickTime output features. Time will tell whether or not Final Cut catches up with Premiere in this area.

If you are working with streaming media, Final Cut Pro does offer the same movie property analysis that Premiere offers. This can help you check data rates on files that you have been producing.

But other than these modest areas, Final Cut Pro does not make great strides to attract the streaming producer. Instead it focuses on the editing and effects aspects of digital video. If you are working with QuickTime streaming, Final Cut Pro will do the basic job. But if you need to export to other formats, be prepared to launch those tools and encoders separately.