Final Cut Pro X launches, $299 in the Mac App Store

Apple’s professional video editing/production flagship app has been rebuilt from the ground up and repriced for the Mac App Store. Final Cut Pro X is now available for $299.99 via the store, and the accompanying Motion and Compressor apps are $49.99 each. This pricing represents a dramatic drop versus the previous edition of the suite.

FCP X is a completely new version of the editing app, with the new Magnetic Timeline (trackless editing) and clip connections to link effects/title elements to primary footage. Your raw videos can be tagged with keywords, collected, analyzed and organized easily with the new content management library tools. The app’s internal plumbing has been overhauled to make it 64-bit, entirely Cocoa, fully parallel and all-around faster (it now leverages the GPU for effects and can render in the background).

The full feature list will take days or weeks for video pros to digest, and there’s going to be a substantial learning, workflow and implementation curve for anyone planning to move edit operations — so FCP X isn’t going to change the world overnight. We’re checking in with leading Xsan integrators for their reactions to the news. Still, with a $300 buy-in, the opportunity for would-be editors to level up to professional tools is cheaper than ever.

Apple’s press release below.

Show full PR text

CUPERTINO, California-June 21, 2011-Apple(R) today announced Final Cut Pro(R) X, a revolutionary new version of the world’s most popular Pro video editing software which 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. Built on a modern 64-bit architecture, Final Cut Pro X is available from the Mac(R) App Store[TM] for $299.99.

“Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We have shown it to many of the world’s best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped.”

“I’m blown away by what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro,” said Angus Wall, Academy Award-winning film editor. “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.

Completely rebuilt from the ground up, Final Cut Pro X is a 64-bit app that takes full advantage of the latest Mac hardware and software so you never have to wait for the next edit, even if you’re working with 4K video. Final Cut Pro X uses multi-threaded processing and the GPU on your graphics card for blazing fast background rendering and superb real-time playback performance. Additionally, a ColorSync-managed color pipeline ensures color consistency from import to output.

Final Cut Pro X also includes powerful tools for audio editing and color correction, and is complemented by two companion apps, Motion 5 for professional motion graphics and Compressor 4 for advanced media encoding, available from the Mac App Store for $49.99 each.

Pricing & Availability
Final Cut Pro X is available today for $299.99 from the Mac App Store. Motion 5 and Compressor 4 are available today for $49.99 each from the Mac App Store. Full system requirements and more information on Final Cut Pro X can be found at www.apple.com/finalcutpro.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Final Cut Pro X launches, $299 in the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple releases iTunes Festival features, app

The iTunes Festival London is a month-long series of concerts featuring more than sixty artists performing in London’s Roundhouse. The fun starts on July 1st and Apple’s got you covered with an iOS app, steaming shows and exclusive music in iTunes.

The free universal app, aptly named iTunes Festival London 2011, offers details on the month’s lineup plus live and on-demand video of highlighted performances (for a limited time). Fans like me who aren’t in London can still get a peek at what’s going on.

Meanwhile, a featured page in iTunes lists albums available from the scheduled performers. Watch for live tracks once the shows begin. In the meantime, check out these photos from previous years.

Tickets are free and distributed via a lottery. Good luck and have fun!

Apple releases iTunes Festival features, app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Diversion

Diversion may not look like much, but it makes up for any shortage in graphical quality (yes, the characters do look that goofy) with a solid bunch of gameplay that’s surprisingly fun despite the simple premise. The pitch here is “a platformer on rails,” so you play as a 3D character who’s always running forward through a world, and it’s just up to you to jump at the right times. Again, that sounds simple, but it’s surprisingly interesting with lots of strange jumps to make and figure out across over 100 levels.

There’s also an amazing amount of content to unlock — there are over 150 different characters to play with and plenty of secrets to find across the game’s 3D worlds. Normally I’d say it’s unfortunate that there’s no Game Center involved, but in this case, it’s not really needed as the challenge is simply just passing the levels rather than racing through them.

Diversion does an excellent job of providing just that, and especially at its current price of just US 99 cents.

TUAW’s Daily iPhone App: Diversion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Create photo albums right on your iPhone with Album App Mini

As we’re well into vacation season, Album App Mini is a well-timed app to send your pictures to friends and family, in nicely formatted photo albums, without having to invoke software on your laptop or desktop.

Album App Mini lets you import photos from your camera roll or online photo services, like Flickr or Facebook, and create attractive templates and add text. Photos can be cropped, scaled and rotated. Text can be any color you choose, and there are several fonts and type-styles to work with. The app has 30 layouts for photo placement, which is certainly more than enough, and it has 5 themes. Album App Mini also has a tutorial, which was a bit difficult to get into. It looked like a video you touch to start, but in fact, it was a set of static pages that you scroll through.

Albums can be several pages, and the completed albums can be emailed — something the iPhone software doesn’t supply natively. You can upload photos to MobileMe galleries, but it looks like that function may be going away when iCloud appears.

When you’re done, you can email your finished album or send it to Facebook or Twitter. I noticed some image degradation when I emailed the album, so it looks like things aren’t going out at full resolution. The app also supports AirPrint.

Album App Mini is a reasonable US$0.99, although extra themes cost money, which is a growing practice I’m not wild about. I’d rather spend an extra buck on an app and get the whole thing. I like the way this app works, and I’m going to give it a full try on an upcoming photo trek to New Mexico. It’s a nice way to send a finished product while you are on the road. You can see some screenshots in the gallery, and feel free to comment on any other similar solutions you have seen and like.

Gallery: Album app mini

Create photo albums right on your iPhone with Album App Mini originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule part numbers, FCC filings surface

In further evidence that updates to the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule are due any day now, Engadget reports that FCC filings for the next-gen AirPort Extreme have surfaced, while 9to5 Mac has received part number info on both the AirPort Extreme and two models of Time Capsule.

Supposedly prices will drop across both AirPort devices, and the Time Capsule will come with two choices in capacity for its built-in drive, either 2 TB or 3 TB. Supplies for the Time Capsule in particular have been constrained in physical stores for a few weeks, and shipping times for the device have slipped in many of Apple’s online stores, too. References to both devices cropped up in a recent AirPort Utility software update, so all signs definitely point to a product refresh soon.

Engadget notes that Apple typically likes to debut new hardware on the store on Tuesdays; while we can confirm that’s traditionally the case, more minor bits of accessory-type hardware occasionally crop up on other days instead. The next time the Apple Store goes down (if it actually goes down at all), don’t be surprised if there’s a bunch of new AirPort hardware waiting for you when it comes back up.

AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule part numbers, FCC filings surface originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 05:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobile apps leaving the web behind in usage

Mobile ad company Flurry has released a new analysis on its official blog stating that customers are making the transition lately from using the mobile web to spending more of their daily time in mobile apps. In the early days of smartphone prominence (and by “early days,” we mean about three years ago), the main feature on mobile phones was the web. You could check email, look up web pages, or browse the web on your smartphone, and that’s how most people used them.

Since the rise of iOS, however, mobile apps are picking up that time spent. And as you can see from the chart above, customers are now putting more time into mobile apps (about 9 percent more, it turns out) than browsing the mobile web. It should be noted that both stats are still growing — customers are spending more time on mobile phones than ever. But mobile app usage is growing even faster.

It’s not hard to see why this is, either. Mobile apps are maturing quickly, and it’s easier to get information from many of them now than it was just browsing around the web. Mobile apps also offer features like offline access and other things that the web doesn’t, so this shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone.

Mobile apps leaving the web behind in usage originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Talking Ben and friends get representation from William Morris

How do you know that you’re on the fast track to Hollywood stardom? Getting a good agent is the first step — and the fuzzy, funny characters in Outfit7’s app stable have found the best.

Talking Ben the Dog, Talking Tom Cat and the rest of the Talking Friends apps animated characters are now represented by William Morris Endeavor, the Tinseltown powerhouse led by Entourage inspiration Ari Emanuel (the brother of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel). The companies intend to bring the characters into films, TV and other entertainment properties.

The company’s apps have been downloaded over 135 million times across both Android and iPhone platforms; they feature characters that repeat back what you say in supposedly adorable fashion, and they react to various pokes, strokes and smacks in a cartoony manner. The latest Talking Tom 2 app (available free for both iPad and iPhone, but in separate versions) features interaction with Talking Ben (a cantankerous former chemistry teacher, which is actually quite academically impressive for a dog) and the option of having Tom call the ‘old’ Talking Tom on the phone so the two cats can mimic each other in a loop.

If you’re thinking “Wow, as a parent I have to be sure never to let my kids get hold of any of these apps, lest I lose my bearings and throw my iPhone out the car window in a fit of temporary madness,” it’s probably too late already. Did I mention they’ve been downloaded 135 million times?

Talking Ben and friends get representation from William Morris originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Jun 2011 03:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone 5 with Major Redesign Coming in August?

Based on the previous rumors, upcoming iPhone 5 is to bring stronger muscles as compared to the iPhone 4. Now, BGR reports that the iPhone 5 will not merely be an upgraded iPhone 4, expect a radical…

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iPhone 5 is set to be released on September 7th

In a little over two months Apple will be releasing the iPhone 5. It is also rumored that the highly anticipated iOS5 will come preloaded.

The iPhone 5 will come pre-loaded with the iOS 5, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system. Apple fans were dejected that the tech giant broke with tradition this year and refrained from saying anything about the next generation iPhone in its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Source: ‘Apple to release iPhone 5 on September 7; will come pre-loaded with iOS 5′

Tool: SVG Level Builder For Corona With Full Physics Support

I recently mentioned the excellent LevelHelper, and in the past I have mentioned quite a few level building, and editing tools. I haven’t talked about too many Corona SDK tools on this site.. as they have become a dime a dozen, and many are somewhat overpriced. This one however is somewhat different from those.

This tool is from Karnak Games and allows you to build your levels in the excellent open source Inkscape vector editing tool, which means that you can create some very complex paths like bezier curves with ease. The builder also supports every Corona SDK physics property so you can implement complex physics within your games without needing to program.

Here’s a video of the level builder in action:

You can find the official page for the level editor here:
http://levelbuilder.karnakgames.com

If you haven’t seen Inkscape you can download it here:
http://inkscape.org/

The price is $49 at the time of this writing and apparently will be going up to $129 once the roadmap is complete (see the official page). The price seems very reasonable at $49, considering you see so many Corona tools at that price range that accomplish less.

Tutorial: Building A Location Based App That Shows Nearby Gas Prices

Location based apps are in high demand, and there are so many ideas yet to be implemented.

I’ve found an excellent post mortem style tutorial by Matt Gallagher demonstrating the creation of an app that gathers gas price info from an RSS feed, and displays nearby gas prices within a beautiful user interface.

The tutorial demonstrates Matt’s thinking during the creation process of the app and the tutorial provides for an excellent code example demonstrating a multitude of functionality including how to retrieve RSS feeds, how to cache the data, how to get the location, how to use geocoding within the Google API and much more.

You can find the tutorial and source code here:
Process Of Writing iOS Application

It will take some time to go through this great example.

Aetuts+ Hollywood Movie Title Series – Legend Of The Guardians

This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Hollywood Movie Titles

Continuing our Aetuts+ Hollywood Movie Title Series, today’s tutorial will explain how to make the “Legend of the Guardians” flying logo style. In this tutorial using Cinema 4d, we will model beveled text and animate of the logo. Then in After Effects, we’ll complete our project with clouds, a lens flare, particles, and our final composite. Enjoy!

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mov

File size: 425.5 MB

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Get started with Adobe Illustrator and Indesign with this handy collection of beginner tutorials from the archives at Vectortuts+. We’re adding to our Basix category all the time, so be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to stay upto date with all the news, articles and tutorials as we publish them.

Continue reading “Get Started with Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, Basix Tutorials from Vectortuts+”

Coloring and Line Work in Illustrator CS5

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Do a search on “coloring comics,” and you get dozens of Photoshop tutorials. They all seem to involve building up areas of color with transparent brushes. Now you can achieve that same effect with Illustrator CS5, using the Bristle Brush.

Unlike Photoshop, however, Illustrator gives you the flexibility to edit individual paths. Since Illustrator’s brush strokes are vector, you can change the shape, width, color and blending mode to achieve exactly the look you want. You can even delete a brush stroke you don’t want. Try that, Photoshop! This tutorial will use another feature introduced in CS5, Draw Inside. Let’s get started!

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How to Mix a Lonely Accordion

I’ve spent a great deal of time and words giving out pointers on how to mix the traditional instruments such as guitars, bass and drums. Mixing this up a bit, no pun intended, I’ve decided to give you a few pointers on mixing unusual instruments such as the accordion. With new Americana or roots music on the rise, with artists such as Mumford and Sons, it’s nice to be able to tackle folky instruments when they walk through the doors of your studio.

We’ll look at the traditional process of mixing an instrument, but since we’re dealing with an instrument we usually don’t come across, we’ll need to look at it just a little bit differently. I wanted to give this accordion a sort of lonely sound, playing in the distance but not out of reach. Kind of like that Simpsons episode when Lisa first meets “Bleedin’ Gums” Murphy playing saxophone in the distance. To accomplish this we’ll use some echo and reverb to make lonely accordion sound.

This is the audio we’ll be working with. It’s very raw, close and in your face.

Download audio file (Dry.mp3)

Step 1: Compression

Just like anything else, I want to add some compression to even out the peaks and fatten it up. I’m not compressing it a lot. Just a few dBs of gain reduction with a low ratio of 2:1 and a medium attack. The accordion jumps out a few times in the raw audio and we want to control those peaks.

Using these settings we’ve controlled the peaks and fattened up the audio a tiny bit. Mission accomplished so far.

Download audio file (Compression.mp3)

Step 2: Analyzing Frequency and EQing

Normally, you can look up in any reference book where so and so’s frequencies are. There are whole lists of EQ setting where you can look at any given instrument and it will say something like, “to reduce boxiness cut at ### Hz” or, “fatten the guitar up by adding 240 Hz.” But what do you do when you’re not really sure of the frequency information in a new instrument? Sure, you can do it by ear and just experiment, especially if you are more or less knowledgable of what the frequency ranges sound like.

But you can also use a frequency analyzer to tell you what the instrument looks like in frequency form. This is helpful if you’re stuck with an instrument and you just can’t seem to get it to sound right. There are some frequencies that are very dominating but you just can’t pinpoint them. That’s where a frequency analyzer can come in handy. The frequency analyzer in Logic that’s built-in to their EQ is a very helpful friend in those situations.

Turning to EQ, I did some adjustments to the accordion. I usually try to find frequencies I don’t like by boosting them all the way up and then cutting them when they pop out; a technique I used twice in this case. I also filtered out the low end, since I didn’t want it competing with any of low end instruments. You’ll hear this later when we put the rest of the instruments into the mix. Additionally, I boosted the accordion in the 800′s. I wanted a thicker sound and I found that a boost there thickened up the mids of the accordion, rounding out the sound.

Hear what we’ve got so far:

Download audio file (EQ.mp3)

Step 3: Echo

Now that we’ve got the accordion sounding like we want it to, we need to sprinkle it with space and effects to make it stand out. Subtle and creative use of effects are great to make things sound interesting. In our case we’ll be using echo and reverb to create the space we want around our instrumen.

Using a send, I’ve added a 1/16^th note echo to the sound. Fiddling with the parameters I’ve come up with a sound that’s decent. It has that echo sound I want, but it’s a little too close sounding. We’ll fix that at a later stage.

Download audio file (echo.mp3)

Sounds good, but it’s maybe a little echoey. Not quite the lonely feel we’re after.

Step 4: Reverb

To make the sound of the echo a bit softer I’ve set up a reverb after the echo on the effects channel. It kind of works like a pre-delay but there are more reflections that we need to soften from the echo than if we were only using a pre-delayed reverb.

I just slapped on a simple reverb from Logic, the PlatinumVerb plug-in. This is a medium sized reverb that works well to soften the reflections from the echo.

It’s definitely a different sound now, with the reverb making those echoes sound a little bit further away, creating that lonely feeling I’m looking for.

Download audio file (echoverb.mp3)

Step 5: Master Reverb

Now, the final thing to do is to send both the effects channel and the original sound to a master reverb. I’m using a single reverb for most of the instruments. I do this to give the impression that they are all playing in the same room. I touched upon this technique in How the Hell do I Use Reverb Anyway!?! as it’s a very effective technique for gluing everything together.

With both the original and echoed channel sent to a master reverb we end up with the final result.

Download audio file (final.mp3)

Conclusion

We’ve managed to take a up close and personal accordion part and make it into a lonely solo echoing off in the distance. In the context of all the instruments it sounds pretty cool to me. Listen to the final mixed accordion with all the instruments around.

Download audio file (mix.mp3)

I think it blends really nicely with the rest of the mix. It’s not heavily drenched with reverb, but we’ve still managed to push it away to lonely land. By using subtle echoes and reverbs it’s easy to create an effect such as this.

What do you guys think? Any questions, or further observations are welcome in the comments. Have you been using similar tricks in your mixes?