Review: Apple Final Cut Studio 2

Apple Final Cut Pro 6 allows you to edit in ProRes 422, the company's new full-raster, visually lossless postproduction codec. Shown above is uncompressed 1920x1080 HDMI captured to ProRes 422, imported via Blackmagic Design's Intensity card using the Capture Now button.

Let's hope Apple never becomes an ordinary company. Few companies set out, after all, to smash the dystopian future as famously depicted in Apple's defiant 1984 commercial introducing the Macintosh (by Ridley Scott, fresh off Blade Runner). Whether or not present-day iPods and iPhones advance the utopian cause, this much is certain: There's a little bit of Apple's disruptive DNA in every product it introduces.

Take, for example, Final Cut Studio 2, introduced in April at NAB. In the ancient days of 2002, I reviewed Final Cut Pro (FCP) 3 with its debut of primary and secondary color correction along with waveform and vectorscope diagnostics. I called it a “post house in a box.” (It's fun to look back: “Say what you will, that a Mac with FCP 3 is not an Avid Symphony — Da Vinci colorists, in turn, belittle Symphony's color correction tools — it sure feels like empowerment to me.”)

Well, with the release of Final Cut Studio 2, the box has gotten way bigger — figuratively and literally. Inside are four hefty volumes of the Final Cut Pro 6 user manual (exemplary in clarity and comprehensiveness) and a slim volume on Color (more below), as well as installation discs for six full-blown applications: FCP 6, Color, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Compressor 3, and DVD Studio Pro 4. You can heat your oven and cook that Thanksgiving turkey in the time it takes to load these installation discs.

Examining six applications in clinical detail in this brief space is impossible. These are large, sprawling, complex programs with countless setups, plug-ins, and possibilities of “round-tripping” clips. With the exception of Color, they're not fledgling versions either. What's already well-established is that FCP is terribly popular among amateurs and professionals alike, from teenaged Spielbergs to aspiring indie filmmakers to Hollywood legends. So instead, I'll focus mainly on my impressions of FCP 6 and Color, having worked with them for several months.

What's soon apparent upon installing the full suite of Final Cut Studio 2 apps is that Apple's “one-size-fits-all” approach has been compromised, if not retired, by technology itself. Where Avid has traditionally tiered its NLE products into price/feature categories by use of dongles and whatnot, Apple has prided itself on a single, democratic version of FCP delivering full functionality and running on most Macs (Final Cut Express HD notwithstanding). The switchover to Intel in early 2006, however, caused a leap in performance that opened new possibilities for processor-intensive software such as advanced codecs. It created a technology gap between older PowerPC heavy lifters such as G5 towers (state-of-the-art months earlier) and the new Intel screamers. Apple, never one to shy away from disruptive products, had disrupted itself.

The fallout: Although there remains a single pro edition of the latest Final Cut Studio 2, not all its apps can run on aging iBook G4s, PowerBook G4s, and Power Mac G5s. Even iMacs, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros based on the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors are not on a par with the quad-core and eight-core “octo” Mac Pros featuring the speediest Intel Xeon processors.

Apple, to its credit, has been diligent in posting detailed system requirements on its website, along with tech notes specifying which systems are up to demanding tasks such as capturing HD directly to ProRes 422, its new full-raster, visually lossless postproduction codec. (1920×1080 or 1280×720, I-frame DCT, 4:2:2, 10-bit sampling, variable bit-rate, 145Mbps to 220Mbps. For details, see images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/resources/white_papers/L342568A_ProRes_WP.pdf.) But in addition to Apple's guidelines and the collective insights available online at forums such as Creative Cow, dvinfo.net, and 2-pop — often inflected by opinion, caveat emptor — experience and testing remain critical.

To import 25Mbps Sony XDCAM EX images into FCP 6, you must strip their MP4 wrappers and replace them with QuickTime wrappers so that FCP 6 can import the files as ordinary HDV. You can accomplish this with Sony's XDCAM Transfer plug-in for FCP 6, shown above as beta software, which will be available when the PMW-EX1 ships.

I installed Final Cut Studio 2 on three machines: a PowerMac Dual 1.8GHz G5 workstation with 4GB RAM, a 15in. MacBook Pro 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB RAM, and a Mac Pro 2x3GHz dual-core Intel Xeon workstation with 8GB of RAM. All were running the latest version of Tiger, OS X 10.4.10.

In the case of the PowerMac G5, I knew of an HDV feature being edited as HDV in FCP 5.1.4 with many layers of greenscreen and keying. Cutting was 50 percent complete. While it's risky to change horses in midstream by upgrading any NLE in mid-edit, the benefits were alluring: A trip to FCP 6.0.1's Effects menu shows a little item called SmoothCam (Effects > Video Filters > Video >SmoothCam), which replaces FCP 5.1.4's so-so Image Stabilizer. SmoothCam is no less than a nondestructive Shake algorithm that analyzes shakiness in a clip (in the background, while you're doing other things), and then allows you to experiment and view degrees of scaling and smoothness without having to re-analyze or rerender. SmoothCam improved several shots jittery from a weak tripod head or uneven tracking, to the great delight of the director (also the editor).

I'm happy to report that the complex 5.1.4 timeline survived the upgrade process intact with only a few easily restored render files missing. Since then, FCP 6.0.1 has run more smoothly on the PowerMac G5 than had FCP 5.1.4, which seemed to occasionally trigger an overheating condition that would automatically shut down the PowerMac G5 in the middle of a long, tedious render (not unknown to HDV projects), causing bouts of violent frustration. Hasn't happened with 6.0.1.

On the 15in. MacBook Pro, I cut a 3-minute promo and a prospective :60 commercial for a SoHo jewelry company. The scratch/render disk was a 1TB Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo Edition connected by FireWire 800. In this case, a shaky camera was central to the aesthetic concept, as were quick cuts and glimpses of SoHo streets featuring a model. Most of it was shot in HDV (a sign of the times?), but one video track — sidewalk shadows of bustling pedestrians at sunset — had been shot in standard-def DV. This abstract, high-contrast DV imagery was intended to flow, collage-like, over the glamour shots.

FCP 6's new open-format timeline architecture enables you to drop clips from assorted codecs onto the timeline and edit instantly without rendering. This freedom made our mixing HDV and DV an afterthought, in that we didn't tinker with settings when importing mixed clips. (We even exploited the vertical black bars of DV's 4:3 pillarbox as a graphic gesture, a set of thick parentheses.) In truth, our interleaving of 1080i60 HDV with 480i60 DV hardly put FCP 6's open-format timeline to the test, because it can also mix clips with different frame rates — a trickier task — in realtime using FCP 6's RT Extreme engine.

The Mac Pro 2x3GHz dual-core Intel Xeon workstation, with its beefy ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card, is something else — half an octo, no less a Ferrari. So I've been experimenting with importing to a ProRes 422 timeline a series of 1080i60 clips from three innovative camcorders:

1. Panasonic's minuscule AG-HSC1U, which uses AVCHD (MPEG-4/H.264 codec) to record 1440×1080, 4:2:0 HD to a tiny SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) card — a high-capacity version of the common SD card. Final Cut Pro 6.0.1 adds support for AVCHD through its Log and Transfer interface, a new function located in the File menu beneath Log and Capture. (Formerly the P2 Import window, it was rechristened Log and Transfer in FCP 6.) After recording a series of clips to an SDHC card, I connected the HSC1U to the Mac Pro by USB cable and opened the Log and Transfer interface. Clips were immediately available for review, logging, and ingest. Couldn't be simpler.

   I also captured live images through the HSC1U's HDMI port, which outputs uncompressed 1920×1080, 4:2:2 HD. (Images captured by the HSC1U's three 1/4in. 16:9 CCDs are internally processed as 1440×1080 but upsampled for HDMI output. More about HSC1U in an upcoming review in Digital Content Producer.) This was accomplished using a standard HDMI cable and Blackmagic Design's excellent (and cheap) Intensity HDMI capture card. Ingest into FCP 6.0.1 was done on-the-fly using the Capture Now button in the Log and Capture window.

2. Sony's 3-CMOS HVR-V1U, which records HDV (MPEG-2) to tape. I had recorded rare takeoffs and landings of a WWII Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, and I wanted to transfer the best possible images to ProRes 422. I chose the V1's HDMI uncompressed 1920×1080, 4:2:2 output, and Blackmagic's Intensity HDMI capture card. Although the V1's clips had already been subsampled to 1440×1080, 4:2:0 and compressed as long-GOP HDV for recording to tape, I reasoned that Sony's own hardware codec would likely do the best job of uncompressing and restoring them. Again, ingest was on the fly using the Capture Now button in Log and Capture. The results were superb.

3. Sony's 3-CMOS PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX, which records MPEG-2 to “S×S” (Sony and Sandisk) flash memory cards, essentially fast versions of the Express Card/34 standard. XDCAM EX offers two data rates: 25Mbps and 35Mpbs. The first is 1440×1080 — functionally equivalent to HDV — and the second is 1920×1080 or 1280×720. Both are 4:2:0. Final Cut Pro 6 can already import XDCAM HD files using a built-in codec, but XDCAM EX files differ in key respects: they use an MPEG-4 file wrapper (even though they're MPEG-2) instead of XDCAM HD's MXF wrapper, and while XDCAM HD images are 1440×1080, the 35Mbps XDCAM EX images are 1920×1080. At present, there's no FCP 6 codec that can import 1920×1080 MPEG-2 images, although this will certainly be rectified by Apple as the EX1 camcorder becomes available in late November.

It is possible, however, to import 25Mbps XDCAM EX images into FCP 6 if their MP4 wrappers are stripped and replaced with QuickTime wrappers, enabling FCP 6 to import these files as ordinary HDV. To do this, I obtained a beta copy of Sony's XDCAM Transfer plug-in for FCP 6, which will be available from Sony as a general release (non-beta) version when the EX1 ships. It is located under “File,” then “Import” in FCP 6 and appears as “Sony XDCAM” (File>Import>Sony XDCAM). I attached the EX1 camcorder by USB cable to the Mac Pro. Both 8GB and 16GB SxS cards were recognized. The 25Mbps files were imported automatically into my project.

The pièce de résistance? All clips ran smoothly in the same ProRes 422 timeline. (Coming from different camcorders, they didn't look the same. Ah, but that's a different article.)

Color, a Final Cut Studio 2 application that, only a year ago, was Silicon Color's professional $25,000 FinalTouch 2K Color Finishing System, enables professional results with the help of a reference-grade monitor and a USB colorimeter such as ColorVision Spyder2.

Where effects are concerned, FCP 6 embraces the FxPlug plug-in standard used in Motion and other applications, meaning that Motion's realtime, GPU-accelerated effects are now accessible in FCP too. A brief tour of the Effects menu (Effects>Video Filters) demonstrates that basic FCP categories such as Blur, Distort, Glow, Stylize, Tiling, and Time contain more than 25 new FxPlug effects. I know I'm looking for that right opportunity to use those new Earthquake and Bad TV filters.

The venerable Color Corrector and Color Corrector 3-way filters now exist in the lengthening shadow of Color, a Final Cut Studio 2 application that, only a year ago, was Silicon Color's professional $25,000 FinalTouch 2K Color Finishing System. That Apple acquired Silicon Color and folded FinalTouch into its Final Cut Pro 2 suite in a matter of months is amazing — and it shows. Starting up Color for the first time is a jolt to Mac-centric sensibilities, as you're confronted with a very un-Mac-like user interface that requires clicking around in weird-looking folders, seeking your root level to set up a media directory. (This oddity will no doubt vanish in the next release.) But no matter: This sophisticated, node-based, 10-bit platform with its HSL (hue, saturation, and luminance) slider controls for primaries, its adjustable saturation curves for secondaries, and its keying with full RGB control, inside and out, of custom shapes is a dream come true — and possibly a nightmare too.

I recently attended the Lincoln Center premiere of an hour-long film I shot in HDV. It was cut in FCP 6 (not by me) and projected as HDCAM using a 1920×1080 projector. Budget had run out, and color correction was done by the editor. He did his very best, but I was aware throughout of saturation errors and uneven blacks. Perhaps no one else in the audience registered this as I did, and the film was well-received. Still, I found myself wistful for a professional colorist's touch.

As I've noted in the past, to properly exploit Color's capabilities you need a reference-grade monitor and a USB colorimeter such as ColorVision Spyder2, or perhaps a tightly calibrated DLP projector, at least to keep things honest. A steroidal Mac Pro and a roaring graphics card can't hurt. A trackball control surface might come in handy too. But most of all, you need experienced eyes — mileage in a colorist's seat.

While results obtained using Color can rival a Da Vinci, for long-form projects, Color can't touch a dedicated color-grading system for speed and efficiency. These are among the reasons why seasoned professional colorists have nothing to fear with the advent of Color. If anything, Color, freed of the postproduction priesthood, might very well serve to include a new and curious generation in the fascinating intricacies of digital video color correction. That can't be bad.

With version 1.01, Apple Color has taken its first baby steps. Let's see over the coming years how the proud parent raises this promising child.

Leopard, the latest edition of Apple's Unix-based OS X, is due this October after a delay attributed to last spring's iPhone birthing pangs. By the time you read this, the eagerly anticipated Leopard, along with Apple's codec for importing 1920×1080 XDCAM EX files recorded at 35Mbps, may be in your hands. Ditto AJA Video Systems' Io HD ingest/output box, the first third-party capture device to support ProRes 422 in hardware, not yet available at this writing. All promise soon to lend impressive new capabilities to Final Cut Studio 2.

Fingers crossed that Apple can keep those sledgehammers a-hurtling.

Company: Apple
www.apple.com

Product: Final Cut Studio 2

Assets: Advances in editing, effects, and audio post with improved integration and stability, FCP 6 open-format timeline accepts multiple resolutions and frame rates without rendering, adds new ProRes 422 lossless compression and FxPlug filter format, Color brings professional-grade color correction.

Caveats: Not all apps run equally on older Macs, Color's interface jarring at first.

Demographic: Mac users needing professional editing and finishing capabilities.

Price: $1,299 (full); $699 (upgrade from Final Cut Pro or Production Suite); $499 (upgrade from Final Cut Studio)