Final Cut Studio is a discontinued professional video and audio production suite for

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

from

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, and a direct competitor to

Avid Media Composer Avid Media Composer is a film and video editing software application or non-linear editing system (NLE) developed by Avid Technology. Initially released in 1989 on Macintosh II as an offline editing system, the application has since evolved to al ...

in the high-end movie production industry. It was developed from 2005 to 2011. Three of its primary applications -

Final Cut Pro X Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear editing, non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia, Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Macintosh, Mac computers power ...

(not compatible with previous versions of Final Cut),

Motion In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and mea ...

, and

Compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Compressors are similar to pumps: both increase the pressure on a fluid and both can transp ...

- continue to be developed and are published as separate applications on the

Mac App Store The App Store (also known as the Mac App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple Inc. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" ...

. The legacy boxed version of Final Cut Studio was last made available only through Apple's phone sales, and therefore not online or in Apple Stores. As of 2017, Final Cut Pro 7 no longer runs on macOS High Sierra or later.

Components

Final Cut Studio version 3, the final release upon discontinuation of the suite, contains six main applications and several smaller applications used in content creation. *

Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear editing, non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia, Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Macintosh, Mac computers power ...

7 – "real-time editing for DV, SD and HD" *

4 – "real-time motion graphics design" *

Soundtrack Pro Soundtrack Pro is a discontinued music composing and audio editing application made by Apple Inc. featured in Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio that included a collection of just over 5,000 royalty free professional instrument loops and sound eff ...

3 – "advanced

audio Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to: Sound *Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound *Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum *Digital audio, representation of sound ...

editing and sound design" *

DVD Studio Pro DVD Studio Pro is a discontinued high-end software tool published by Apple Inc. to allow users to create DVD masters to be sent out for replication at production houses. Its tight integration with other Apple applications allowed users to take Fi ...

4 –

encoding In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

, authoring and burning. *

Color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

1.5 – a new

color grading Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, s ...

application adapted from Silicon Color's FinalTouch. *

3.5 – a video encoding tool for outputting projects in different formats. *

Cinema Tools Cinema Tools is a software program for filmmakers, to use in conjunction with Final Cut Pro. It facilitates the creation of an integrated film database, allowing the management of film material through telecine. Overview Cinema Tools is software ...

4.5 – tools specific to film processing. *

Qmaster Apple Qmaster is a system made by Apple Inc. that provides automated work distribution and processing for high-volume projects created with certain digital visual effects software packages: Shake, Autodesk Maya, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, DVD ...

3 – a distributed processing tool. The applications are designed to integrate as a suite, to form a workflow. In particular: *Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported to Soundtrack Pro for audio tweaking or music scoring *Final Cut Pro sequences can be sent to Compressor, for encoding in an external format *Final Cut Pro sequences can be exported to Motion, for motion graphics overlays, or LiveType, specifically for title overlays *LiveType projects can be opened in Final Cut Pro without needing to be exported first *Motion projects can be incorporated into DVD Studio Pro menus without needing to be exported first *LiveFonts from LiveType can be used in Motion. Final Cut Pro and Motion also integrate directly with Apple's discontinued Shake, a digital

compositing Compositing is the process or technique of combining visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. Live-action shooting for compositing is variously ca ...

package.

History

Production Suite is a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

compilation by Apple used for

digital video Digital video is an electronic representation of moving visual images (video) in the form of encoded digital data. This is in contrast to analog video, which represents moving visual images in the form of analog signals. Digital video comprises ...

editing. Production Suite contains

HD,

3, and

Apple Motion Motion is a software application produced by Apple Inc. for their macOS operating system. It is used to create and edit motion graphics, titling for video production and film production Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a ...

. The compilation's component applications were announced at the

National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a trade association and lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasters in the United States. The NAB represents more than ...

in April 2004, and the compilation was released in August 2004. Final Cut Studio was introduced at the

in April 2005, as the successor to Production Suite. It added new versions of all the Production Suite applications:

and Motion. It also introduces a new application,

, which is a new version of Soundtrack, formerly included with Final Cut Pro. In January 2006, Final Cut Studio became the only way to purchase any of the individual major applications. In March 2006, Apple released the

Universal Binary The universal binary format is, in Apple parlance, a format for executable files that run natively on either PowerPC or Intel-manufactured IA-32 or Intel 64 or ARM64-based Macintosh computers. The format originated on NeXTStep as " Multi-Archi ...

version as Final Cut Studio 1.1.

Release history

Marketing

Final Cut Studio has been positioned as an all-in-one production workflow system because of its integration of film, motion graphics and audio post-production tools in one suite. It is analogous to the iLife suite, which is aimed at consumers, insomuch as

iMovie iMovie (known at times as iMovie HD) is a preinstalled video editing application developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS devices. It was originally released in 1999 as a Mac OS 8 application bundled with the first FireWire-enabled ...

is the consumer counterpart of Final Cut Pro;

GarageBand GarageBand is a line of digital audio workstations developed by Apple Inc. for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS devices that allows users to create music or podcasts. GarageBand is developed by Apple for macOS, and was once part of the iLife software s ...

3 is a consumer version of Logic Pro and Soundtrack Pro; and

iDVD iDVD is a discontinued DVD authoring application for Mac OS produced by Apple Inc. iDVD allows the user to burn QuickTime movies, MP3 music, and digital photos to a DVD that can then be played on a commercial DVD player. It was often consider ...

is the cut-down version of DVD Studio Pro. Like Motion, iMovie includes

Core Image Core Image is a pixel-accurate, near-realtime, non-destructive image processing technology in Mac OS X. Implemented as part of the QuartzCore framework of Mac OS X 10.4 and later, Core Image provides a plugin-based architecture for applying filt ...

effects that can be applied in real time.

High Definition

In the

Macworld Conference and Expo Macworld/iWorld was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conference & Expos ...

2005,

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...

, former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of Apple, declared 2005 to be the "Year of HD". To this end, the HD features of Final Cut Studio were emphasized, such that a little HD logo was placed on the box for each individual Studio application, as well as the Final Cut Studio box. Final Cut Pro supports nearly all High Definition formats (

HDV HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon, and Sharp. The four companies formed the HDV Consortium in September 2003. Conceived as an af ...

DVCPRO HD DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around t ...

, and uncompressed HD) and Soundtrack Pro and Motion can import these formats too, where they can be played back on an external monitor. DVD Studio Pro supports the HD DVD 1.0 specification. See

Packaging

The design for the packaging and websites for each application are consistent to a demonstration video shown at the product's introduction at NAB 2005. This video also includes reference to Shake 4 – a high-end digital compositing application that integrates with Final Cut Pro but is not included in Final Cut Studio.

Case studies

To market the Studio components, Apple compiled a set of

case studies A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular fi ...

of real-world users of the applications. For Final Cut Pro, they used Bunim-Murray Productions' uses of the program in their ''

The Real World Real World or The Real World may also refer to: * Real life, a phrase to distinguish between the real world and fictional, virtual or idealized worlds Television * ''The Real World'' (TV series), 1992–2017 * "The Real World" (''Stargate Atla ...

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 19 ...

show. For Soundtrack Pro,

Walter Murch Walter Scott Murch (born July 12, 1943) is an American film editor, director, writer and sound designer. With a career stretching back to 1969, including work on ''THX 1138'', ''Apocalypse Now'', '' The Godfather I'', '' II'', and '' III'', ''Ame ...

became their advocate – a film editor and sound designer who worked on '' Cold Mountain'' and ''

The Godfather ''The Godfather'' is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel of the same title. The film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, ...

''. For Motion, Apple used the example of

Mekanism Mekanism is a San Francisco-based creative agency that specializes in the development and production of marketing campaigns, commercials and branded entertainment for multinational companies.Levere, JaneUsing a Light Touch to Attack a Dark Subj ...

and their creation of a TV spot designed to persuade

young people Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. You ...

vote Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holde ...

. And for DVD Studio Pro, the example of Relevant was used, who used the application in a unique, interactive movie called ''Backwoods to Brooklyn''.

References

External links

* {{Apple MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc. Video editing software Video editing software for macOS