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You've read about the Final Cut Pro 5 announcements (see "Apple's New Production Package" below), but you use Final Cut every day. You want to know what's "really new." This article takes you under the hood and shows you what Apple's engineers have been working on for the last year.
But first, a caveat:. This article is based on discussions with Apple's product marketers and engineers. Since the software won't be released until later this month, I haven't been able to try the software myself, so this isn't a review. Also, while lots of exciting new applications were announced, this article focuses on Final Cut Pro 5 and Soundtrack Pro, the two applications you are likely to be using on a daily basis in creating your projects.
SOUNDTRACK PRO
Soundtrack Pro is integrated with Final Cut Pro 5 and is designed to meet three major audio needs of video production:
1. Create music, sound effects and background ambience. In fact, Soundtrack ships with more than 5,000 loops, effects and audio textures.
2. Repair bad audio-for example, pops, clicks and loud background noise.
3. Mix a large project, including split-feeds, track-based filters and decent EQ, effects and compressors.
What I like about the new Soundtrack is that even if you have no musical talent (and you know who you are), Soundtrack is still useful. The two features that most appeal to me are Action Layers and the mixer. The audio mixer in Soundtrack Pro is light years ahead of the mixer in FCP.
You can load a Final Cut sequence into Soundtrack and mix it, create up to 24 output channels, send any audio track to any combination of outputs, group faders to provide sub-mixes, move files between FCP and Soundtrack Pro using round-tripping, add filters to individual clips or entire tracks, use Action Layers (which make changes simple and non-destructive), and apply 50 supplied Logic audio plug-ins-including, I've been told, some decent audio compressors and limiters.
But that's just the start. New support for Mackie Control Surface Protocol allows sound editors to use hardware faders...