Final Cut Pro is a non-linear editing system created by Apple Computer that allows users to edit video. The latest releases are for Mac OS X only. Since the early 2000's, it has come to be accepted as a high-end professional editorial tool, and has become a competitor to the previously main force in the industry, Avid.

Used on Macintosh computers, it is a resolution-independent software editing front-end to a user-configurable hardware architecture. It can be used to edit material ranging from Firewire-attached MiniDV video from a consumer digital video camera in the home environment to High-Definition digital video (HD) in a full professional studio environment. The software loads the video onto the Mac, where it can be edited and processed.

History

Randy Ubillos and other members of his team originally created Adobe Premiere. They were then hired by Macromedia to create KeyGrip, built from the ground up as a more professional video editing program. Macromedia ran out of both time and money during the development process, which included both Mac and Windows versions. As a result, they were bought out by Apple, which in due course introduced Final Cut Pro.

With the introduction of FCP, Adobe Premiere market share plummented, since its ancient codebase had neither the features nor the design flair to compete. In 2003, Adobe introduced Premiere Pro as a Windows-only product with an entirely new codebase and many FCP-like features.

In 2003, Final Cut Pro HD was introduced and high definition features were added. However, Final Cut Pro HD did not support HDV video, even though the cheaper Final Cut Express did. HDV support was added with the release of Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.

Many feature films have been edited with Final Cut Pro, including Ocean's Eleven, Cold Mountain, Intolerable Cruelty, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Gunner Palace , and Napoleon Dynamite.

Final Cut Express

Apple also makes Final Cut Express, which is a light-version of Final Cut Pro with the same user-interface but without some of the more advanced features.

In January 2005, Soundtrack and Live Type, previously only available with Final Cut Pro, were added to Express, and features were added to edit HDV video.

Final Cut Pro 5

In April 2005 Apple Computer released Final Cut Pro 5 at a pre NAB event. Amongst the improvements were better integration with Apple's other Pro applications and improved codec support for editing HD, DV and SD video formats. A new technology called RT Extreme allows a real-time multistream effects architecture (allowing multi-camera editing) and Dynamic RT Extreme, which automatically adjusts image quality and frame rate during playback.

Also included with Final Cut Pro is Compressor, an audio and video compression application and Cinema Tools, a tool to aid in dealing with telecine issues.

See also

• List of video editing software
• Comparison of video editing software

External links

• Apple: Final Cut Pro 5
• Ken Stone's FCP
• lafcpug
• the free Pro Apps Hub