Cinema Tools, a new Apple product!

[simX]

http://www.apple.com/cinematools/

It seems to be an enhancement to Final Cut Pro.

Cinema Tools for Final Cut Pro enhances Final Cut Pro 3's 24fps editing capabilities with support for film cut lists and 24-frame edit decision lists (EDLs) for high-definition (HD) video.

Could this be what became of Nothing Real? Maybe just the first step.

UPDATE: Here's a MacCentral article about it:

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/...inematools.php

An Apple spokesperson confirmed with MacCentral that Cinema Tools 1.0 incorporates some of the same technology used in FilmLogic, a product with some similar characteristics developed by Focal Point Systems. Focal Point Systems was acquired by Apple in April, 2001.

Apple noted that Cinema Tools technology has already been used to edit two upcoming Miramax Film releases -- Steven Soderbergh's "Full Frontal," and "Blue Car," which drew crowds at this year's 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

By the way, Cinema Tools is only available for pre-order right now. It will ship in may.

Interesting, though. So this is what became of Focal Point Systems. I'm glad Apple is using the technology that was in the companies it acquired.

[jaredbkt]

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for AVID? From what I can tell from my limited experience of FCP3, and what I've read, both offer the same things. FCP has a little more, too. The main difference is price where Apple is killing AVID. Now they are going after the actual film and not just DV. Anyone else have opinion?

[mindbend]

Very big.

simX, I'm pretty sure this product is NOT a result of the Nothing Real acquisition FWIW, though you can bet it will all roll in together somehow in the upcoming months/years. I think this product is the result of a separate acqusition about a year ago.

Avid still has the better product as well an established user base, but make no mistake about it, FCP is hurting Avid in a big way and this product is like pouring salt on the wound.

I use FCP daily and love it, but if somebody dumped a fully loaded Avid Symphony on my desk I'd be stupid not to use it. Ironically, Apple is the runaway price leader in this category. Their video lineup overachieves relative to the competition.

DVD Studio Pro has been reviewed several times as without question the best authoring app on any platform for $1000 or less. FCP has dominated the same price range the last two years until Avid's Xpress DV showed up recently at a bit higher price.

Apple is really making some very smart decisions/acquisitions and delivering very solid products at very reasonable prices given the professional market. They are in a great position. I don't think they could have done anything better these last couple of years (realistically), so only time will tell.

[simX]

Originally posted by simX
Interesting, though. So this is what became of Focal Point Systems.

Apple acquired Focal Point Systems in the first half of 2001. Cinema Tools is what became of it (Apple officially acknowledged this to MacCentral in the article).

[mightyjlr]

I just formated my hardrive and installed OSX without 9.x, since I no longer need classic. YESSS. Now I have a problem though. I am a legal owner of FCP2 and the FCP3 upgrade. Since I have no 9.x installed I can't install FCP2 and I can't install FCP3 either because it looks for a 9.x system folder, and FCP2 etc. Does anyone know a way to install FCP3 upgrade on a computer with no 9.x? Any help is appreciated.

[ksuther]

Yes, reinstall 9. It's just a stupid thing to delete OS9. You may never use it, but it's a whole 80 megs when streamlined, and then you don't have to deal with crap like this :-/

[dricci]

You can safely install OS 9 on an OS X partition (as long as you don't tell it to erase the HD first). I did this on my iBook. I had 10.1.3 installed and I just booted from my handy 9.1 CD and installed onto the main partition with 10.1.3. Nothing was lost, just got a classic system folder and some OS 9 apps. Then I just had to boot back into X and classic mode was already set up.