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Edit Review—Apple Final Cut Pro 4

Aug 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Steve Mullen

The new version of the popular editing program is more than just an NLE.

Apple's Final Cut Pro 4.0 is far more than an upgrade from version 3. True, the application has been enhanced in several significant areas. Version 4, however, encompasses far more than an NLE application.

Final Cut Pro 4's RT Extreme realtime architecture takes advantage of the G4 and G5 Velocity Engine to support additional streams of video.

Apple bundles four additional supporting applications. To create dynamic titles, Apple's LiveType application supports animated fonts. To create soundtracks, Apple includes Soundtrack. You can use Apple's new Compressor application to handle a wide range of encoding jobs. To support film production, Apple has bundled its second generation of Cinema Tools. And in 1,500 words, I'm going to provide you with an in-depth review of all the new software — not.

Reality dictates that I cover only a few significant enhancements to FCP. On p. 51, Frank McMahon provides a comprehensive review of Soundtrack.

Final Cut Pro 4 introduces an entirely new realtime architecture that Apple calls RT Extreme. The architecture supports both software- and hardware-based accelerated realtime effects. RT Extreme takes advantage of multiple CPUs and is optimized for the G4 and G5 Velocity Engine. Unlike FCP 3, which supported only one or two streams of video, RT Extreme supports multiple streams. The number of streams, of course, is limited by your system configuration. The faster the system, the more simultaneous streams of video you can work with in realtime.

After clicking the RT Extreme popup menu in the Timeline, you can choose between two sets of options. Select Safe mode and Final Cut Pro 4 provides guaranteed perfect playback of realtime effects. Select Unlimited mode, and FCP plays as well as possible multiple streams of video. When Unlimited is selected, almost 200 FCP effects, filters, and transitions can be used in realtime.

If you select Low- or Medium-quality video playback, you will see “preview-quality” realtime effects. Conversely, if you select High-quality video playback, you will see full-resolution, full-frame-rate playback of realtime effects. Apple claims that many effects can be output to tape without having to be rendered when you select Safe mode and High-quality video playback.

I decided to experiment with RT Extreme using the dual-1.4GHz G4 PowerMac that Apple sent me for this review. (The PowerMac had a single ATA100, 120GB drive.) I used DV25 material and created a dozen short clips that I placed into a Sequence. First, I color-corrected every clip. Then I joined every set of four clips with three 1- to 2-second transitions: dissolve, clock wipe, and cross-stretch. For the experiment I created four audio tracks.

In Safe mode at High quality, all transitions became red, indicating the material had to be rendered. Thus to output to tape at full quality without rendering, it seems you may have to confine yourself to only a single video stream. In Unlimited mode at Maximum quality, all transitions (plus the remainder of the clip after the cross-stretch) became orange, indicating the capabilities of the system to play perfectly had been exceeded.

At either Medium or Low quality, the clock wipe became yellow (meaning some aspect of the effect, such as edge softness, would be ignored), while the stretch became orange. In all cases, however, I could play through the series without stuttering.

I then layered a second series of four clips, set at 50% transparency, above the first. I staggered the set so transitions were never above other transitions. The second layer added a stream — so whenever a transition occurred, three streams were required. In Unlimited mode at Maximum quality, the entire series of clips went orange. Playing through the four clips resulted in severe stuttering and pauses. In Unlimited mode at Medium or Low quality, areas with three streams went orange. However, I could play both tracks with no apparent problems. So far, so good.

Next I layered a third series of four clips, set at 50% transparency, above the first two layers. At several points, two transitions overlaid each other. I immediately noticed that when I placed the Timeline cursor where there was no transition in the top layer, only the top layer was visible.

Placing the cursor above an upper-layer transition resulted in all layers being rendered for the selected frame. It was as if the upper layer's transparency level was being ignored between transitions.

Sensing an FCP bug, I trimmed the top layer so that only areas with transitions remained in the upper track. The result was areas with one, two, three, or five streams. With FCP set to Unlimited mode with Medium quality, the three- and five-stream areas were marked orange. Nevertheless, the entire three tracks, requiring up to five streams, played fine.

Naturally, I couldn't resist placing a dissolve — requiring two more streams — above the area with two vertical transitions. I wasn't surprised when playback stuttered severely through the area that required seven streams. This dual-processor system easily supported realtime preview of five streams with five filters, plus two transitions. These positive results pushed me to add a lower-third super to the fourth video track. Once again, RT Extreme played through the entire segment with no stutters. Fundamentally, these tests indicate that for most DV25 productions, rendering lulls will not slow your creative process.

In my testing I used only Apple's DV25 codec with RT Extreme. FCP has several capabilities that benefit owners of Panasonic DVCPRO and DVCPRO 50 equipment. First, a DV50 codec is now supplied. As you might expect, this increases system bandwidth requirements. The bandwidth required is 7MBps for 29.97i, or 5.7MBps for either 23.98p or 24p.

Second, via the reverse 2:3:3:2 pulldown function in Cinema Tools 2, 480p24 editing is supported for material shot with a Panasonic DVX100 or SDX900 camcorder. FCP 4 itself supports the realtime application of 2:3:2:3, 2:3:3:2, or 2:2:2:3 pull-up to FireWire output, thereby supporting an NTSC monitor. When your production is complete, you can use Cinema Tools to apply 2:3:2:3 pull-up so you can record it to NTSC tape.

Using RT Extreme, those editing DV — or using Apple's OfflineRT codec — can view effects simulta-neously onscreen (DVI monitor or laptop LCD) and on an NTSC monitor driven by a camcorder or deck via FireWire. Of course, if you have a PCI board or FireWire-based video I/O box, this hardware can take advantage of RT Extreme for greater realtime processing power.

Underneath RT Extreme, Final Cut Pro 4 has a new render engine. Render modes are supported on a per-sequence basis: 8-bit RGB, 8-bit YUV (default), 10-bit YUV, and High Precision YUV. Additionally, FCP includes uncompressed 8- and 10-bit SD and HD formats (4:2:2 YUV) that are optimized for both multiple processors and the Velocity Engine.

When rendering, codecs convert video data to 4:4:4:4 and pass it to the render engine. Final Cut Pro always renders using 4:4:4:4 sampling, even when the sources have a lower sampling ratio. While High Precision YUV — also known as “32-bit floating-point” or HDR (High Dynamic Range) — does not increase color space, it does provide maximum rendering quality because intermediate calculations do not suffer from “fixed-point” rounding errors.

Final Cut Pro 4 provides the editor with a new Time Remap tool. You can speed up, slow down, reverse, or ramp playback speed over time. These options are supported by an addition to the user interface that allows you to remap time graphically — directly in the Timeline. Your decisions are based on the video, not on percentages or frame rates. With the Time Remap tool, the link between frames and time is not fixed. Thirty frames do not have to be one second long. You can pick any frame from the source clip and place it anywhere in time. This results either in stretched (slow-motion) time or shortened (high-speed) time for the video on either side of the new keyframe. I found this new feature to be both useful and a whole lot of fun.

When you've completed a production, you can export it to tape as a QuickTime (FCP) movie, compress it using any QuickTime codec, or pass it to the new Compressor application bundled with FCP 4. When you open Compressor from the Final Cut Pro Export menu, even realtime effects in Final Cut Pro 4 can be encoded. Integration means it's no longer necessary to create an intermediate file, which saves both time and disk space. Compressor, which features a batch-encoding capability, can also be used as a standalone application.

Compressor takes advantage of multiple processors and the Velocity Engine for high-performance encoding. Compressor's MPEG-2 codec is a second-generation Apple encoder that supports one- and two-pass variable bit rate encoding, advanced motion estimation, and the ability to control GOP size and structure. Compressor also lets you encode projects using MPEG-4.

Other than the glitch I encountered while putting RT Extreme to the test, I ran into no problems using FCP 4 on the dual-processor review system, or on my 1GHz iMac. A few years ago, I predicted in these pages that ultimately one would need to pay no more than a $1,000 for a professional NLE. With the enhancement of Final Cut Pro, plus the inclusion of the other four production packages, Apple has more than made that prediction come true.

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BOTTOM LINE

Company: Apple
Cupertino, Calif.; (408) 996-1010
www.apple.com

Product: Final Cut Pro 4

Assets: Supports more video streams than the previous version; new Time Remap tool; DV50 codec now included; four separate applications now bundled.

Caveats: Realtime capabilities are limited by your system configuration.

Demographic: Professional Mac editors.

Price: $999

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.