Final Cut Studio 3 not coming at WWDC...

[Torrey Loomis]

Just my own predictions here, but I think we still have a little while to go before Final Cut Studio 3 ships. More info here:

http://silveradosys.blogspot.com

I hope I am wrong. What's your two cents?

Torrey
-----------------------------------------------
Torrey Loomis
President & CEO - Silverado Systems, Inc.
(916) 760-0032 • FAX (916) 404-5258
torrey@silverado.cc
http://www.Silverado.cc

Silverado Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/silveradosys
StudioBuilder blog at http://silveradosys.blogspot.com

[Kwan Khan]

Apple's big announcements are typically kept under heavy lock-and-key.

It seems these days apple only cares about there itoys and forgot about the pro apes

[Kenneth Nordahl]

I think they have to wait for SL to be released, and maybe 1 month or so after SL shipping.

[Joyfool]

I think they have to wait for SL to be released, and maybe 1 month or so after SL shipping.

regardless of snow leopard's release I would imagine FCS3 should be backwards compatible. Many post facilities won't be able to just lift to SL due to other inhouse dev'd apps and the such. The smart thing would be to make sure FCS is "optimized" for SL but compatible with OSX 10.5.x.

[Kenneth Nordahl]

Yea, ofc it is backwards compatible, but to showcase Grand Central it would be a great selling point to wait untill Snow Leopard release.

[Jon Chappell]

People seem to forget - WWDC is a developer conference. There might be a couple of small, off-topic announcements such as minor speed bumps but all big announcements will be developer-centric.

I don't think it is impossible for Pro Apps to be announced at a WWDC conference, as Apple made a lot of API/SDK improvements from FCP 5 > 6 so it makes sense for FCP 7 to be even more developer-friendly (hopefully significantly). However, with Snow Leopard AND iPhone 3.0 at the same show I doubt they would have room to cover anything else. Those two are huge topics that represent a significant portion of Apple's developer market - it makes sense to prioritize them first.

Remember that Apple gets a ton of coverage for even minor, trivial things so they do not need to rely on trade shows or specific events in order to get the word out.

[Torrey Loomis]

I don't think it is impossible for Pro Apps to be announced at a WWDC conference, as Apple made a lot of API/SDK improvements from FCP 5 > 6 so it makes sense for FCP 7 to be even more developer-friendly (hopefully significantly). However, with Snow Leopard AND iPhone 3.0 at the same show I doubt they would have room to cover anything else. Those two are huge topics that represent a significant portion of Apple's developer market - it makes sense to prioritize them first.

Remember that Apple gets a ton of coverage for even minor, trivial things so they do not need to rely on trade shows or specific events in order to get the word out.

All good points.

TL

[jonnycom]

I think it will be out just after SL. I hope SL comes out soon. We already are getting comfortable with CS4.....

[Snow R. Shai]

There were big discussions over this prior to NAB09 - will it show up in Vegas?
Some of us think the best time for a FCS3 update is with Snow Leopard, to maximize compatibility, tech & speed.
Although possible, it does not make sense to break out a new major, much waited for, multiple pro app revision before the new system is in place, with all new technologies inside.
Still, CS4 is out there, so never say never...
We know it's a long time coming.
Actually, we are all playing prophets until the thing is actually out...

[Zack Birlew]

Well, after the FCPUG at NAB this year, I got the distinct consipracy theory that Adobe is going to take over. You see, the thing that was showed off quite a bit at the FCPUG meeting was how well Premiere and FCP play together now, even so much as dragging timelines from one to the other with no conflicts. Heck, even the interfaces looked exactly alike! Now, I haven't had much experience with this myself, maybe some of you can point to problems going between the two, however, it all seemed very suspicious to me how convenient things were. Furthering my suspicion is the experience my brother had when he had to play around with Premiere recently to get around some little effects issue, so he had to edit the clip a bit and he told me later that it was exactly like working in Final Cut Pro. Could you imagine? Just port over Motion and Color and FCP is fully assimilated.

Now, that's just my conspiracy theory and unless I'm proven right, I'm going to assume that Final Cut Studio 3 is imminent. However, my question is, "How could it get any better than it is?" Honestly, all Apple has to do is release a bunch of bug fixes and speed improvements. If they tossed in Logic Pro and Shake for free that'd be pretty cool for newcomers but, then again, that's not doing too much for current users. Snow Leopard will obviously help it take full advantage of multi-core processors, so it will naturally get faster. As far as Shake goes, Apple can't do too much now because there are already great solutions out there, like Nuke. Maybe if they had released the new version of Shake a year or two ago, then maybe it stood a chance. However, most can get by with After Effects these days as it has come a long way in a very short amount of time. What would be great is if Apple bought out somebody like Wondertouch or Redgiant Software and added those products and integrated them into the FCS system, then that would be a big leap forward in terms of functionality and use. Imagine having Instant HD's uprez capabilities and Magic Bullet's 24p conversion capabilities natively integrated into Final Cut Pro's import/export system. I know you can get the same with the plug-in as it is but this would be on the fly. Wondertouch is a no-brainer as it is practically the advanced version of Motion, minus the 3D capabilities. Merge the two and there you go, new version of Motion. But, at this point, neither of those are likely to happen.

I would imagine all that could be done is better support and optimization for 2K and 4K+ material, as well as 3D, of course, in some way. Blu ray is a must for DVD Studio Pro as well. It would be nice if they made Color as powerful as Scratch, Lustre, or any of those other ridiculously expensive DI solutions. Besides that, I can't think of anything else as FCS is a pretty powerful software suite as it is.