An interesting thread popped up on the FCP-L today as a follow up to all the Adobe integration in the recent RED Scarlet & Epic announcement: what does the future hold for Apple’s Final Cut Studio 3?
Jim Feely set the table with this MacWorld San Francisco prediction:
So what’ll Apple show at Macworld SF? I’m assuming they’ll have a booth
there. Anyway, Macworld could be the Mac Pro & OS 10.6 show this year. And
what the heck, they’ll demo FCS3 to show off the amazing power of their new
hardware. And they’ll make some point about how FCS3 is perfectly positioned
for the switchover from analog to digital television…which happens to
occur in the US one month later.
The Mac Pro hardware will be ready to go. Not sure about 10.6, but FCP (and
really, the emphasis will be on FCS3) will be more of a technology demo and
will ship sometime later.
Partner announcements will be about some major productions going Apple from
post to delivery to consumers via iTunes, Apple TV 3.0 (that happens to work
really well with NetFlix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTwob…that’s the 2.0 version of
YouTube…and whatever else Google and/or AT&T own at that time.
And then Craig Seeman chimed in with a more specific tea leaf reading:
With FCS3 people will notice that DVDSP is gone, Jobs having declared DVD dead.
Compressor will be greatly expanded.
Apple will introduce MobileMePro accounts which will come free with FCS3. It’ll have
unlimited storage and you’ll be uploading 720p24 H264 files which will be wrapped in a
Flash player as Jobs emphasizes the death of DVD as well as Blu-ray.
There will be no optical drive at all in the new MacPro and, instead, they’ll be an eSATA port
as Apple claims Hard Drives as the means to long term archival along with backing all video
up to your MobileMePro account. People will grumble about having to buy an external DVD or
Blu-ray burner.
Adobe will continue to refuse to unbundle Encore but will have a 50% off FCS trade in
program (reminiscent of Apple’s “send us your Premiere Pro discs and you’ll get Final Cut
Express free deal) for its Produce Suite.
While there has not been an official announcement from Apple regarding Final Cut Studio 3, it sure is fun to hypothesize. I’m still waiting for the Motion 3 + Shake super app. When’s that coming?
pro • active • ly 
Although Jobs may consider DVD dead, many clients that we FCS 2 serve will want Blu-Ray. I can’t imagine that DVD SP 5 will not be released.
Hey Sean, totally agree. Blu-Ray is alive and well on my PS3 and will be, I’d imagine, for some time to come.
proactively • dismembering necromorphs in Dead Space • peter
Blu-ray for sure.
but in motion4, i am expecting some extrusion and shadows.
Shake is about 1 step from being a monster. 4.1 is still one of the strongest compositor out there. I just wish they would get rid of the non-conforming lingo like calling files scripts. Its not a script in node its a FILE-in node. They need a smoother less hidden UI also. But i bet the new version of shake is included and no longer a stand alone.
Here might be the surprise. How about NO LIVE TYPE. I can not figure out what live type does that motion can not. Maybe individual character manipulation which could be added to motion.
how about the next compressor having the ability to upres as good as the Kona3.
Great rumors, FCS3 even didn’t show up at NAB 09.
…and I don’t think it will show up at wwdc…..
New codecs for ProRes are due. I’m betting on a 444 codec and maybe even a 4444 codec as well as new lower bit rates to compete with Avid’s 36mb and up offerings.