Apple Final Cut Studio 3 review

Color

This colour-grading application hasn't changed much since Apple bought it in 2006. Before then it cost $5,000 as a standalone application, which gives an idea of its sophistication. It isn't particularly inviting, and it's likely that many users will prefer to stick with Final Cut Pro's built-in colour-correction tools. Color goes much further, though, and excels not just at correction but also for creative treatments such as film emulation and day-for-night effects.

Behind the sombre interface, its tools are mostly straightforward and familiar, although editing of parameters in the creative effects section is painfully awkward. Thankfully, there are some attractive presets to get users started, and more available for download. This latest version extends format support and adds the ability to open simple Final Cut Pro sequences. There's still room for improvement, particularly in its interface, but there's nothing to match it in Adobe's software line up.

Soundtrack Pro

This multitrack audio editor provides some useful functions beyond what's possible in Final Cut Pro. These include a comprehensive mix architecture and a superior suite of audio effects, both of which compare well with dedicated music production software. Its audio-cleaning tools are improved in this version, although its mains hum removal failed to impress.

It also has a new time-stretch tool for changing a clip's length but not its pitch. It performed large-scale stretches before sound quality significantly deteriorated, but it's a shame that this tool isn't available directly on the multitrack timeline.

Another new feature analyses a dialogue recording and matches its volume and spectral tone to other dialogue clips. Apple claims that it can analyse the dialogue while ignoring any other sounds in a clip, but we found that background noise sometimes rendered it useless. Still, there's likely to be many an occasion when this feature proves to be extremely useful - so much so that it's disappointing that it isn't available directly from within Final Cut Pro. Not everyone wants to work on a soundtrack as a discrete stage to editing the picture.

Compressor

Most of this encoding utility's functions are accessible without leaving Final Cut Pro, but there are a few reasons to fire it up. One is for processing batches of files. We found that Compressor's interface became quite lethargic when setting up a batch-conversion job, but it was still a significant timesaver compared to processing files individually.

It's also possible to create Droplets, which sit on the desktop and convert files dropped onto them based on a particular encoding template. One really smart feature is the ability to drag QuickTime and various other types of video file to the Settings library, instantly generating an encoding template that matches the file.

Buying decisions

Final Cut Studio is remarkably good value considering that Adobe Premiere Pro costs around £700 and only covers editing, encoding and disc authoring. However, Final Cut Studio also has CS4 Production Premium to compete with. For those who can't live without Photoshop or Encore's Blu-ray authoring features, CS4's £2,000 price is reasonable for nine heavyweight applications.

However, professional applications are often chosen on merit rather than value. In this context, Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro are mostly interchangeable, but for us, Final Cut Pro's superior preview performance is enough to clinch the deal. Switching operating systems is undoubtedly a big upheaval, but this software makes an extremely convincing argument for doing so.

Author: Ben Pitt