Apple overhauls Final Cut Pro

The old Final Cut Pro 7 we've come to love and sometimes curse  is history. Apple today unleashed a brand new, rewritten from the ground up, 64-bit version, Final Cut Pro X, with a substantially lower price ($299.99, vs. $999 for FCP 7) and greatly enhanced speed. The video program is available in the online Mac App Store. (Final Cut 7 and the $199 junior version, Final Cut Express, are no longer for sale. However, unlike previous upgrades, an install of Final Cut Pro X will not delete the previous version. Both can co-exist side by side.) This is such a radical overhaul that Apple considers it an all-new program, not an upgrade. FCPX looks totally different, and many of the letter shortcuts and commands we've known over the years are toast. The good news: much faster editing. You now can take multiple types of video footage from different sources  say an iPhone, point and shoot camera, digital SLR and a video camera  and put them altogether for editing without any issues. (And believe me, there were lots of issues with multiple video formats before. The program would just clog up.) In the past, Final Cut would come to a complete stop when graphics or transitions were added, asking the editor to wait for "rendering" before continuing. I recently had to wait 90 minutes when editing a video of a recorded Skype interview. With the new Final Cut, rendering is done in the background. That same Skype clip went into place immediately, with no issues. The new Final Cut is targeted towards today's videomaker, who shoot on memory cards  not videotape, like days of yore.