Apple Introduces Production Suite

SIGGRAPH, LOS ANGELES—August 10, 2004—Apple® today introduced Production Suite, the essential software suite for film and video that delivers real-time production tools in one comprehensive and integrated package. Production Suite combines Final Cut Pro® HD, the latest version of Apple’s Emmy award-winning editing software; Motion, a revolutionary new application that redefines motion graphics; and DVD Studio Pro® 3, the latest version of Apple’s professional DVD authoring application. Production Suite provides creative professionals with an integrated round trip production environment where media and project files move seamlessly throughout the creative process. Production Suite is available now for a suggested retail price of $1,299.

“Production Suite delivers a complete real-time production workflow in a box at an incredible price,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “Production Suite ushers in a new era of production workflows with round tripping—allowing creative pros to build stunning motion graphics in Motion, transfer them seamlessly to Final Cut Pro movies or author professional quality DVDs with DVD Studio Pro.”

Fine-tuned to take advantage of the incredible performance and architecture of the Power Mac® G5 and Mac OS® X version 10.3 “Panther,” Production Suite delivers real-time interactivity with over 150 real-time effects for DV, SD and HD in Final Cut Pro HD, a real-time animation design engine in Motion and real-time compositing and previewing in DVD Studio Pro 3. Production Suite also provides seamless integration with common user interface elements such as the timeline, keyboard commands and media browsers that make it easy to learn and move quickly from one application to another. Complete edited timelines with cuts, layers, motion paths and composite modes made in Final Cut Pro HD can also be directly opened in Motion, providing a streamlined workflow.

Final Cut Pro HD is the latest version of Apple’s Emmy award-winning editing software, which now adds the real-time performance of high quality native HD, to the existing real-time support for DV and SD. In an industry first, Final Cut Pro HD delivers the ability to capture, edit and output broadcast-quality HD video over a single FireWire® cable without compromising the professional image quality. Final Cut Pro HD supports native DVCPRO HD editing with no recompression or image degradation and enables HD monitoring on an Apple Cinema HD Display with the new Digital Cinema Desktop feature. -more-Motion is a breakthrough new application that redefines professional motion graphics production with incredible real-time design and revolutionary animation techniques. Motion features a real-time design engine that delivers fast, intuitive animation of text, graphics and video, with instant previewing of filters and particle effects. Motion also pioneers an innovative new animation feature called Behaviors that applies the principles of procedural animation to easily create natural fluid motions and sophisticated multi-layered animations, without using complex keyframes. With an ingenious user interface for video, DVD and the web, Motion enables users to spend less time managing windows and palettes and more time interacting with their project.

DVD Studio Pro 3 is the latest version of Apple’s professional DVD authoring application that gives users a complete set of tools for modern DVD design and authoring. DVD Studio Pro 3 features revolutionary new Alpha Transitions to create stylish DVDs and an innovative new Graphical View for easy visualization of a project’s entire flow. DVD Studio Pro 3 also includes Compressor 1.2, the latest version of Apple’s revolutionary digital media encoding and compression tool that provides high-quality HD to MPEG-2 encoding. New DTS and Dolby audio support gives DVD Studio Pro 3 users the highest quality audio for creating captivating DVDs in 5.1 surround sound.

Production Suite includes professional audio scoring capabilities with the Soundtrack music composition application. Designed specifically for videographers and motion graphics professionals, Soundtrack provides more than 4,000 professionally-recorded audio loops and sound effects, with real-time pitch and tempo adjusted loop matching, allowing users to quickly and easily generate scores, beds and bumpers. Soundtrack also includes 30 powerful audio plug-ins that scale so users can easily migrate their projects to Apple’s Logic Pro 6, for continued work in other multi-track environments. Additional audio capabilities built into Final Cut Pro HD include a 99-track on-screen audio mixer, and audio router and multichannel output.

Production Suite also contains LiveType 1.2 for resolution independent animated titling, Compressor 1.2 for HD encoding, Cinema Tools for filmmakers working with 35mm or 16mm film and QuickTime® Pro for powering the digital media workflow from capture to delivery. Built on the open architecture of QuickTime, Production Suite applications scale smoothly to fit into virtually any production workflow and output to professional tape formats or encode MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, and QuickTime files for DVD, web, or delivery on 3G devices.

Pricing & Availability
Production Suite is available now through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $1,299 (US). Registered users of Final Cut Pro can upgrade for $699 (US). Full system requirements can be found at www.apple.com.