Apple is still backing Final Cut, and the next release of Final Cut Studio will be “awesome,” claims CEO Steve Jobs. Continuing a trend of replying to customer e-mails, Jobs is noted to have recently answered a complaint about the video production suite, which called the changes to Final Cut Studio 3 “not stellar.” The e-mail also alleges that people laid off from the Final Cut teammay have been engineers, who would normally be responsible for advancing the software.
In addition to reaffirming Apple’s commitment to Final Cut, Jobs further comments that the people who lost their positions were in support roles, not in engineering. It is not certain when Final Cut Studio 4 might be ready; Mac Soda claims “reliable word,” however, that it will be released before the end of 2010. Such a timeline would represent a much faster turnaround than the gap between FCS2 and FCS3, however, which was roughly two years.

HDW :  Steve would say this after their sworn rival ADOBE entered the scene with CS-5 … full 64 bit and a new Premiere Pro tie up with NVIDIA allowing seven streams of full HD video or 4 real time streams of RAW 4K RED CODEC  in multicamera mode…very impressive. I don’t think you could run this from FW800 or SATA drive, I think the minimum spec to get 7 streams of HD would need a RAID of some kind.

I think it’s important for Apple to appreciate that WE THE END USERS do not like being dictated to when it comes to the final output and I for one will give up FCP no mater how awesome if we don’t get full Blu-ray authoring in Final Cut Studio-4.

While I am on my soap box…Compressor is so slow when it tries to compress H.264…I now use Elgato turbo.264 HD to compress H.264 for my web content, not only is it 2x faster at least than Compressor but it gives you a better end result.

We were sadly cheated with FCS-3 when it became apparent that DVD Studio 4 had been left in the ark and anyone producing Blu-Ray was forced to use Adobe’s Encore. Adobe have a ten month start on Apple and I for one will be dipping my toe in the 64bit Premiere Pro water, not for the first time I may add, six years ago I was using Premiere Pro 1.5 till I was persuaded to go over to the Mac but now Premiere is Mac compatible it might be worth a further investigation and reading the boards I won’t be the only one !