Apple's Final Cut Pro X, no longer 'hamstrung by 4GB of memory'

At NAB in Las Vegas, Apple gave the first sneak peek at the upcoming version of its professional video editing suite, Final Cut Pro X.

First and foremost among changes to Final Cut is the fact that it has been rebuilt as a 64-bit application.

"Final Cut Pro Ten will no longer be hamstrung by the 4GB of memory that are available to 32-bit applications, and can now take advantage of as much memory as you can throw at the application," said Peter Steinauer, Architect of Final Cut Pro. "What this means in technical terms is larger, more complex projects, larger formats, larger frames of memory, deeper and richer effects decks, basically all of the things that are ridiculously memory intensive now have full run of all the memory you can throw at the problem."

Secondly, despite the expected time of its release (which should coincide with the release of OS X Lion) the software is customized for Snow Leopard, including support for Cocoa, Core Graphics and Animation, OpenCL, and Grand Central Dispatch.

"We've got a unique competitive advantage here at Apple in that we we don't have to worry about multiple different platforms, we can deal with one platform and make it sing," Steinauer added.

It will support content analysis similar to the features found in iLife, with face detection, people detection, and the detection of shot range (that is, wide, medium, or close-up) for "Smart Collections."

Timeline editing has also been retooled, and the "Magnetic Timeline" feature automatically marries a video clip to its primary audio clip.

Further features include: resolution-independent playback with support for video up to 4K in resolution, scalable rendering, non-destructive image stabilization and color balance, clip connections, and more.

Final Cut Pro X is expected to be available for download in the Mac App Store in June for $299.