Apple Final Cut Pro 7 review

Apple's Final Cut Pro (FCP) is an amazing program that has grown in leaps and bounds since its humble beginnings in 1999.

In fact, you can no longer purchase it on its own as it's now part of the Final Cut Studio suite, which includes Motion, Compressor, Colour, Soundtrack Pro and DVD Studio Pro, offering you nearly all the tools you need to make and distribute your very own film. Version 3 of this collection has just been released and with it comes FCP 7.0.

One of the main advertised features of this new version is the inclusion of new formats. Two years ago, Apple introduced ProRes, which is an intermediate codec designed to retain as much of the quality of the original uncompressed video as possible.

The camera's format may be ideal for capturing data but is far too complex to edit with, unless you have an incredibly powerful computer (as is the case for AVCHD). You now have no less than five versions of ProRes to choose from: ProRes Proxy is designed for offline work only; it's followed by ProRes LT, ProRes (the original from FCP6), ProRes HQ and finally ProRes 4:4:4:4.

If you use a device that records in AVC-Intra however – like Panasonic's P2-equipped broadcast cameras – you'll be pleased to learn that FCP7 now supports that format natively, greatly speeding up ingest times and saving you a lot of disk space.

STREAMLINED SPEED: The Viewer window's Time Graph is just as flexible, but in the Timeline, you can now alter the Time Speed Indicator by dragging it (Click here for high res version)

But what's it like to edit in FCP7 compared to working in the previous incarnation? There are no new revolutionary features, but plenty of very useful tweaks and improvements to many existing functions.

For instance, not only can you now colour-code your markers, you can even edit them without having to pause playback. This is done with a set of keyboard shortcuts: you can select the marker's colour on the fly by holding down Ctrl and hitting one of the number keys (1 to 8). To edit markers as you go, add the Option key to that combination.

Best of all, sequence markers aren't fixed but move as you add or delete clips. This is especially useful if you've placed down specific scoring or chapter markers that are dependent on a clip's location.

MARKERS: You can now colour-code and edit markers during playback, as well as choose whether to have them ripple with the sequence or remain static (Click here for high res version)

Tabs have also received a splash of colour, which is handy if you work with a lot of open sequences and docked bins. You can also reorder your tabs just like you can with Safari, and instruct FCP to close all but one of them rather than forcing you to close each individually as before.

More improvements

There are a few other nice improvements, such as the ability to join all through edits in one go to clean up your sequence instead of having to do it manually, one at a time. You can also highlight all clips in your timeline that came from the same media file – a timesaver when you're ready to colour correct your work (highlight one and go to View > Reveal Affiliated Clips in Front Sequence).

COLOUR: Aside from a few splashes of colour, the FCP interface remains unchanged and will feel completely familiar (Click here for high res version)