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Adobe had developed Premiere, a powerful non-linear video editing software package in the early 90’s. It ran on most mid to high range Macs and had a price tag that was much more reasonable than the Avid systems. With Premiere, Mac users could simply add a digitization card to their Mac by which they could import the video to the hard drive for editing. And, like the Macintosh line, there were digitization cards available in many shapes and sizes. Prices ranged from $200-$5000, but the capabilities of these cards were also a melee of price versus performance pitfalls.
A Change in the Making:
At the same time Apple engineers were developing the FireWire, Apple software engineers were developing a video-editing package to take advantage of the new technology. And by the time FireWire reached the market, Apple’s new non-linear digital video editing package was ready for primetime. That software package was called Final Cut Pro.
Final Cut Pro’s design was as well thought out as the Mac OS itself. Using the features commonly found in the high end editing system like Avid’s, Apple designed a software package that rivaled the Avid, but ran on a stock Macintosh. There was no need for proprietary hardware and the software was designed for systems like the Blue & White.
Final Cut Pro had the same user interface that Mac users had come to expect from Apple. But the real power behind Final Cut was that it was designed for use with Digital Video. And with the release of Final Cut, anyone who owned a DV camcorder could edit video on the Mac without the expense or trouble of adding a digitization board to their system.
Simply plug one end of your FireWire cable into the DV camcorder and the other end into the FireWire port on the back of a FireWire equipped Mac and users had a powerful new tool for editing video. Capable of full screen video at 30 frames per second, Mac users now had the power of the Avid system running on their personal computers.
Just as the DV Camcorders capture video digitally to the Mini-DV tapes, the end user could capture the video from the Camcorder, digitally via FireWire and save it to disk in real time with no loss of quality.
Apple had done something truly extraordinary. It had given users the ability to work with video in ways that users like myself had only dared to dream of. And with the popularity of the iMac series, Apple saw a way to improve on its accomplishments.
While Final Cut Pro was a powerful new tool available to professional and armchair video editors alike, it carried a price tag of $999.00. While this kind of money is nothing to a production house that is accustomed to dropping $150,000 on a new editing station, the price still kept the program out of the home market.
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