Professional video editors who have been patiently waiting for substantial improvements to Final Cut Pro X had that patience rewarded on Tuesday, with a point update that brings back features such as multicam and broadcast monitoring. But that isn’t all of the news, as a third-party developer releases a pair of tools for allowing FCPX to play nice with its legacy version as well. There’s even more on deck for this fine Tuesday, January 31, 2012 as well...
With the release this morning of Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3, Apple has finally lived up to the promises it made seven months ago after its controversial introduction to the Mac App Store. But one thing still lacking is the ability to import projects from the legacy Final Cut Pro 7, which Apple has left to third party developers. Thankfully, that wait is now over, as Assisted Editing is now offering 7toX for Final Cut Pro, a $9.99 Mac App Store purchase that allows metadata from a Final Cut Pro 7 project to be imported to Final Cut Pro X using XML, with full support for most every feature you can imagine. Better yet, the same developer is now selling the $49.99 Xto7 for Final Cut Pro, which does the same thing in reverse: It translates XML exported from Final Cut Pro X and allows it to be imported into Final Cut Pro 7. Coupled with the pro features offered by today’s update of the host software, it will be interesting to see what the critics will be left to complain about now.
This morning’s Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 update may have grabbed all the headlines, but Apple didn’t stop there, pushing out minor updates to Motion 5 and Compressor 4 as well. Motion 5.0.2 now features improved speed and responsiveness for text editing, the ability to automatically add animation keyframes when recording is disabled, a keyboard shortcut for repositioning animation curves or paths, the ability to adjust the pan and scale of an image in a drop zone and an enhanced look for the Keyframe editor. Compressor 4.0.2 finally allows markers to be set as chapter markers by default, adding Uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit 4:2:2 to the export settings list along with improved transcoding speed from Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 to ProRes. Both updates are free in the Mac App Store for existing users.
With its former senior vice president of retail now working his mojo at JCPenney (and God help them, they need it!), Apple today announced that John Browett will step into those very large shoes, where he’ll report directly to CEO Tim Cook. Browett’s last gig was with Dixons Retail, billed as “a European technology retailer,” where the new veep has been CEO since 2007. Browett won’t report to work until April, where he’ll oversee “Apple’s retail strategy and the continued expansion of Apple retail stores around the world.”
Valve Software released Steam as a mobile app for iOS and Android devices last week, but it was unfortunately a closed beta. Thankfully, that barrier has now been shattered and today the company announced the app was open to everyone, allowing gamers to chat with Steam friends, browse community groups and user profiles, view screenshots and user-generated content for their favorite games, read the latest gaming news and stay up to date on unbeatable Steam sales -- so, basically everything except actually play the games. But hey, what do you want for free, folks?
Firefox 9, your number is up! Mozilla today pushed out Firefox 10 to its release channel for both desktop and mobile. So what’s new? On the desktop, the forward button is now hidden until you navigate back and most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of the browser by default. WebGL now gains anti-aliasing and CSS3 3D-Transforms are now supported, along with a new HTML5 tag for <bdi> as well as full-screen APIs. Last but not least, Mac OS X users get a bug fix which caused Firefox to crash when closing a tab with a Java applet installed. Sure, nothing earth-shattering, but look at the bright side: At the pace they’re going, Firefox 11 (which is already in beta) will be here before you know it, right around the time that new browser smells starts to wear off of Firefox 10.
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MINZ
February 02, 2012 at 7:22am
Why oh why is Firefox Going Nutcase with the Version Numbers in the last Year? Soon they will run out of numbers. What happened to
Version X.X.X usage ? I use SeaMonkey and like to leave the Version ALONE! Dang I Miss Netscape 7!
chirpity
January 31, 2012 at 4:57pm
Ugh… Mozilla, what are you doing to your browser? These are sad times indeed. I want to use Firefox 10.x.x for the next year without any version 11 in sight. Unfortunately, Mozilla thinks that version numbers mean something to people and if they aren't as high as Google, people will stop using them.
Unfortunately for you, Mozilla, it is not the browser number that is making people migrate to other offerings.
