Phil Schiller summed it up quite nicely, 'can't innovate anymore, my ass.' For the first time since Steve Jobs, we got the full wow factor when details about the new Mac Pro were announced.
We have thought that the last few keynote presentations from the Worldwide Developer's Conference from Moscone West in San Francisco have lacked that sparkle. Well all that changed today.
The new Mac Pro was announced. The new Mac Pro website is already live with some great look inside animations and more information.
When we say announced, you won't be able to buy one until later in the year as this was a sneak peek. Apple don't normally do this, yes they have laid out an FCP roadmap in the past, but this is future hardware. It will sure shut up some critics for good who think Apple are not after the Pro market.
The new Mac Pro also got billing before the new iOS. It was behind the announcement that the new Mac OS was to be named Mavericks.
We will post the embedded keynote when we can, but for now we will have to use screen grabs and a description.
So what did the new Mac Pro look like? A small upright cyclinder with a wrap around handle at the top. It's about as high as the power button on your silver Mac Pro. 9.9 inches by 6.6. We appreciated the shot of Steve Wozniak to see his reaction. Phil Schiller said it was "truly revolutionary, truly radical.' All the cards, processors and storage are built around a central triangular thermal core. Think cylinder, not cube this time.
The Intel Xeon machine will be available in up to 12 cores, 256-bit-wide floating point and PCI Express gen 3. It will be at least double the speed of the fastest previous machine. The new PCIe flash memory will have 1866MHz DDR3, four channel controller, 60 GB/s bandwidth which means speeds of 1.25GB/s. read & 1.GB/s. write. 10 times faster than any drive Apple have put in a Mac Pro before. All expansion will be external via Thunderbolt 2, 20 GB/s, 6 devices per port and all backward compatible.
The machine which (no surprise here) will be assembled in the US, features 2 GPUs built in. As FCPX uses the graphics card to do all the heavy effects lifting, this will be of great importance and speed up things like background rendering as well. The machine will support up to 3 4K displays from the built in cards. The dual workstation GPUs are 4096 stream processors, 384-bit memory buses, 528 GB/s total bandwidth. In other words, fast.
It was announced that the Final Cut Pro team were working on a new version for the new Mac Pro which will use all the performance the machine can offer. Also nice to see FCPX mentioned at the keynote.
More information when we get it. Here is the official Press Announcement that has just been published.
Excited, yes.
I am the Editor-in-Chief of FCP.co and have run the website since its inception ten years ago.
I have also worked as a broadcast and corporate editor for over 30 years, starting on one inch tape, working through many formats, right up to today's NLEs.
Under the name Idustrial Revolution, I have written and sold plugins for Final Cut Pro for 13 years.
I was made a Freeman of Lichfield through The Worshipful Company of Smiths (established 1601). Though I haven't yet tried to herd a flock of sheep through the city centre!
Current Editing
2020 has been busy, the beginning of the year was finishing off a new property series (cut on FCP) for Channel 4 called The Great House Giveaway. I also designed and built the majority of the graphics as Motion templates. It has been a great success and the shows grabbed more viewers in the 4pm weekday slot than any previous strand. It has been recommissioned by C4 for 60 episodes, including prime-time versions and five themed programmes. The shows have also been nominated for a 2021 BAFTA.
Although both were postponed to later in the year, I worked again on ITV's coverage of the Tour de France and La Vuelta. 2020 was my 25th year of editing the TdF and my 20th year as lead editor. The Tour was the first broadcast show to adopt FCPX working for multiple editors on shared storage.
BBC's Snooker has played a big part in my life, I've been editing tournament coverage since 1997. I'm proud to be part of a very creative team that has pioneered many new ideas and workflows that are now industry standard in sports' production. This is currently an Adobe Premiere edit.
Covid cancelled some of the regular corporate events that I edit such as trade shows & events. I was lucky however to edit, from home, on projects for Amazon Kindle, Amazon Black Friday, Mastercard and very proud to have helped local charitable trust Kendall & Wall secure lottery funding.
As for software, my weapon of choice is Final Cut Pro and Motion, but I also have a good knowledge and broadcast credits with Adobe Premiere Pro, MOGRT design and Photoshop.
Plugin Design & Development
I'm the creative force behind Idustrial Revolution, one of the oldest Final Cut Pro plugin developers. It hosts a range of commercial and free plugins on the site. One free plugin was downloaded over a thousand times within 24 hours of release.
I also take on custom work, whether it is adapting an existing plugin for a special use or designing new plugins for clients from scratch. Having a good knowledge of editing allows me to build-in flexibility and more importantly, usability.
FCP.co
Now in its 10th year and 4th redesign, running FCP.co has given me knowledge on how to run a large CMS- you are currently reading my bio from the database! Although it sounds corny, I am pretty well up on social media trends & techniques, especially in the video sector. The recent Covid restrictions has enabled live FCP.co shows online. This involves managing a Zoom Webinar through Restream.io to YouTube and Facebook.
The Future
I'm always open to new ideas and opportunities, so please get in touch at editor (at) fcp.co. I've judged film competitions, presented workflow techniques to international audiences and come up with ideas for TV shows and software programs!
