Final Cut Express 2 led off CEO Steve Jobs’ Macworld Conference & Expo keynote address on Tuesday morning. The new version is based on Final Cut Pro 4 technology, which means it offers RT Extreme for real-time effects, filters, compositing and color correction without time spent waiting for rendering. It can also handle five DV streams simultaneously and it features an enhanced user interface.
In addition, Final Cut Express 2 sports better audio tools that allow multi-track audio support, real-time volume and audio filter adjustment, solo and mute controls in the timeline, an improved capture tool, and scoring markers for use with Soundtrack, Apple’s audio-looping software. Projects can be exported to Soundtrack, iDVD, or DVD Studio Pro and saved back to tape or exported to any QuickTime format.
Final Cut Express 2 is optimized for Mac OS X v.10.3 (Panther) and the Power Mac G5, and it’s available now for US$299. The upgrade version is $99. It requires Mac OS X v.10.2.5, a 350MHz or faster PowerPC G4 processor (with AGP), built-in FireWire, 384MB of RAM (512MB required for RT Extreme), 40MB of available disk space, and QuickTime 6.4 or later.
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