Digital video is more than a major theme at NAB this year, it’s the reason it exists. And everyone wants a piece of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2 action, and we mean everyone. By far the largest and most popular booth belongs to Apple, who is holding demonstrations of its new editing software that seems like macro-versions of its in-store trainings seminars. There were hundreds of people filling the auditorium and spilling into the aisles, and, to the chagrin of neighbors like Aja, into the booths of partners.
Here we see one Apple employee demonstrating Color, the newest edition to FCS2, and probably the slickest. Color is color correction software. Color correction is gaining in popularity as an effective and inexpensive way to add all sorts of thematic looks to digital video, from increasing contrast to compensate for blown-out shoots as in Jarhead to creating the stark darkness seen in an episode of 24. But it’s more than just for atmosphere: color correction makes sure that Jack’s jacket under the Halogens of the studio look the same as under the standard lights of a field shoot. Color has shown to be an effective and powerful way to manipulate these small but important details.
And it looks fun. As the Apple rep went through re-creating corrections for a clip, the crowd oohed and awed, amazed at how simple Apple was making it. We’re looking forward to our chance to demo it ourselves, but, being that we’re colorblind, we’ll let the pros take care of pro color correcting.
More info [Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2]