In the early days of desktop video editing, things were fraught with frustration trying to make PC’s (and Mac’s) of the day do things they were not really designed to do. These were the days of Adobe Premiere 4.2, dedicated capture cards and analogue cameras – Firewire was yet to come as was digital video including miniDV.

To set up a PC/Mac to edit/create movies and documentaries, as mentioned, was an expensive business; also yet to come were the freebies such as Windows Movie Maker, iMove and Avid Express or low cost applications (Vegas Movie Studio, Final Cut Express) etc. Indeed, the apps of the day – of which Premiere was Top Dog at prosumer and Avid at the “pro” level - in many cases didn’t have as much grunt feature wise as the “lite” NLE’s (non-linear editors) of today!

At the SMPTE Conference and Exhibition at Darling Harbour in Sydney last week, I was shown the latest from Apple in the Final Cut Stuio 2 suite and while many are saying a lot of the functionality is catch-up to the likes of Sony Vegas+DVD, Adobe Production Suite 3 and similar packages, nonetheless it is an impressive package at a very impressive price.

The full package contains half a dozen separate programs, each designed for a specific purpose. The heart of the beast is of course Final Cut Pro 6 which has rapidly gained ground as a well respected editing package. This is complemented with Motion 3 (graphics and animation), Soundtrack Pro 2 (audio post-production), Color (colour grading and finishing), Compressor 3 (digital delivery) and DVD Studio 4 (DVD authoring).

A year ago, such a bundle would have been expected to cost around $5K +, but Apple has sharpened their pencil, and this new suite is an amazing $1698. Of course it can be argued that as you have to have a Mac to run it, then Apple will pull money back that way, but even accepting that, it is a very attractive price.

I did ask if, seeing as Adobe had released PS3 for the Mac (or more correctly, re-released after a 4 or 5 year gap) if Apple were considering making a Windows version of FCS2, and met the standard Apple answer of “We do not comment on future products”. When it was brought up that Safari had been released for Windows so was this becoming Apple policy thus opening up their marketing opportunities, I got pretty much the same answer.

Time will tell I guess. But I couldn’t help thinking how far we have come from those early days. Anyone one with a good script and some talent can now truly become a movie/TV/documentary producer at a reasonable price.

(For the fans out there, apologies for the non-post last week. I was in transit back from the Eastern seaboard and it slipped through the cracks. I have stood in the corner for 10 minutes in penance I promise).