Apple Adds More Color (1.0.4) to Final Cut Studio 2

Apple has released an update to Color, the company's professional color grading application and part of the Final Cut Studio professional video and audio production suite developed by Apple for Mac OS X.

On the Mac segment of its web site, Apple reveals that the part adding color to Final Cut Studio 2 has reached version 1.0.4. According to the release notes, “Color 1.0.4 addresses specific customer issues and general performance issues.” Apple also indicates that the update is “recommended for all Color 1.0 users.”

Color minimum system requirements include:

- The standard graphics card in any Mac Pro, 17-inch MacBook Pro, 24-inch iMac, or 2.5GHZ or faster Power Mac G5 Quad.
- For 32-bit rendering: a graphics card with at least 256MB of VRAM.
- A display with 1680-by-1050 resolution or higher (excluding 20" iMac); dual displays are highly recommended.
- A three-button mouse for full functionality.

Download Color Update (Free)

Note: a valid serial number is required to download the update. You will need to register your copy of Final Cut Studio in order to do this. Also, see the materials that came with your product for the correct serial number. Use uppercase letters when entering your serial number.

Final Cut Studio was introduced at the National Association of Broadcasters in April 2005. It is the successor to Production Suite, and added new versions of all the Production Suite applications, as well as Soundtrack Pro, a 'new' program which is really just an improved version of Soundtrack, formerly included with Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Studio later became the only way to purchase any of the individual major applications. Final Cut Studio 2 contains six main applications and several smaller ones used in editing video.

Major applications are Final Cut Pro 6 - "real-time editing for DV, SD, HD and film;" Motion 3 - "real-time motion graphics design;" Soundtrack Pro 2 - "advanced audio editing and sound design;" DVD Studio Pro 4 - encoding, authoring and burning; Color - a new color grading application adapted from Silicon Color's FinalTouch and Compressor 3 - a video encoding tool for outputting projects in different formats.

Additional applications include LiveType 2 (a text animation program), Cinema Tools 3 (tools specific to film processing) and Qmaster 2 (a distributed processing tool). All apps can be updated by downloading Pro Applications Update 2008-05.