Apple has anounced their latest version of Final Cut Studio.

Some might be aware Apple purchased the rights to a program called Shake which has features in it that allowed editors to smooth out a shaky camera shot as well as having powerful color correction features.

Apple stopped development of Shake once they purchased it which fueled speculation that Shake's powerful features were going to be incorporated into Final Cut Pro. That speculation proved to be true with the release of Final Cut Studio 2.

Final Cut Pro 6 introduces ProRes 422, Apple’s new post-production format offering uncompressed HD quality at SD file sizes. "Use ProRes 422 when collaborating over an Xsan storage network or working on a portable computer in the field; when working with non-native camera formats; or to preserve maximum quality for composites and demanding color grading work" says Apple.

The Smoothcam feature ported over from Shake allows editors to take a shaky clip, such as a macro shot of that tiny Imperator shrimp and remove the shake of the underwater housing. If you have slight shaky housing movement taken during a camera pan shot, such as sweeping the camera slowly left to right, it will even smooth that out while preserving the pan movement.