Universal Appeal
2
So the word is that Apple is now shipping the universal binary version of its Final Cut Studio applications. They said they’d have it out in March, and it looks like they made it just under the wire. For those who don’t speak Modern Mac: “universal binary” means it’ll run on the older PowerPC Macs and the new Intel ones.
This is of interest to me because I do my podcast production in Soundtrack Pro on my little Mac Mini in the basement. I have a much nicer dual core Intel iMac1 but since I haven’t been able to run STP on it, I’ve been using it for everything except podcasting. I’ll still record on the Mini no matter what, but it’d be nice to do some of my editing upstairs where it’s warm and carpeted.
Crossgrade deals are available. The major problem here is, it doesn’t appear that I can get a universal version of just Soundtrack Pro. Instead they’re ditching the standalone applications, and making me an offer to pay two hundred bucks to get the full-blown Final Cut Studio. Now, $200 is a hell of a deal for all those applications. Would I use them? I don’t know. Final Cut would be nice if I ever do video podcasting. Right now I’m neither for nor against that notion. The other programs (3D animation and DVD mastering) just aren’t in my interest set.
So I’m trying to decide. “Crossgrade” or not? I realize this is exactly what Apple’s infamous for — making it very easy for you to spend more money with them to get what you’ve already got — but, well, they do make good stuff. And if I don’t do this, the only way to improve on my current workflow will be to ditch Soundtrack Pro for something else. I doubt there’s anything for the Mac right now that’s better for fine-grained podcast crafting.
Opinions welcome.
- Bought it with this year’s tax refund. Hooray for having a baby! ↩
IMHO put that $200.00 toward a Digidesign mBox and Pro Tools LE. It’s a serious audio tool that you can do much more with than Sound Track. It includes a usb interface box that has 2 inputs, 2 outputs and a headphone out. It comes with pretty excellent compression and eq included. Pro Tools is a serious editing and mixing tool. The lion’s share of the music, sound effects and dialog in most of the films and television shows in the last 5 years was edited and some are mixed on a version of Pro Tools.
I use the above setup to produce my podcast start to finish.
$200.00 is a bargain for the Final Cut Studio, but not if you don’t need it.
Comment by Ezra — April 23, 2006 @ 8:52 pm
Thanks, Ezra. I’ve been intrigued by Pro Tools… My problem is that I’ve already got a Mackie Onyx mixer with Firewire, and don’t need or want the mBox. If there were a way to get ProTools without tying it to any hardware, I’d do it in a second.
I guess one way or the other, the software vendors are making me buy stuff I don’t want to get the stuff I do. Hmm. Some world.
Comment by SFEley — April 23, 2006 @ 9:40 pm