Apple's NAB announcements: Final Cut Pro; QuickTime 4.0; QuickTime Streaming Server; Mac OS X Update

At today's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention, Apple announced the release of its high-end video editing program, Final Cut Pro. It also announced the release of of a preview version of QuickTime 4.0.

Apple Ships Final Cut Pro Video Authoring Software From a press release: Apple Computer Inc. today announced and began commercial shipment of Final Cut Pro, a revolutionary new software application that combines professional-quality video editing, compositing, and special effects in one package for a price of U.S. $999. Using Final Cut Pro, a digital video (DV) camera, and Apple's new Power Macintosh G3 computer with its built-in FireWire, video creators now have a complete, professional-quality, plug-and-play video editing system that costs less than U.S. $5,000 - around a tenth the cost of competing systems. [See also presentation file on Apple's ftp site.]

QuickTime 4 Public Beta Released From a press release: Apple Computer, Inc. today released the public beta of QuickTime 4, its industry-leading multimedia software, for both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. QuickTime 4 features "streaming" of live and stored video and audio over the Internet, and is the first Internet streaming solution to use non-proprietary industry-standard RTP and RTSP protocols for streaming over the Internet. The public beta software also includes an all new QuickTime Player that offers easy access to QuickTime content, and significant enhancements to the QuickTime PictureViewer application and QuickTime Web Browser Plug-in. [See also Wired News article for other details.]

You can download a free version of QuickTime 4 public beta software from Apple's QuickTime web site. The advanced playback and editing capabilities of QuickTime 4 Pro are available to users for U.S. $29.99. QuickTime 3 Pro customers are automatically upgraded to QuickTime 4 Pro free of charge upon downloading the QuickTime 4 public beta software.

QuickTime Streaming Server From a press release: Apple Computer, Inc. today introduced QuickTime Streaming Server software, the underlying server technology that powers QuickTime 4's ability to stream live and stored video and audio over the Internet. The technology can be downloaded by developers as Open Source software - the Darwin Streaming Server - from (www.apple.com/publicsource) and is also available as a free update to Mac OS X Server, Apple's new modern server operating system. [Note: The update also improves NetBoot performance.] Apple also announced that leading media server companies such as IBM and SGI are integrating QuickTime Streaming software into their product lines.

Apple Updates Public Source License From a press release: Apple Computer, Inc.today announced that it has updated its Open Source software license - the Apple Public Source License (APSL) - based on feedback and discussion with the Open Source community.