With this week’s official debut of Apple’s iMac Pro came a Final Cut Pro X update that added support for mono and stereo 360 video and improved pro color-grading tools, including HDR video support.
The 360 video tools include options for editing equirectangular footage with tools for adjusting horizons, removing objects from the scene, adding 2D and 3D effects, and viewing playback in real time via a VR headset.
Color wheels in FCP X
A new “color inspector” gives editors the ability to make keyframeable color adjustments using color wheels, color curves, and hue-saturation curves. as well as a variety of LUTs. FCP X now has options for transforming footage shot with log gamma on a variety of cameras to an array of output formats, including HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision. And FCP X 10.4 includes tone-mapping capabilities to convert HDR footage to SDR for output to broadcast.
More details on Final Cut Pro X HDR workflows are available in a just-released Apple whitepaper, Working with Wide Color Gamut and High Dynamic Range in Final Cut Pro X: New Workflows for Editing.
Apple’s new hardware and software open new horizons for vendors such as Atomos, which specified that its Ninja Inferno and Sumo19 can record HLG metadata alongside footage as video is required. Apple’s FCP X workflow maintains the metadata through export via Compressor, for delivery via HDR-aware platforms including YouTube and Vimeo. (Compressor can also build a combined SDR/HDR package for outlets like the iTunes Store.)
And Softron announced new additions to its line of M Family boxes that it said would allow the 18-core iMac Pro to ingest up to 16 simultaneous 30p HD streams or four 30p 4K streams over a single Thunderbolt 3 connection. The high-end box, the M 1600, is built around two Deltacast video cards with eight HD inputs each for 16 channels of ingest, and retails for just under $20,000. The M 80X, with eight channels of ingest, and the M62X, with six channels of ingest and two playouts, are about $12,900 apiece; and the M44X, with four channels of ingest and four playouts, is about $11,200.
