Sandy: June 2011 Archives

It's finally here!  Final Cut X is now available on the App Store.  Along with Motion for $49.99, and a new version of Compressor for $49.99, Final Cut X is available today for just a cool $299.99  Here at GeniusDV, we will be sequestering ourselves over the next few days to discover all the new bells and whistles in order to provide the same caliber of training on Final Cut X as we have trained the other versions of Final Cut for the past 10 years.  Stay tuned!

Here's the good news! Even though this is a completely new interface, many of the same shortcuts are still the same. 

For example: 

• Shift Z still fits things within the highlighted window. 
  
• Command + and - still zooms in/out of the timeline and Canvas.
  
• The Up and Down arrow still snap to clips
• J K and L still allows you to play forward and backword in the timeline.
  

Also, if you already have Final Cut Studio or Final Cut Pro 7.0 installed, the system will automatically move your old applications into a folder called Final Cut Studio.

Here is a quick tutorial showing you how to edit to the beat in Final Cut Pro, in order to fix some shaky camerawork.

Today at the WWDC in San Francisco, Apple announced the new and upcoming iCloud.  The digital hub is being moved to "the cloud".  Most people think of the cloud as a hard disk in the sky; but iCloud is much more than that.  Not only does iCloud serve as your storage, but it wirelessly pushes to all of your devices now, such as iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and to your Mac.  Store your music, photos, books, apps, calendars, documents, and device settings, and automatically back up all of your devices wirelessly; no more plugging in, no more syncing, iCloud does it all for you!

iCloud makes working with documents easier now too.  Now you can edit a document on any of your devices through the iWork applications and iCloud automatically updates the document changes.  So if I'm at lunch reviewing a document with a client on my iPad and we need to make a change, it will automatically change the document back on my computer at work.  How awesome is that!

The App Store will also go to the cloud universe.  So now all of your devices can have the same apps.  Being able to see your purchase history on the App Store, iCloud automatically pushes all of your apps to all of your devices.  No need to download again, no extra charges!  Same thing with iTunes; with iCloud, the music you purchase in iTunes, automatically appears on all of your devices.  Again, no syncing!  I'm so excited!

Let's talk about photos; with Photo Stream, you can take a picture on your iPhone, and in seconds, look at it on your iPad; or look at it on your computer; you can also load pictures on your computer from your digital camera, and guess what?  There they are on your iPhone and iPad.  Did I mention iCloud works with AppleTV?  Well of course it does!

The one and only small downfall to iCloud that I can see is the fact that there will be no more Mobile Me.  Oh, you mean I get to save $99 a year now?  Ok, if I have to.  You'll still have your contacts, calendars, and mail.  Think of iCloud as the new and improved Mobile Me, but 10X better; oh yeah, and it's FREE.  iCloud will be available with the new iOS5 update this fall.  If you ask me, it can't be soon enough!