It’s been a while since Apple’s rolled out a nice, random software update for us to pick apart. But as August—the news droughtiest month of the year—comes to a close, Apple’s dribbled out a couple of small video-related updates.
The first is Final Cut Express 4.0.1, available now via Software Update, which Apple says “addresses compatibility issues with AVCHD camcorders, improves stability when using third-party FxPlug plug-ins, and addresses a number of other minor issues.” Wow. That’s, er, actually kind of informative. Everybody feeling all right over there?
In its tracks, Apple has also dropped the ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for both Mac and Windows. Curious about its superpowers?
The Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder software allows both Mac and Windows users to play Apple ProRes files through QuickTime.
Oooh. You might remember ProRes back from the intro of Final Cut Studio 2. It’s been flying a bit under the radar for those of us outside of the video production realm, but now that it’s accessible via QuickTime, perhaps that might be about to change? I like the sound of “uncompressed HD quality at SD data rates.” It sounds like win.
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Keep in mind that SD data rates is actually in the realm of 145MB/s, 220MB/s for ProRes (HQ).
But it is an awesome codec.