Apple boosts video firepower at NAB
The Mac maker announced that it has bought Astarte's DVD software, which includes packages such as DVDirector, DVDelight and DVDExport; the company's engineering team will join Apple as part of the acquisition.
Meanwhile, Apple and Matrox Video Products Group announced the RTMac, which they said was the first PCI video card for real-time DV editing on the Mac. The card, which works with Apple's Final Cut Pro video-editing software, will cost less than $5,000, the companies said. In related news, Apple and Pinnacle Systems rolled out the Targa Cine, a Pinnacle system for editing uncompressed standard- and high-definition video in Final Cut Pro. The Targa Cine, slated to ship this summer starting at less than $10,000, supports simultaneous output of SD and HD video, real-time 3:2 pull down for converting between 24 frames per second and 30fps, and two Digital Tether ports for connecting to a family of breakout boxes for flexible I/O options.
Finally, Apple took the wraps off Final Cut Pro 1.2.5. The free upgrade to the $999 package, which is scheduled to ship in May, features support for 16:9 wide-screen format and YUV processing and allows users to create reference movies using pointers to source files. -- Matthew Rothenberg, ZDNet News
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