It also NFL 17 Coins uses a new timeline

It also NFL 17 Coins uses a new timeline system called the "MagneticTimeline". It's a little difficult to explain in words alone, butin essence this is a posh term for quite a simple UI improvementthat allows you to compress and expand a multi-track edit withoutlosing sight of short clips that may become hidden by larger ones.You can see a video of the timeline in action on Apple's website to get a better idea of what this lookslike.

Another new feature is a media analysis tool. This will scanyour imported videos and sort them in your library based on theircontent. For example, you can browse clips that only feature twopeople in them, or perhaps just close-up shots of a single personthat may also need some image stabilisation processing. This isstored as metadata and is generated automatically, but you can addcustom tags and notes to certain frames or regions of your clipstoo, and create folders to collate them for future reference. Thereare a number of other major new features perhaps relevant only toprofessional editors, such as 4K-resolution editing.

But most interesting to us is that as a result of Final Cut ProX's price ￡179, the suite costs several hundred pounds less thanthe old ￡830 Final Cut Studio box set even when combined with someoptional add-on utilities. Apple has confirmed to us that the oldsuite of apps will "no longer be available". It makesprofessional-grade video editing far more accessible to consumersand semi-pros as an alternative to the more basic Final Cut Expressapplication, which costs ￡130 -- just ￡50 less.

Apple did the same thing with Aperture 3, its professional photo editing package, whichretails in stores for ￡170, but is available on the Mac App Storefor a consumer-friendly ￡45. This is just another example of Appletransitioning away from its boxed software sales, as theforthcoming OS X release, Lion, will only be available from the MacApp Store when it goes on sale next month.