Universal version of Final Cut Studio is out

This is a big moment- Apple's Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, and the assorted companion programs that comprise its pro video suite are now Universal apps.

Unlike most Mac programs, the Final Cut suite was highly optimized for the AltiVec instructions of the G4 and G5 processors, and the task of converting the programs to Intel must not have been trivial.

The performance of FCP on Intel will be a really useful benchmark as to the success of the transition from a performance perspective.  I'm really looking forward to the reviews.

Apple's press release paints a positive picture (of course):

"DV and HDV rendering from the Timeline is up to twice as fast on a MacBook Pro with 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo than a 15-inch PowerBook® G4 with 1.67 GHz PowerPC."

"MPEG-2 encoding from DV and HDV for DVD authoring is up to 2.5x as fast on a MacBook Pro with 2.16 GHz Intel Core Duo than a 15-inch PowerBook G4 with 1.67 GHz PowerPC."

Let the bechmarking begin!