Apple shakes up market with $499 Shake compositing software

Apple today slashed the price of its Shake video compositing software from $2,999 to $499 for the just-released 4.1 version. “At just $499, Shake is now priced as low as a plug-in for Final Cut Studio,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Product Marketing. “Now Final Cut Studio customers can retouch their shots with Shake’s optical flow technology or add photo realistic visual effects to their productions, even on a shoestring budget.” Shake can be used for sophisticated 3D compositing, keying, image tracking and stabilization and was used to create visual effects for, among other projects, “King Kong.”

“Shake has become an essential tool at ILM for visual effects compositing, playing a central part in our pipeline on blockbuster movies such as ‘Mission Impossible 3,’ ‘Poseidon’ and the upcoming ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,'” said Cliff Plumer, chief technology officer of Industrial Light and Magic. “By pricing Shake at less than $500, Apple has opened up the doors for the next generation of artists to master their craft.” Shake 4.1 complements Final Cut Studio by providing a full range of operations from simple re-touching to complex 3D compositing. Launched directly from the Final Cut Pro timeline, Shake uses optical flow image analysis to re-time, track and stabilize shots with precision.

Particle effects from Apple’s Motion 2 can be dropped directly into the Shake process tree to add elements such as smoke, sparkles and fire to sophisticated multi-plane 3D composites. High resolution work can flow from Motion to Shake by rendering with the shared OpenEXR format for pristine film quality reproduction.