Apple announces Shake 4

Apple today announced Shake 4, a major upgrade to its compositing software used by independent artists and visual effects facilities to create the world’s most celebrated visual effects for film and television. 

Shake 4 features 3D multi-plane compositing, cutting-edge optical flow image processing and improved integration with Final Cut Pro 5.  

"From Academy award-winning films to broadcast television, Shake helps bring realistic visual effects to life,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing.  “With 3D multi-plane compositing, advanced optical flow technology and tight integration with Final Cut Pro 5, Shake 4 opens up a wide range of new creative opportunities for artists everywhere.”

Artists can now composite live action and 3D CGI layers with added realism using Shake’s new OpenGL accelerated 3D multi-plane compositing node. Seamlessly integrated into the node view, 3D compositing works with the same flexible user interface as every other operation and is as fast and high quality as 2D operations.  Shake 4 presents an entirely new dimension by offering the ability to position, rotate and animate unlimited layers and cameras in 3D space.

As the world’s leading film and HD compositing software, Shake 4 is at the forefront of integrating the latest image processing algorithms and workflow advantages into a single, affordable visual effects package. Shake 4 features advanced optical flow technology that uses pixel-by-pixel image analysis to create smooth retiming and automatic stabilization.  Editors and visual effects artists alike can now effortlessly adjust the speed of any clip to achieve Hollywood-quality results.  Shake 4 can also revive unusable content by automatically removing camera jitter from static shots and correcting uneven pans across a scene without setting tracking points.

Shake 4 integrates Truelight monitor calibration to maintain color consistency between the computer screen and the final look of the film, allowing compositors to accurately pre-visualize the look of their HD or film imagery, saving time and effort.  Shake 4 can also distribute visual effects processing across a cluster of Apple’s Xserve G5 servers or Power Mac G5 desktop computers for maximum rendering performance and efficiency.  

Shake 4 completes the digital production pipeline as it tightly integrates with Apple’s Final Cut Studio, a new HD video production suite which allows professional editors to work in any format from DV, SD, HD to film, and elevate production values with powerful editing tools, revolutionary sound design, real-time motion graphics and next generation DVD authoring.  Shake 4 can now launch directly from the Final Cut Pro 5 timeline and using the XML interchange format, cuts and layers from the timeline automatically generate a Shake process tree.  

Pricing & Availability

Shake 4 for Mac OS X with unlimited render licenses will be available in June through the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, for a suggested retail price of $2,999 (US).  The cross-platform version of Shake 4 will be available for a suggested retail price of $4,999 (US) through Apple Authorized Pro Film Resellers. The Shake 4 upgrade price is $999 (US).  Full system requirements and more information on Shake 4 can be found at Apple's Web site..