Apple offers Final Cut Pro, a video editing platform featuring optimized for a high performance machines and supporting a wide range of quality effects.
$299.99
per license
Studio 360 (discontinued)
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Studio 360 for PowerPoint, or formerly Articulate Studio, was a PowerPoint plugin used to develop elearning course content. It has been discontinued and is no longer receiving support.
The best scenarios for using Final Cut Pro are any and every scenario where you want to have the greatest control over your editorial needs without the complexity or useless slop that other platforms throw in to seemingly look stronger. Final Cut Pro keeps the editorial experience clean, uncluttered and exactly what it should be - intuitive. That's one word we often come back to because it's one of those things where you really shouldn't have to 'think' about where you can find the right tool to use for your edits... it should be 'right there' where you would think it should be - and in Final Cut Pro, that's almost always where we find it.
Articulate Studio is constantly surprising in terms of what it can do. It is like a "Swiss Army Knife" of functionality. I've used it to build portfolios, whole interactive websites, authoring videos and I often discover novel ways to make it useful on a pretty regular basis. What would be a situation where you would not want to use Articulate Studio? Well, even though you can use it to author video and to publish websites, it's not a replacement for a video editing package or a web platform like WordPress, but there are times when it will do certain things in an astoundingly simple way superior to other tools.
They made it very easy to understand how to add new content to the courses, including images, videos or audio, of course, you are still able to do text-based content as well.
Creating quizzes has never been easier. The ability to add controls to each question and what actions each answer creates, whether an additional question or passing to the next section. Customizing these actions are very easy to learn and add to your course.
Being able to use your own scoring mechanism is awesome! I like SCORM but there are many options to use including a custom one of your own. This ability allows you to pass your students over to a proprietary system that enrolls them in the next course, or use the built-in utilities to provide the next course or quiz, the choice is yours!
The audio editor is awful. Sometimes when you cut a section, it actually takes a different section that you selected. Especially when in zoom mode. You have to then undo the action, and re-do. Also, scrubbing through the audio is difficult. If you're exporting audio, it can glitch during the process. I avoid using the audio editor whenever I can.
After all these years, it's still a buggy program. You can be doing your recordings, and a sudden message appears saying that something went wrong and needs to close. I've done re-installs, contacted support, and I constantly clear the temp folder. Still happens. Also, it's a good idea to export your audio, and there have been times the program freezes up on me, and the audio file (in the .ppta file) gets corrupted and all audio is permanently lost.
The program can get slow when publishing, previewing or opening the audio editor.
The included Engage program is pretty good, but it needs more customization options. And I think they can add more modules that provide a little more engagement.
Fast shortcuts and editing tools make this an efficient piece of software for any skilled video editor. From newbies to experienced editors, FCPX can be used by almost anyone. It is easy to learn but takes time to master. Add Motion for even more effects and punchouts on your videos.
This is very useable software even for novice eLearning authoring users. People with some PowerPoint experience should be fine with this software and even Excel!
Most of the support I need, I find online. While Apple has a Q/A section on their site, it's not always beneficial in answering the questions that I have. With that said, they regularly update the software, and when updates lead to crashes, they usually have another update not far behind.
I've never really had any major issues with the product (Other than the registration loop error)and my ten out of ten rating is based on the assistance I got when we initially set up the extension in Power Point. I found the support folks to be professional, helpful and friendly
Implementing Final Cut Pro into the organization was a smooth transition from what we didn't had. We felt we went from zero to hero with this software, due to all the great features that we learned. We took some time in training staff on how to use the software but at the end, this was very useful and important.
Premiere and Final Cut are very similar is usage. Final Cut has less crashing and lag, but does not work well with Adobe products. You'd basically have to use all different softwares to use it best. Davinci is a different beast with a color grading portion that is unmatched by any other product. Although DaVinci is non-linear editing, so you essentially have to unlearn everything you know from Final Cut and Premiere.
Articulate Studio is very much a leader in the e-learning space. It stacks up well against other tools designed to quickly and easily build and update CBTs by managers and super-users versus needing to invest time and effort in dedicated e-learning developers. Process improvement initiatives and cross-functional departments are empowered to develop their trainings themselves and identify areas for future development.
I only see positive impact since it is a very easy to use tool for rapid learning. The only point is to know what is possible to develop using this tool to avoid any kind of frustration afterwards.
Another positive impact is that we don't need a diversified development team. There is no need of technical professionals, and a creative instructional designer is enough to develop effective learning content using Studio.
The third positive impact is that Studio makes possible to realize short-term projects, mainly when there's already a PowerPoint presentation.
