Not strictly iPhone or iPad news, but Apple today released a huge upgrade to their pro video editing tools with Final Cut Pro X, Motion, and Compressor, which will be available for $299, $49, and $49 respectively on the Mac App Store.

“Final Cut Pro X is the biggest advance in Pro video editing since the original Final Cut Pro,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We have shown it to many of the world’s best Pro editors, and their jaws have dropped.”

“I’m blown away by what Apple has done with Final Cut Pro,” said Angus Wall, Academy Award-winning film editor. “Final Cut Pro X is incredibly modern and fast, but most importantly it lets you focus on telling your story in the most creative way, while it actively manages all of the technical details.”

While they’ll no doubt be used to make a ton of content for our iOS devices, the interesting thing to me is how closely Final Cut Pro has come to resemble iMovie for both Mac and iOS, showing once again how Apple uses innovation on OS X to drive iOS, and iOS to drive OS X.

We saw this with the leaner, meaner QuickTime X on iOS that got ported back to the Mac, along with tons of interface and experience conventions for OS X Lion, and we’re seeing it with iMovie, GarageBand, and things like CoreImage being moved to iPhone and iPad.

We probably won’t see Final Cut Pro X touch for iOS any time soon, but we’ll absolutely see better versions of iMovie for iOS because of it. And vice versa.

Anyone picking up Final Cut Pro X?

[Apple PR, Final Cut Pro]

iMovie, Apple’s first exclusive iPhone 4 app, is no available for purchase from the iTunes App Store for $4.99. (At least the US App Store, we can’t find it in all of them yet — let us know if it’s in yours).

The demos have all looked beyond slick, finger-painting with clips and transitions, themes and titles. Will it hold up to actual field use, beyond magic moments, cute kids, and pet tricks? Try it out and let us know what you think (especially the video editors out there — we want your expert opinions).

Full Apple description after the break.

[iTunes via @thedeadbaby]

Make beautiful HD movies anywhere with iMovie, the fun, feature-rich video editing app for iPhone 4. Create a video postcard of your day at the beach and publish it to the web — without ever leaving your spot in the sand. Or make a movie of your child’s birthday party and send it to your parents — while the party is in full swing. With iMovie for iPhone, you can start several projects and finish them whenever you want and wherever you are.

Made for Multi-Touch.

• Tap to add or record video right into your project.
• Drag to trim the lengths of video clips and photos.
• Pinch to zoom the timeline and get a closer look.
• Slide to scrub through the video in your project.

Give it a theme.

• Choose from a selection of themes including Modern, Bright, Travel, Playful, and News.
• Each theme includes a matching set of titles and transitions – plus its own soundtrack.
• Instantly change themes or swap themed elements in your project.
• Titles and graphics automatically update with location data from your video.

Add music and photos.

• Select from included music that matches each iMovie theme, or select from your own song library.
• Enable ducking to automatically lower the volume of background music and highlight audio from video clips.
• Add photos from your own library, or take a picture and drop it into your project.
• Customize each photo with a unique “Ken Burns” panning effect.

Share your movie.

• Export your movie in one of three sizes: Medium, Large, or HD.
• Share your movie on the web in a MobileMe gallery or on YouTube.
• Send your movie to friends and family in an email or via an MMS message.
• Easily sync your movie back to your computer.

Yes, it’s a relatively minor update, but after I installed it I realized we hadn’t really mentioned ReelDirector for iPhone [$7.99 - iTunes link] on the front page yet, in its own right, and that’s a shame because any app that can even approach video editing on a mobile device deserves some love.

Now on version 2.4, ReelDirecter adds the ability to important soundtracks, toggle off pan-and-zoom, and increases speed for still photos. But you add to that 2.0′s multitrack, Ken Burns effects, trim and split for imported clips, and videos from synced folders, and you add all that to that its stitching, drag-and-drop reordering, titles and credits, transitions, and more, and this “video toaster” in your pocket deserves some attention. Sure, it won’t replace Final Cut Pro, but it could just be the iPhone’s first pro-sumer level cutter.

If you’ve tried it before, or just try it now, let us know what you think!

Looks like Apple wasn’t quite done unveiling new iPhone 3GS commercials, as a a third one began airing last night focused on video recording, editing, and sharing.

Like the previous two, which highlighted copy and paste and Voice Control, Apple’s keeping them all about the new features — and the ease of use of the new features.

So that means compass and landscape keyboard are next, right?

[Apple.com]

Early word from TiPb commenters and the Twitter show some new iPhone 3.1 features found already:

• Non-destructive video editing means trimming a clip no longer saves over the original video but gives you the option to “Save as copy…”
• Voice Control now works over Bluetooth
• iPhone vibrates when moving icons
• Updated AT&T profile to 4.2
• Updated modem firmware to 5.08.01

Behind the scenes changes abound as well:

• Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz.
• APIs to allow third party apps to access videos and edit them.

Update: Yes, MMS buttons appear to be back for AT&T users, but as with early iphone 3.0 Betas, they’re non-functional on standard devices. Whether they survive to the official release this time (they were removed in 3.0 Beta 5), who knows?

[Thanks to Chris, Muero and WhenWillApple]

Lots of smartphones have lots of features, and as Steve Jobs has said in the past — many people don’t even know about them, much less use them.

With the original iPhone, Apple popularized mobile web browsing, and the iPhone 3G too that to previously unseen levels (and AT&T has the data network woes to prove it). The App Store made getting and using mobile applications so ridiculously easy that 50,000 now fill the store and over 1 billion have been downloaded.

So now Apple is set to take on mobile video.

Like previous efforts, mobile video isn’t new. Many smartphones have been able to shoot video for many years. Likewise, the Flip Mino and similar pocket video camera have become media darlings. But as with most things Apple, the iPhone 3G S is set to make shooting, editing, and sharing videos not only more convenient, but easier and likely more popular than ever.

Think about it: the video camera will be with you everywhere you have a phone. It will be constantly connected. And it will be integrated with not only MMS and MobileMe, but with the 800lbs gorilla of video — YouTube.

Hey, dad, here’s your son making that soccer goal 5 min ago. Hey, sis, here’s Steve Jobs totally ordering a smoothy at Whole Foods! Hey, air force, here’s that flying saucer that keeps buzzing my cattle ranch!

Business Week (via Daring Fireball) is adding fuel to the rumors of Apple’s iPhone 3.0 may not only be shooting video come WWDC, but editing and sharing as well:

I’ve spoken with a source that is familiar with Apple’s plans for the next iPhone, which may well be announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in early June. Evidently, shooting video is as easy as it is with a Flip, the ingenious device made by Pure Digital (recently purchased by Cisco). Then there’s an iMovie app that lets you quickly save the sections you want, right there on the phone itself. There may also be support for MMS, so the clips can be shared wirelessly with friends. And because of the iPhone’s relatively large screen, your friends don’t have to schlep to your PC or their Facebook page to see that video of your kids or your safari. Just hand them your iPhone.

Questing — will this only be available on the next generation iPhone or will current (and older) iPhones be so blessed, lower-quality camera and processors not withstanding?

When iPhone 3.0 Beta 1 was released, we saw what looked to be an errant video upload screen. Next it was the apparent ability to receive video MMS. Now more deep diving into the 3.0 beta has turned up resource files that show not only may the next generation iPhone allow not only video recording, but perhaps video editing, including trimming as well. This might be similar to the already surfaced Voice Memo app’s ability to trim audio recordings on device.

Would make a nice addition to that rumored 3.5 or 5 megapixel camera, enhanced CPU and GPU, and fast cell and WiFi networking, wouldn’t it?

[BenM.at via TUAW]