Sometimes Xmas comes earlier and when you less expect it: A Greenwich High School student wrote a letter directly to Mr. Jobs himself asking politely for an student discount on Final Cut Studio 2. Two weeks later, he got way more than he wanted, shipped directly from Cupertino.

The student, a long-time Gizmodo reader and tipster—who is not John Mayer—told me today the story, which is one of those cool little IT tales that makes you smile and want to hug Steve Jobs and two hundred kittens at the same time. Cotton candy and chocolate kittens. Or maybe just hug Steve and eat the kittens. Here's his original mail:

And here's Apple's reply, straight from Richard Townhill, Director, Pro Video Product Marketing.

For sure, a high school student with an 8-core Mac Pro doesn't look in need for a free copy of FCS2, but hey, up high for His Steveness and his generosity fostering future generations of Woody Allens and Martin Scorseses. [Thank you, tipster]

Update: Crunchgear says the secret's out, and it's going to be integrated Redcode inside Final Cut Studio. This means there will be native Red support, editing that 4k video image at a lower resolution so you won't have to tax your box looking at 4k pixels whenever you're editing. [Crunchgear]

The Studio suite includes Final Cut 6, Motion 3, Soundtrack Pro 2, Color (new), Compressor 3, DVD Studio Pro 4 and Livetype (the latter two of which were, of note, the only elements of the existing software suite remaining unchanged).

Ships in May. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [apple]

Then Apple showed some uncompressed 1080p footage with other resolutions and frame rates, all edited together in real time. Nice.

They then showed us a side-by-side comparison of ProRes and uncompressed HD, and it was hard to tell the difference between the two. Then the kicker? The ProRes footage was 10th-generation. Impressive.

The biggest story here is editing software Premiere Pro's return to the Mac, where it was practically pushed out of the market by Apple's wildly popular Final Cut Pro three years ago. Premiere Pro has since been beefed up considerably, and enjoys the huge advantage of smooth interoperability with other Adobe applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator and the powerful compositing tool, After Effects. Expect to see the new Windows and Mac versions by mid-year.

Take a look at these screen shots:

Premiere Pro is the best editing software on the planet, and this sets up a battle royale between Apple and Adobe, the two video content creation industry titans. This will be fun to watch. – Charlie White

Adobe Annouces Mac Production Studio (Big Screen Shots) [Digital Video Editing]
Adobe Production Studio To Be Available for Both Mac and Windows [Adobe]

MXO is capable of some counterintuitive feats as well, such as extracting 8 channels of SDI embedded audio with stereo audio monitoring from the secondary DVI port on a Mac. Another advantage is that it's compatible with most Macs including laptops, iMacs and G5 desktops. Final Cut Pro video editors on the Mac will love this thing.

The best part of MXO is, until now, Mac users couldn't get an accurate view of what would actually be seen on a television screen when watching their productions in full-screen view on a computer display. Now they can get that full 1080i effect, using this $995 box. I've seen this baby, and it's fo' real. – Charlie White

Product Page [Matrox]

First Look [Creative Mac]