Final Cut Pro X running on a MacBook Pro.

With June nearly halfway over, the clock is ticking for Apple to make good on releasing the next major version of its Final Cut Pro X video editing software this month. A new report from Japanese Mac blog Macotakara claims that release is going down next week, and will coincide with announcements of several new third-party ThunderBolt-enabled peripherals.

Apple first debuted the updated video editing software at the Supermeet event, which took place during the National Association of Broadcasters event in Las Vegas in April. There, the company provided a demo of the new features and announced the $299 price tag' at that time, it said Final Cut Pro X would be released sometime in June.

Final Cut Pro X is a followup to Final Cut Pro 7, software Apple released in 2009 as part of Final Cut Studio. The new version represents a complete 64-bit rewrite of Final Cut, and blends in functionality of other software programs that were included as part of the Studio suite.

Apple is only offering it as a standalone download through the Mac App Store, where the company also sells Aperture 3, its pro photo editing and library software. The Mac App Store is on its way to replacing the boxed software the company sells, including major system software updates. Apple last week announced that the only way it would offer the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" would be through the Mac App Store, ending a long history of providing optical discs to customers.

To coincide with the release, Macotakara says that additional third-party products featuring Intel and Apple's ThunderBolt technology will be announced. Final Cut Pro has been closely tied to the launch of that I/O technology, with demos showing multiple, uncompressed high-definition video streams being pumped through the software in order to show how much data can go back and forth between ThunderBolt-equipped Macs and peripherals. That will become even more of a showcase with Final Cut Pro X, which can handle 4K- and 5K-size video streams.