A new poll

[Bill Dawson]

We would have upgraded to FCS4 and would have loaded FCPX into a few workstations and started playing with it. Instead, we converted 24 edit stations to Avid.

[Bill Davis]

I’m trying to look back and see a time that Apple (at least under Jobs) was ever a “bet hedger.”

Sink or swim, what makes them Apple is partly the willingness to push for better than “we do that too.”

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Jamie Franklin]

[Bill Davis] ” Sink or swim, what makes them Apple is partly the willingness to push for better than “we do that too.””

Instead of “we do that too” they would be better served saying “we do that too and more“…instead of “you do what we say, or get out of the way”

[Jamie Franklin]

I’d probably spend my time being a lot more helpful to questions in the FCS4 forum instead of my self serving rantfest in this one…

[Robert Brown]

I think there is no question the reason this forum gets the traffic it does is because they killed the old FCP. I think it has to do with the number of FCP users and the fact that Apple broke a major assumption in the software industry that new versions will be improvements but more or less the same thing as the old ones.

I personally have no problem with X and if people like it and use it fine but as far as professional editing is concerned – i.e. you make a living doing it – I hope this signals the end of the reliance on Apple software because there are a lot of companies who provide equipment and software for film/video that mostly follow a set of unwritten rules, and you can’t have companies that have huge influence that just choose to randomly re-write those rules one day or feel they don’t apply to them. People’s livelihoods depend on having some idea what is going to happen based on what has happened on the past.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[David Roth weiss]

[Robert Brown] “I personally have no problem with X and if people like it and use it fine but as far as professional editing is concerned – i.e. you make a living doing it – I hope this signals the end of the reliance on Apple software because there are a lot of companies who provide equipment and software for film/video that mostly follow a set of unwritten rules, and you can’t have companies that have huge influence that just choose to randomly re-write those rules one day or feel they don’t apply to them. People’s livelihoods depend on having some idea what is going to happen based on what has happened on the past.”

Walter Murch alluded to the same points in Pt2 of his recent X interview. I too believe this is the “story” that will be remembered when the final epitaph is written about this episode in the history of media.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

Don’t miss my new Creative Cow Podcast: Bringing “The Whale” to the Big Screen:
https://library.creativecow.net/weiss_roth_david/Podcast-Series-2-MikeParfitandSuzanneChisholm/1

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums.

[Robert Brown]

[David Roth Weiss] “Walter Murch alluded to the same points in Pt2 of his recent X interview. I too believe this is the “story” that will be remembered when the final epitaph is written about this episode in the history of media.”

Yeah I saw that. I don’t know if it could ever go as fas as a SMPTE type requirement but I think the other companies have responded appropriately by committing to cater to the needs of their customers as opposed to dictate what their needs are and I believe them. I think the good news is that Apple is probably the only company that would do something like this.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Douglas K. dempsey]

Agree with most of the above. If FCP4 had arrived, our forum would be about new features, and lots of Avid & PPro users showing up, asking if they should convert to FSC4.

HOWEVER, if as you fantasize, FCPX indeed did arrive as iMovie Pro, replacing the unweilding “not FCP” $300 app, Final Cut Express…

THEN we would probably still have a rollicking discussion. Because the $300 FCPX is basically the software version of the DSLR revolution. It’s super cheap, anyone can do it…but as you start to use it in pro situations, you start buying expensive add-ons to bring it SORT OF up to the task accomplished by real pro products. With the DSLR, it’s trying to get pro audio, dealing with timecode, shutter roll, native codec (highly compressed AVCHD) vs out to uncompressed, trying to follow focus and aperture with still lenses that are hopelessly bad ergonomically for cinema shooting. And in FCPX, you are doing all the work-arounds, clever new workflows and add ons. As Craig Seeman likes to point out, you may be building your Mac that way soon as well: no one-stop pro Mac, just a cheap consumer-friendly iMac or Mini with Thunderbolt and an array of hardware per your particular needs. Just like Avid with all the breakout boxes back in the ’90s!

Doug D

[Craig Seeman]

[David Roth Weiss] “Had Apple simultaneously released FCPX and the fully functional 64-bit FCS 4 most were expecting, how many of you would be paying attention to this forum?”

Given the R&D resources I can’t imagine such a scenario. What might have happened is that Apple continued to sustain FCS 3 with maintenance updates (rather than removing it from the market)while FCPX was developed.

Personally I welcome the radical change. I do not like the way it was handled though.
I think by this time next year FCPX will have a very complete “professional” feature set which, like any other NLE some will like and some won’t. There was no transition though.

[Craig Seeman]

[Douglas K. Dempsey] “As Craig Seeman likes to point out, you may be building your Mac that way soon as well: no one-stop pro Mac, just a cheap consumer-friendly iMac or Mini with Thunderbolt and an array of hardware per your particular needs. Just like Avid with all the breakout boxes back in the ’90s!”

I think there will be a replacement MacPro which will have much better CPU/CPU specs the the Mini or iMac but, yes, not one stop. It will be heavily dependent on Thunderbolt boxes. Given the direction the current economy is headed in, I think that will be an advantage to most (but certainly not all) post houses.