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ACE Tech Day this Saturday…
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[Andrew Kimery] “Dude you mention a LOT of things in a LOT of posts which is why I was trying to narrow it down a bit. ;)”
Fair enough. LOL
[Andrew Kimery] “I think the hypothetical FCP 8 shoves Avid all the back on its heels and 9 sees the king slipping off the top of the hill. “
Not a chance from my view. None. I think FCP had gone as far as it worth going, which is why, after 2005, it didn’t really go anywhere, other than the addition of Pro Res in 2007 — admittedly a game changer for sure, but based on the exact same technology that Avid introduced with DNxHD FOUR YEARS EARLIER….and not really all that much of a game-changer until a couple of years later still when hardware from AJA and camera manufacturers enabled RT encoding.
(Note again that I personally am not pissing on FCP. But the record here in the FCP forums after every NAB is replete with disappointment after disappointment following most releases.)
That’s what I’m talking about when I say that nothing that Apple was doing with FCP was really addressing *that market.* They’d have kept playing catch-up, kept missing the mark, and not bringing anything to make anyone stop what they were doing and say, “Wait a minute here.”
Premiere has obviously done that, and yes, there’s certainly that extent to which Premiere is pretty dang close to what FCP 8 might have been….but I think what’s moved the needle there is a more compellingly-integrated After Effects as much as Premiere itself, maybe more.
My own experience when I worked at Avid, visiting hundreds of Avid facilities around the world, and speaking with thousands of editors, is that AE was easily on 80% of projects, maybe more (albeit not too too often being used by the editors themselves, this lot still tending to specialize).
Of course Premiere had to be capable of a lot in order to be worthwhile on the front end. This is the limitation that MANY folks have observed here for the Resolve editor-colorist workflow, that there’s not yet quite enough “there” there YET for many people to use Resolve as an editor, especially not when Resolve’s interop with other NLEs is pretty well-established.
But Premiere did indeed do the hard work to modernize in ways that simply weren’t worth Apple’s while relative to what Apple REALLY wanted to do, which was to stop playing everyone else’s game, blow it all up, and start over with the question, “What would we do if we didn’t HAVE to do anything to answer anyone’s agenda but our own?
“And Step 2, what kind of scaffolding do we need for third parties to do the rest?”
Which is what they did. Create a product that addressed their own priorities first, then in subsequent iterations, seeded an ever-greener meadow for third parties to shepherd the flock to FCPX when it was ready for them.
And I think it was the best move they could possibly have made. The sooner they acknowledged that FCP was zombieware — shuffling along, but not actually ALIVE for years — the better. It’s clear in retrospect that they knew this, which is why they released X with the paint still wet and TOLD us they were doing that. The new thing was too important to wait any longer.
Mayyyyyybe when the ScriptSync-style features are nailed down (and maybe they are now) and an MC-ISIS-style sharing experience is meaningfully advanced (not there yet from anything I’ve heard), but even to get to Legend’s 2009 marketshare is likely a couple of years away, and most of the growth will come at the expense of FCP, not MC.
imo, fwiw. 🙂
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[Tim Wilson] “Not a chance from my view. None. I think FCP had gone as far as it worth going, which is why, after 2005, it didn’t really go anywhere, other than the addition of Pro Res in 2007 -“
My hypothetical FCP 8 though departs from actual events and has Apple developing new features with the same rigor that Adobe and Avid were over the same time period (so 64-bit, background processes, improved multicam, GPU acceleration, better codec support, improved 3-way CC using tech from Color, etc.,). Basically the FCP 8 that everyone was so desperate for because 7 was such a minor bump that barely, if at all, qualified as a full version release. If *that* FCP 8 comes out (and for kicks I’ll give it the $299 price point too) then MC is in even more trouble than it was and no one even looks in PPro’s general direction.
[Tim Wilson] “Mayyyyyybe when the ScriptSync-style features are nailed down (and maybe they are now) and an MC-ISIS-style sharing experience is meaningfully advanced (not there yet from anything I’ve heard), but even to get to Legend’s 2009 marketshare is likely a couple of years away, and most of the growth will come at the expense of FCP, not MC.”
Of course now we are back to the 10-year plan statement and speculation on what’s going to happen between now and 2021. Is X now pretty much ‘set in stone’ the way FCP was around 2005? Since X can be more of a ‘platform’ will 3rd party development be enough to keep it moving forward? Will customers be more accepting of a slow pace of development since X only requires a one time payment of $299? I mean, many people give Resolve plenty of slack as a work-in-progress NLE because in large part because it’s free where as many people give Adobe a lot of flack if they don’t feel development is moving fast enough in large part because of the subscription model.
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[Charlie Austin] “I think we’re approaching a “tipping point”… Maybe. Or not. 😉 However, in the last 2 weeks WTF has appeared at a Producers Guild sponsored screening Q/A, At ACE, And on Wednesday at the DGA for a screener and Q/A. People are… interested.”
I think X is around where Legend was in ’04.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I think X is around where Legend was in ’04.
“Could not disagree more. V1 of Legacy did barely anything that other NLEs weren’t doing at the time. They all took what was basically a virtualization of the A/B roll ideas of hardware editing and incrementally grew them. They all did the same thing basically. Legacy competed on price and its early links into FireWire and the new DV25 space, but in terms of actual editing ideas it had little new thinking to offer that I can recall. It was just a cheaper and easier form of where the industry had always been going.
X broke LOTS of rules.
X asked us to re- imagine large parts of our day to day editing processes and learn totally new things we had never encountered before
Not like Legacy’s development path at ALL IMO.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Charlie Austin] “I think we’re approaching a “tipping point”… Maybe. Or not. 😉 However, in the last 2 weeks WTF has appeared at a Producers Guild sponsored screening Q/A, At ACE, And on Wednesday at the DGA for a screener and Q/A. People are… interested.”
[Andrew Kimery] “I think X is around where Legend was in ’04.”
[Bill Davis] “Not like Legacy’s development path at ALL IMO.”
Adoption path, not development path.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Adoption path, not development path”
I don’t think you can say this. Back in the FCP4 days, there was a much smaller group of users that could actually “do” visual storytelling, at least at a level that could be considered “pro”. Hell, there was simply much less video to cut. The web was not a place you went for film and video. Retail stores did not have video monitors on almost every aisle with product demonstrations or other “educational” material. You could not capture quality video on a cell phone, GoPro or drone. Today, the amount of video EVERYWHERE is multiples of the FCP4 days and because of that I think the adoption of FCPX is far ahead of Legacy 4.x. Capturing, cutting and distributing is much easier these days and almost second nature to up and coming editors.
Unless, of course, you are speaking of the broadcast and film niches, as that niche is very slow to change and adopt new things and workflows (for very good reasons, many times).
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “Unless, of course, you are speaking of the broadcast and film niches, as that niche is very slow to change and adopt new things and workflows (for very good reasons, many times).”
Agreed on all points and you are correct that my statement was limited to just ‘Hollywood’ movies. After 2-3 years of FCP Legend ‘toe-tipping’ in Hollywood workflows it started to be used more frequently around 2005-2006. If the responses Charlie talked about at the ACE event ripple out then I could see more people learning about possible FCP X workflows this year and then maybe another movie or two (not done by the Focus/WTF team ;)) cut on X later this and/or early next year. If the feedback is positive from that then more people will use it (similar to the building success FCP Legend had in the mid-to-late 2000’s).
Even at FCP Legend’s peak penetration though the majority of Hollywood films were still cut on Avid, but it no longer was a curious thing to cut one on the old FCP. I could see the same thing happening for X and PPro. How much ground Avid loses though I think is more up to Avid than to outside NLEs as getting people to stay with what they already have is much easier than getting people to switch. One of the best examples of this has to be the vast number of people that stayed with FCP Legend (and might still be on FCP Legend) give years after it was EOL’d.
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[Tim Wilson] “I think FCP had gone as far as it worth going, which is why, after 2005, it didn’t really go anywhere, other than the addition of Pro Res in 2007 — admittedly a game changer for sure, but based on the exact same technology that Avid introduced with DNxHD FOUR YEARS EARLIER….and not really all that much of a game-changer until a couple of years later still when hardware from AJA and camera manufacturers enabled RT encoding.
“I agree with Andrew on this Tim, you seem to be assuming that FCP 8 could not have been a total rewrite, as Adobe CS6 showed us could be done.
Not wishing to get involved in yet another BS argument here, but as I’ve said before, the so-called paradigm shift of FCPX often bandied about here was, in many ways, but not totally, a solution looking for a problem. (***Though many here still think FCPX keywording and database implication is the only way to fly, all NLE apps have different ways of addressing the same needs, even DaVinci Resolve, the very newest kid on the block.)
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist & Workflow Consultant
David Weiss Productions
Los AngelesDavid is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Adoption path, not development path.
“Legacy was adopted for one reason and one reason only. It was effective editing software. Then cost was a factor.
IMO X will face precisely the same trajectory. People who bought into the fantasy that it was a toy and that Apple just wanted the home movie crowd – popular early arguments that persisted far too long and are still out there today – were always baseless – even when apple was soecificslly saying that.Now X’s adoption will be based on what it always should have been. It’s competence as an NLE – a space where increasing numbers of editors of all levels are learning that it’s not just competent – it’s exceptional.
And I use that rearm advisedly. If it wasn’t literally exceptional – there would be no reason for people to use it since there are plenty of other choices out there.
Now it just left for each editor to elect whether they wish to actually learn about it and whether it’s exceptional strengths fit their editing style or not.
And that’s how it should be.
My 2 cents.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “IMO X will face precisely the same trajectory.”
I agree. Which is why I said it a few posts ago. 😉
I think you underestimate the cost factor of Legend vs MC though. If FCP was 70, 80, 90 grand a seat like MC was back then (and required all the proprietary hardware MC required) then Apple would’ve had a dud on its hands. The total value that FCP offered though (performance plus cost) was unmatched. It’s Media Manager was nicknamed the Media Mangler, it never had the multi-user features that Avid did, etc., but a lot can be forgiven when you can could get around 10 seats of FCP for the cost of a single seat for Avid.
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