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Apple gives up another network client
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[Jeremy Garchow] “If FCPX is adopted by your clients, why will it change your approach? I don’t understand.
Of your clients, has anyone adopted anything new, and by that I mean, completely tossed FCP Legend and started over from scratch?
You mentioned red herrings and brought another open up, I could easily say that many haven’t moved to Avid or Adobe, just as easily as I could say that many haven’t moved to FCPX. Many people haven’t moved from FCP Legend quite yet.
“I can take that – its a sort of a straw man argument anyway – any movement from FCP, that there has been, has been to either Avid say in the case of Mark Raudonis or Premiere in the case of Associated Press’s entire editing operation, there has been absolutely no moves of any significance towards FCPX.
Also FCPX is not comparable as an option to either of them, its a weirdo, non-standard piece of kit, relying heavily on imovie originated metaphors that bears no comparison to its predecessor or its two main competitors. Avid has a sizeable long standing installed base, and premiere basically gets called FCP8 quite often – its not really true, but its not far off either.
there is no standing skills base for FCPX, and it ignores a wide number of standing conventions.
I brought up the comparison to Motion because Motion never went anywhere, it never appeared on jobs boards, and no one ever bothered putting it on their CVs – it was just motion in the suite. With motion Apple rejected a lot of existing practise and threw in all kinds of stuff like behaviours and so on. They said it was going to revolutionise motion graphics. It didn’t. it was completely ignored.
I say FCPX is Motion. Its completely non-standard, its got simplified operations and a weird methodology, on top of that it has received hideous press, and while I know I’m vocal at it on this forum, it is pretty broadly disliked software. Hence all those stories at release about “editing world explodes in disgust at bloody awful software, shakes fist at apple”
more fundamentally I return to my basic point – this software lacks friends.
Its broadly disliked, has shown zero market penetration (one BBC magazine editor doth not a spring make), it never appears in jobs listings, whereas as FCP7, Avid, and now quite regularly Premiere 6 do.
It’s toast. I’m calling it a bit early, but we’ll know for certain within this year if its formally dead in the market – or at least as dead as say vegas, or edius. Quite a few editors cut quietly on vegas, tout its realtime abilities, but the point is no one cares.
It’s going to be like that for FCPX pretty soon – no one is really going to care, because there is no reason to.
Guys boosting it like Bill and craig will be like guys boosting Edius.I think apple is permanently out of the mainstream of editing. software too weird, software too stupid.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Also, did After Effects ever have a “Cold Mountain” moment?”
Yes, I think AE has had several of these moments over the years, in high-end commercial work, music videos and feature film… otherwise, I don’t think the adoption would be nearly as wide.
[Jeremy Garchow] Does Motion? Does FCPX?
IMO, yes. FCPX may not need it as much as Motion. But I do think that Motion needs a “Cold Mountain moment” as well as a Mark Christiansen, a Stu Maschwitz, a VideoCopilot.net, an intensive course on FXPHD (or similar), and a post house like The Orphanage (R.I.P) to help drive its popularity. I might be wrong here, but I feel as if I haven’t seen Motion used to it’s fullest potential yet. If people were producing MoGraph or VFX work on par with what we normally associate the AE, then I think Motion would gain a lot more traction. Otherwise, it might as well be HitFilm (formerly Alam DV); a lot of great features… but relatively obscure and underpowered.
Just my opinion,
Shawn
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Incompatible how? I can put an FCPXML in to Resolve and puke out an XMEML. Same with RCXPro and Xto7. I am sure there will be more options in the future.”
Random side note… I just sent 3 spots to finish, one cut in X for one project, 2 cut in 7 for another. For the X spot I sent an aaf from X2Pro, and a cuts only EDL-X EDL… worked perfectly.
For the other 2 FCP 7 spots, I sent an omf and edl’s generated from within FCP 7. Audio was fine, EDL’s were totally messed up, all sorts of zero frame edits, they were useless. Granted, it wasn’t cuts only, and EDL-X has some issues with transitions in EDL’s also, but still, after all the years 7 has been out it still didn’t work.
Point is… the nice thing about the EDL-X problems is that I can (and have) email the developer, send him the problematic files, and he’ll hopefully be able to sort ’em out and fix them. There’s something to be said for 3’rd parties providing critical features. Same is true of X2Pro, and all the Intelligent Assistance apps. Any time I’ve found a bug or had a problem, I’ve had a fix/workaround almost instantly. Not the case if it was a problem with an in-app feature, ya gotta wait for the next version, which doesn’t help when the deadline is uh… now. 😉
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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[Aindreas Gallagher] “It’s toast. I’m calling it a bit early, but we’ll know for certain within this year if its formally dead in the market – or at least as dead as say vegas, or edius. Quite a few editors cut quietly on vegas, tout its realtime abilities, but the point is no one cares. “
I really wasn’t aware that Vegas and Edius were dead, I’m sure there are quite a few Editors who do actually care about these two tools.
I think you’re meaning to say that FCPX may be dead in YOUR market and based on current trends that could very well be a possibility.
However you are aware that there is a whole world beyond your market aren’t you? A world beyond the boutique suites of Soho and beyond.
Steve Connor
‘It’s just my opinion, with an occasional fact thrown in for good measure” -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I guess I never knew what those goals were.”
They were quite clear at the launch that they wanted Motion to be the pre-eminent MoGfx program out there – they wanted to knock off AE, just the same way they want FCPX to be the market leader in NLEs. They weren’t shy about it. Also, as Craig and others have often pointed out, they make software to sell hardware. They didn’t launch Motion to be the titler program for Final Cut, they wanted a market leader that you would have to buy Apple hardware to use.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Walter Soyka] “[Jeremy Garchow] “Of your clients, has anyone adopted anything new, and by that I mean, completely tossed FCP Legend and started over from scratch?”
Not really. Most of the editors I am working with are not excited about FCPX (perhaps they haven’t given it a fair shake). I have been fielding some questions on Premiere from editors I know, but that could be bias as they know I am an Ae guy. Almost all production I’m seeing is still wherever it was (Avid or Legend).”
My guess is the people haven’t given it a fair shake, especially editors who are seen as “real pro’s”. It really is the Cold Mountain effect, though at that time everyone was talking about how cool FCP was, and it had already made inroads into places that “pro’s” https://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2001/04/trailerpark/“>took seriously. 😉
Now, – think mainly due to the way Apple launched X, – “everyone” says it sucks. With classic, people were willing to work through the bugs, and there were tons, because it was so much cheaper, and really easier to use than MC, which was the standard. Now in many ways, FCP Classic is the standard, and X is getting the same hate from *classic* editors that Classic did from Avid editors.
So X has not only the normal “I hate the new thing” mindset to contend with, but also all the negative ranting from people who maybe opened it up when it came out, saw that it looked like iMovie and crashed a lot, and proclaimed it awful, unprofessional, and dead. They’re still proclaiming. As a result, nobody “influential” in their eyes is using it, so they’re not gonna try either. There are some folks who need something specific to their workflow that isn’t there yet for sure. But I think a lot of folks aren’t giving X a fair shake not because it sucks, but because many people, most of whom have no idea what they’re talking about, say it sucks. When I tell the guys at the post house we use that I’m cutting in X, they’re genuinely surprised. Same with other editors in our little Hollywood promo niche. They’ve heard it’s not useable.
Eventually, a Cold Mountain moment will occur. I mean, it actually sort of has… there are quite a few high profile people using X, but the wall of negativity is so high that everyone seems to discount them. Maybe it’ll take 2 or 3 Cold Mountain moments to overcome it. I’m trying to do my part. Not because I’m some fanboi, but because X is pretty awesome. I really like cutting in it, warts and all. I don’t have any desire to wade back into the world of MC and Premiere. I’m a pro, I work for big fancy movie studios, and I prefer FCP X. I think some people are listening too. 🙂
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~”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.”~
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Sans any hard facts about Apple’s marketing strategy my gut informs me (I think that’s what the growling means) that Herb may be right on this.
On this forum, many have alluded to the fact that many people bought After Effects without any real consideration for Premiere Pro, at one time.
I don’t doubt that Apple might have thought that some people would buy hardware to support a motion graphics program rather than an NLE. I can’t help but consider that Apple thought Motion’s real time playback (and the supporting GPU needed) would bring people into the Mac family… or at least discourage them from moving to Windows (After Effects being cross platform).
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[Herb Sevush] “[Jeremy Garchow] “I guess I never knew what those goals were.”
They were quite clear at the launch that they wanted Motion to be the pre-eminent MoGfx program out there – they wanted to knock off AE, just the same way they want FCPX to be the market leader in NLEs. They weren’t shy about it. Also, as Craig and others have often pointed out, they make software to sell hardware. They didn’t launch Motion to be the titler program for Final Cut, they wanted a market leader that you would have to buy Apple hardware to use.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions”Yeah, but they wrapped it up into FCS pretty dang fast. Same with Soundtrack. I don’t think you could buy it as a stand-alone for more than a year or two, until now of course. Whatever their plans were at the outset, it pretty quickly evolved into the notion of being a part of the Suite. Personally, when I think of FCP I’m actually thinking of the entire suite, not just the editing component. Motion was part of that suite for quite a bit longer than it was a stand-alone.
I also think it gets a bad rap, because a lot of AE folk just plain hate it. Maybe thats an analog with X as well. I’ve created some blow away GFX with Motion, that have been appreciated by AE folk, only to be dissed by them when they find I created them in Motion. They tend to get angry at it. And, I get that. Its no threat to high end gfx, but it sure is to the middle ground. Or what used to be the middle ground.
I’m from TV and old enough to remember when GFX meant Chyron or the like, and there was no big separation between video editor, GFX creator, and FX editor. So, from my perspective, things like Motion are simply restoring a balance that was lost for awhile.
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[Craig Seeman] “Sans any hard facts about Apple’s marketing strategy my gut informs me (I think that’s what the growling means) that Herb may be right on this.”
Here’s the 2004 Press Release:
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/04/18Apple-Introduces-Motion.html
Key quote:
“Motion opens the door for everyone to create professional-quality motion graphics by eliminating the need for complex timelines and keyframes,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “With its revolutionary technology, breakthrough ease-of-use and low $299 price tag, Motion may do for motion graphics what Final Cut Pro did for non-linear editing—bring the ability to create pro-quality results to the masses.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I’m with Aindreas on this.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
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[Craig Seeman] “I can’t help but consider that Apple thought Motion’s real time playback (and the supporting GPU needed) would bring people into the Mac family… or at least discourage them from moving to Windows (After Effects being cross platform).”
I think that’s right. It was a very nifty feature for the time. People, who now take that kind of visual feedback for granted, seem to forget the slog that RAM preview only was just a few years ago.
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