Apple took 6 years to recover the number of FCP users it had in 2011

[Greg Janza]

For me, the Apple FCPX debacle was a precursor to my abandonment of Apple.

I agree that for most of us veteran editors they lost us at Hello. Once bitten twice shy as the saying goes. The notion of using multiple NLE’s doesn’t make sense to me either. The depth and breadth of NLE’s these days requires users to dig in deep to master the tools and so once I committed to Premiere that was it.

It’s also helpful that the overall NLE market over the past five years has shifted dramatically towards Adobe. In the Bay Area, virtually every post house and freelance editor with an edit suite is using the Adobe Cloud.

And by being platform agnostic, Adobe then freed me up to think in terms of completely abandoning the Mac platform and instead switching to a PC. And that’s exactly what I did and quite happily there’s really nothing I miss about Apple.

So when I hear about the new and improved FCPX releases and now the increased sales, its all irrelevant until the day arrives when FCPX has made an actual dent into the professional marketplace.

[Steve Connor]

[greg janza] “its all irrelevant until the day arrives when FCPX has made an actual dent into the professional marketplace.
“

It has already and did so quite a while ago- obviously not in the area you are in but it’s a big world out there. Where I am more than 50% of Production Companies are using FCPX and that’s growing.

[Ronny Courtens]

Agreed. If you don’t know how popular FCP X is in the professional marketplace (whatever that still means), you really should get out of your cave one day and you will see there is a world out there that is much, much bigger than you think.

I am lucky enough to be able to travel around the world visiting major production companies and tv stations all the time, and I see FCP X everywhere. In a few weeks I will be going to Poland where both the public broadcaster and the commercial national tv exclusively use FCP X (240 seats in total). A few weeks ago I was in Spain visiting one of the largest film schools in Europe (1800 Spanish and international students each year) where they only teach FCP X for editing and nothing else. A multinational client of mine (Schibsted Media Group) has 100 FCP X seats only in Norway. And I can go on and on. So please don’t tell me that FCP X has not caused a dent in the professional marketplace, because I will prove you wrong with hard facts and figures any day.

– Ronny

[Bret Williams]

For me it’s undoubtedly not about the magnetic timeline. Although as someone that often has 20+ layers, I’ve got to say, for the compositing/motion graphics work it’s extremely efficient in that you can move layers around vertically and others get out of the way. Just like a compositing app like AE or Motion. I can take or leave the full time ripple. It has no appreciable benefit for me.

It’s really all about the connection between FCPX and Motion. If one isn’t taking advantage of that, then they’re really missing out. It’s has really increased productivity. Especially when changes roll around. Nearly every graphic I make, just like the ones I used to do in AE, is now a plugin. No more rendering out and replacing. It’s all interactive. And it used to be producers would rough cut projects, or maybe we have a team working on a big project, and I’d do the finishing, but now I supply them all with the tools (custom plugins) to do the finishing themselves with a consistent look.

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCP X Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Bill Davis]

Greg,

This is the thing.

EVERYONE seems to agree that in the modern era, people have retreated to “information silos” and only allow in what best fits their pre-conceptions.

I do that too much with X.
And clearly you do that too much with Premiere.

It’s just how the world works when you can live so easily behind filters of your own choosing.

So how does anyone know what’s really on the other side of the fence anymore?

For me, it means I have to listen harder and harder to detect differences in the stories and discussions about these modern tools.

And match those stories to my needs.

Personally, the values I am most personally concerned with are efficiency and innovation I am willing to endure discomfort if at the end of change, I’m getting more done more quickly and feel like my tools are truly evolving to meet the new challenges. That’s been the story of X for me.

For many editors, consistency and safety might have been more critical. Not having to change too far from their hard won expertise was more critical than having to change their approach to editing. That’s a perfectly rational choice.

The ability to occupy a seat that values the older non-magnetic editing tradition is a smart thing when all the seats around you are non-magnetic.

But as others in this thread are noting, that’s NOT all the seats out in the wider world.

Those may be changing.

If so, I’d argue they are changing for a reason – and that reason is largely down to one factor and one factor alone. Efficiency – the same thing that has driven innovation forever.

IF (and it’s a huge IF) one tool actually allows the editor to do more work more easily at the same quality – that will typically tilt the scales over the long run. We’ll see about that in the coming years. I wish you well in your path.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Greg Janza]

People are impassioned about their choices and that’s a good thing. Our main job as editors is to elicit emotional responses from those who view the stories we cut together. And so it’s fitting that the viewpoints on which equipment we prefer to use to create those stories would be equally filled with emotion.

Just to round out the discussion a bit. I’ve learned FCPX and I’ve done several projects with it and I also like it quite a bit. I also agree that it can be a tool that will increase an editor’s efficiency. In an ever-changing market, adaptability is key. However, most of my work is being created with Adobe Premiere.

Market forces usually dictate what software will be used. When Avid dominated the market, a large percentage of editors were Avid proficient. Then FCP came onto the scene, it cut dramatically into the Avid market and consequently we had FCP editors as the norm. So in the last several years Apple re-invented FCP and that coincided with alienating a sizable percentage of it’s professional user base. Seeing an opening in the market, Adobe jumped in and seriously beefed up it’s product line. So now we have a lot of editors who are committed to the Adobe cloud.

If any of the numbers released by Apple and Adobe are to be believed, Adobe has anywhere from a 2 to 1 to 10 to 1 dominance in the market. The actual numbers though are irrelevant.

The deciding factor for freelancers will usually be what systems they need to know in order to gain employment. And of course, it’ll vary from market to market.

[Oliver Peters]

I think all of these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. First of all, we don’t really know what “seat” means in this context. Apple does sell enterprise-wide site licenses for large corporate and educational customers. So it’s hard to tell how those number are calculated. In the case of Adobe, how do you factor a subscription for only 3 months, which is turned off at the end of the job? Naturally, unless someone subscribes to only a single app, then there’s really no way to separate out the actual Premiere users from those who got CC for Photoshop and AE, getting Premiere in the deal. Of course, Adobe probably does know, since they can track downloads and updates. This really leaves you with Avid probably providing the most accurate numbers, since no one dives into Media Composer unless they really have plans to use it.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Bill Davis]

[Oliver Peters] “In the case of Adobe, how do you factor a subscription for only 3 months, which is turned off at the end of the job? “

I’ll just note that I have yet to meet a single person who has done a “start and stop” Adobe subscription successfully.

I still have two Photo subscriptions running after being entirely unable to successfully stop the duplicate subscription from billing – even tho I have spent more than one and a half hours on hold with Adobe reps trying to help me untangle this.

So please, if ANYBODY here has actual, personal successfully experience in doing this type of “switch off – switch on” Adobe subscription thing PLEASE post here how you managed it. I would LOVE to be able to execute that as well.

I’ll even be glad to switch to the much more expensive monthly plan – rather than the annual plan with the realization that unless I successfully kill it on EXACTLY the renewal date, stiff penalties may apply – and if I let it go even a day beyond auto-renewal – that means I’m on the hook for more than $150 in cancellation fees for the next yearly cycle.

Help. Please.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Andrew Kimery]

[Bill Davis] “So please, if ANYBODY here has actual, personal successfully experience in doing this type of “switch off – switch on” Adobe subscription thing PLEASE post here how you managed it. I would LOVE to be able to execute that as well. “

I have twice. Okay, so both times my credit card was closed due to theft and Adobe was like “Hey, we’re trying to bill you but we can’t…” and I let my account go dark for a bit because I wasn’t using CC. Technically that counts, right? ????

I know you’ve been struggling with your account snafu for a while, and this may be an extreme suggestion, but what if you change your payment method to a prepaid CC?

[Steve Connor]

[Andrew Kimery] “I know you’ve been struggling with your account snafu for a while, and this may be an extreme suggestion, but what if you change your payment method to a prepaid CC?

“

If you use PayPal it’s easy to “switch off” the debits