Baselight for FCP?

[Chris Harlan]

[Andrew Richards] “Except, why would anyone do that?”

You’d have to ask the people who are keeping Lightworks alive. I DO know that I would be a volunteer supporter of any volunteer fringe group that tried to do the same for FCS. It would be quite the hobby.

[Robert Brown]

[Andrew Richards] “Except, why would anyone do that?
“

There would probably be millions of reasons -$$$$$$- to. It’s what a lot of editors wanted, a better FCP.
It’s all I wanted. But I would guess there would have to be some legal hurdles to make a clone of FCP but if not maybe somebody should. It would take somebody with serious resources to pull it off though.

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

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Bill Davis]

[Walter Soyka] “I joked about FCPX pricing yesterday [link], but by setting the base price of the application so low, Apple may have also established very low pricing expectations for third-party plugins and possibly damaged the viability of the market.
“

I dunno, Walter.

When I worked in advertising early in my career, one of my clients was a local Cadillac dealer.

I learned not to be surprised at the people who were adding “premium” features such as very expensive solid-gold-plated hood ornaments to what was essentially a upper-mid priced stock automobile purchase. (These weren’t Rolls Royce or Ferarri customers, after all.)

It was merchandise aimed for the customer who wasn’t particularly price sensitive but wanted a way to “trick out” their mid line purchases to the nth degree.

There will always be customers like that, in every purchase class, IMO.

And Cadillac’s “premium gold package” market was perfectly viable for many decades.

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

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Harlan] “You’d have to ask the people who are keeping Lightworks alive. I DO know that I would be a volunteer supporter of any volunteer fringe group that tried to do the same for FCS. It would be quite the hobby.”

Lightworks is being kept alive by a well-established company in the business of selling expensive hardware (EditShare), it won’t stay free once it gets out of beta, it comes from a very well established codebase, and it is cross-platform. I don’t see how that is similar to the idea of someone spinning up a spiritual successor to FCP from scratch.

How much would you PAY for the FCP8 Apple never made?

Best,
Andy

[Chris Harlan]

Dude–who are you today–Mr. Contrarian? You ask “who would do such a ting?” Maybe some other company would have a similar interest? Who knows. Is it gonna happen? Doubt it. But you posed the scenario.

[Andrew Richards]

[Robert Brown] “There would probably be millions of reasons -$$$$$$- to. It’s what a lot of editors wanted, a better FCP.
It’s all I wanted. But I would guess there would have to be some legal hurdles to make a clone of FCP but if not maybe somebody should. It would take somebody with serious resources to pull it off though.”

That’s the key- how much would you pay for it? The business model du jour seems to be “software for cheap, hardware required”. This is and was true for FCP and the Mac, is probably the case for Da Vinci and DeckLink cards, and is arguably true for Avid as well (most of their money is made in their big systems like ISIS). Adobe doesn’t sell PPro outside of Creative Suite, and they recently announced they are tightening their upgrade pricing policy (to much gnashing of teeth).

A lot of editors wanted FCP8, but without Apple subsidizing development with Mac sales, how much would it cost? $5,000? $10,000? Your point about serious resources being required is the key- who would do it, and why would they do it? It would still be such a costly undertaking aimed at such a small and demanding market that it just seems like the economics don’t wash for me.

Best,
Andy

[Andrew Richards]

[Chris Harlan] “You ask “who would do such a ting?” Maybe some other company would have a similar interest? Who knows. Is it gonna happen? Doubt it. But you posed the scenario.”

I posed a technical scenario. Tech isn’t nearly the hurdle that the economics is. I can’t think of a company that could both execute such a product and also stand to benefit from it without selling it for way more money than we are used to for NLEs.

I almost argued for AJA doing it (heavy investment in ProRes, development talent, hardware to sell), but they can now sell Konas and Ios to every major NLE on the market, so there is no business case for building an NLE to help sell their hardware.

Best,
Andy

[Walter Soyka]

[Bill Davis] “I learned not to be surprised at the people who were adding “premium” features such as very expensive solid-gold-plated hood ornaments to what was essentially a upper-mid priced stock automobile purchase. (These weren’t Rolls Royce or Ferarri customers, after all.) “

Fair point! But we are talking about tools, not status symbols doubling as personal transportation. I’d think there’d be at least a little more emphasis on rationality over emotion for these purchases. I wonder how many Smoke for Mac customers have bought it because they wanted the power and feature set, and how many have bought it because they wanted the name to impress their clients with.

My concern is that we could have a chicken-and-egg problem: developers like Baselight may not want to develop high-end tools for FCPX until a high-end editorial market arrives to purchase them, and the high-end editorial market might be waiting for more high-end tools from third-party developers like Baselight before they commit to FCPX.

Coupled with Apple’s how-low-can-you-go pricing, I can understand why someone might want to think twice before funding development.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Andrew Richards]

[Bill Davis] “It was merchandise aimed for the customer who wasn’t particularly price sensitive but wanted a way to “trick out” their mid line purchases to the nth degree.”

Aye, there’s the rub. Who in the Post business isn’t particularly price sensitive?

Best,
Andy

[Walter Soyka]

[Andrew Richards] “Adobe doesn’t sell PPro outside of Creative Suite, and they recently announced they are tightening their upgrade pricing policy (to much gnashing of teeth).”

Adobe does sell Premiere Pro a la carte; you could also get it via subscription licensing instead of perpetual licensing, either alone or in a suite, if you so choose.

Adobe is proof that you can succeed in the industry as a software-only developer, if your offering is compelling enough. Autodesk is another (looking at their 3D and CAD apps moreso than turnkey Smoke/Flame systems).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events