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BBC adopts FCP X for news editing
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[Walter Soyka] “While many here just want Adobe to sell versions of the same software they’re offering subscriptions for, I see CC — development, marketing, sales — as one big ball of yarn; pull on it in one place, it affects all the others, too. Changing the sales model also changes marketing and development as you’ve outlined.”
That’s my hope as well. Adobe has a chance to create a system and solutions that go beyond just desktop software and I hope they don’t squander it.
[Walter Soyka] “Minor clarification here. “
Thanks for that. For the life of me I couldn’t find the words to clearly an concisely talk about SOX in relation to our industry like you just did
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[Oliver Peters] “And you still have the ability to walk away from Adobe and never use them again.”
With all file level access to all the work you’ve done while inside their system abandoned!!! Who treats loyal decades long customers like that? Thats the bone of contention. They couldn’t risk file hostage taking (my pejorative term, admittedly) for their Photographers believe they knew those guys would bolt for Capture One and other solutions en mass. But they were willing to throw their video editors under the bus in order for a chance lock them into Premier – since the perception was that it was the only way for video editors to get a FCP Legacy replacement. Hardball business decision, Period. But hardball business of a sort I don’t appreciate.
And its sad, because it’s a good product for those who want to carry forward with traditional-style non-magnetic editing – and it deserves a long life serving that constituency.
Many, MANY others mileage will vary greatly. And I understand that. But I can’t find a single compelling reason they have force fed their customers a rental only video model otherwise. Not when they didn’t similarly stick their Photo legions with the same. They saw a market opportunity – and saw it not as merely a chance to “attract” customers, but rather a opportunity to lock them down for the future as well.
Its a good program from what I hear, so right now the handcuffs are very comfortable. But they are handcuffs none the less. And the problem with handcuffs is that it’s pretty hard to get out of them, and really, REALLY tempting for whoever is in charge to ratchet them down tighter once they are in place.
Time will tell.
My 2 cents. And my personal view only.
As to the Sarbanes-Oxley silliness, I don’t really see a whole lot of altered corporate practice as a result, do you? Where’s the stream of executives going to jail for financial shenanigans? Or do you feel that the maintenance of corporate profits (at record levels!) were because really, nobody at the executive suite level was manipulating the markets via tame regulators and multi-million dollar lobbying?
SOX was kinda a joke in retrospect, wasn’t it? We’ve spent a decade under the new rules, yet the number of executive punishments effectively doled out is what? Oh yeah, ZERO. And yet, corporate profit levels are exactly the same or higher then they were when many companies were clearly cooking the books. So either NOBODY was doing any market manipulation originally (hard to believe when they tell us that the entire economy was teetering on the brink of collapse at the end of the GWBush era -OR perhaps, the financial sharpies saw the melt down as a way to spin a nice yarn. RENTAL will solve the problems. Just let us fishhook directly into consumers bank accounts (with effective SELLER risk abatement – of course!) and everything will be better for the poor CONSUMERS don’t you know!’
Want to go shopping for swamp land with me as well?
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] “With all file level access to all the work you’ve done while inside their system abandoned!!! Who treats loyal decades long customers like that? “
Or, you simply renew for a month or two to get their revisions done. And they even benefit from you having the current version of the software at a fraction of the cost that you used to pay for upgrades.
[Bill Davis] “SOX was kinda a joke in retrospect, wasn’t it?”
I’m not going to get bogged down in politics, but that’s exactly my point about government intervention. It’s often useless, except to create more unnecessary paperwork that hurts small businesses.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Bill Davis] “As to the Sarbanes-Oxley silliness, I don’t really see a whole lot of altered corporate practice as a result, do you? “
It’s altered Apple’s and Adobe’s practices and most likely Avid’s as well. I’m sure it’s altered other companies too. Has there been a repeat of Enron? W/o laws people will keep doing the same thing but if you pass a law, and everyone obeys it, it can appear that the law is unnecessary.
Corporate practice and corporate results are two different things though. I’m sure corporate practice has changed, but that doesn’t mean the haven’t found different means to similar ends.
[Oliver Peters] “I’m not going to get bogged down in politics, but that’s exactly my point about government intervention. It’s often useless, except to create more unnecessary paperwork that hurts small businesses.”
I dunno, I kinda like things like the Internet, cleaner air, public roads, GPS, NASA, child labor laws, toxic waste not being dumped into my water supply, a standardized work week, laws against price fixing, government inspectors making sure our buildings don’t spontaneously collapse on our heads, that separate but equally was ruled inherently unequal (as unpopular as that ruling might have been at the time with some people) and that my house full of electronic devices can all co-exist since they meet the EMI standards set by the FCC. 😉
There are certainly many governmental problems, but I’d say much has been improved by people using government as their tool for change. I mean, in general the company mindsets haven’t changed, what’s changed is that sweatshops and dumping toxic materials in landfills are no longer permissible in the US so many companies have moved to places overseas where those things are still permissible. Has this caused an increase in paperwork? Yeah, but being a free country and all if someone doesn’t want to do the work they don’t have to open a business. 😉
Governments, like companies, are only as good as the people that run them.
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[Oliver Peters] “Or, you simply renew for a month or two to get their revisions done. And they even benefit from you having the current version of the software at a fraction of the cost that you used to pay for upgrades.”
Right,
You rent the piano. You invest your time in learning to play it. Then heck, let the piano OWNER haul it off for a few months only to return it immediately before you’re required to play the concert? is that the idea?.
I’m sure this approach will have NO effect on the ability of editors to maintain their skills.
Because of course, editing, is so much akin to ditch digging. Rent the power tool in the morning, dig the ditch, return it in the afternoon.This doesn’t devalue the job of an EDITOR at all. No way.
And I’m sure that if we were able to go back and ask John Warnock his opinion in the early days, he’d be perfectly happy to recast AJ Lieblings old bromide as “The power of the press belongs to the man who is allowed to RENT one!” Huzzah!
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] “You rent the piano. You invest your time in learning to play it. Then heck, let the piano OWNER haul it off for a few months only to return it immediately before you’re required to play the concert? is that the idea?. “
Switching from cars to pianos? 😉 It’s silly analogies like this that make it hard to discuss the topic seriously. I didn’t say you had to like the solution, just that it does present a solution to the dilemma you posed.
[Bill Davis] “I’m sure this approach will have NO effect on the ability of editors to maintain their skills. “
Editors who are continually working come out ahead (cost-wise) in this business model compared to perpetual+regular upgrades. It’s editors who do not work regularly for whom subscription is a financial sticking point. Regular use versus occasional use.
But, what is your strategy when a good client presents you with a Premiere Pro CC2014 project and some media and asks you to edit it?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Switching from cars to pianos? ;-)”
What can I say, life’s too short to recycle analogies too much~
[Oliver Peters] “But, what is your strategy when a good client presents you with a Premiere Pro CC2014 project and some media and asks you to edit it?”
I don’t edit at a level where clients care what I cut on. I’m a simple corporate and business video producer/editor. So nobody EVER asks what I cut on. They’re only interested on what shows up on the screen. Period.
But I will note that friends like Tom Carter in London have reached the point where if you want him to edit for you – as he has for Honda, Sony, Mumford and Son, Jessie J, Ellie Goulding, and a bunch of other A-List clients, you have to accept the tool that HE prefers to edit with.
You’re free to go elsewhere, but he isn’t willing to take the productivity hit he believes is involved in going back to non-magnetic editing. And with the awards he’s piling up, I don’t blame him. Strike while you’re hot and all.
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] “Right,
You rent the piano. You invest your time in learning to play it. Then heck, let the piano OWNER haul it off for a few months only to return it immediately before you’re required to play the concert? is that the idea?.I’m sure this approach will have NO effect on the ability of editors to maintain their skills.
Because of course, editing, is so much akin to ditch digging. Rent the power tool in the morning, dig the ditch, return it in the afternoon. “I don’t know how well that example plays out considering that until rather recently (the last 10-15yrs or so) it wasn’t common for people like editors or cinematographers to be able to afford to own their own gear, at least not in movie/tv land.
[Bill Davis] “This doesn’t devalue the job of an EDITOR at all. No way. “
How *does* it devalue the role of an editor? If anything doesn’t the readily available nature of NLEs these days devalue the role of the editor because now everyone can be an editor?
-Andrew
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[Bill Davis] “I don’t edit at a level where clients care what I cut on. I’m a simple corporate and business video producer/editor. So nobody EVER asks what I cut on. They’re only interested on what shows up on the screen. Period. “
I didn’t mean that the client cared what you edit on. The hypothetical is that they bring you a project that they’ve started in Premiere Pro CC 2014 and expect you to continue. Given Adobe’s current momentum, that’s quite likely. It happened before with FCP “legacy” all the time. What do you do? Tell them to take a hike? Ask them to come back with an FCPXML or an FCP X Library?
The point is that with the subscription model, you could power up for a month or two and do the job. In the past, you might have had to shell out for the Production Premium bundle at $1800. So in this real-world scenario, you come out ahead with the subscription.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Andrew Kimery] “I don’t know how well that example plays out considering that until rather recently (the last 10-15yrs or so) it wasn’t common for people like editors or cinematographers to be able to afford to own their own gear, at least not in movie/tv land.”
Granted, Andrew, but that was then, and this is a debate about now.
[Andrew Kimery] “How *does* it devalue the role of an editor? If anything doesn’t the readily available nature of NLEs these days devalue the role of the editor because now everyone can be an editor?”
If the supposed new model is to rent your tools for a while to learn them, then let the owner shut them off to keep your costs in line, it’s perfectly arguable that your skills will ERODE over the time you’re shut off from tool access, and you’ll be experientially behind the competition that elects to pay and pay and pay.
I and others have been very pleasantly surprised that with X, Apple felt that $299 ONE TIME – and the halo hardware sales effect of needing to chase software capabilities with on-going hardware purchases to maintain maximum functionality was enough of a business model to sustain (and expand) X software development.
I get that Adobe doesn’t have anything but software and cloud connection wrapped in an insurance company auto-pay economic model to sell. And that might be a factor in their feeling they need to lock in their customer base up to the extent possible with their current policies. But with competition from the likes of BackMagic who also have a hardware sales model like Apple, but combine it with a a largely FREE software component in the mix, I hope they don’t come to regret the plan.
After all, Eventually $50 a month going out in perpetuity is something many can ignore, but not all. Particularly if Resolve ends up is doing a big subset of the same style of legacy friendly editing at Zero bucks a month.
Time will tell.
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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