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Beating a dead horse
Beating a dead horse should be the name of this forum.
For those who keep insisting that the Apple rollout of FCPX (as opposed to the product itself) was brilliant, Andrew Kimery, in a different thread, pointed to this interview of Mr Ubillos from last year
https://alex4d.com/notes/item/back-to-1-0-randy-ubillos-interview
the salient quote being:
“The Final Cut Pro team was trying to figure out what they wanted to do next. X was a big shift. I had a big part in convincing people it was the right thing to do. I will say that I had a different idea of the way the launch might have gone… [audience laughter]
My idea was that Final Cut 7 should stay exactly as it was for about a year, and every time you bought a copy of X you got a copy of 7. They didn’t want to hear it. I knew 16 months before the launch that I was going to have a bunch of arrows in my back. I was going to be blamed for this big transition. It’s the Apple way of doing things: ‘Feet first, jump in!’
The very last conversation I had with Steve Jobs was right after the launch of Final Cut Pro X. I was getting ready to get on a plane to go to London to record the second set of movie trailers – we’d hired the London Symphony Orchestra [to perform the music that was going to be bundled with the next version of iMovie] – and Steve caught me at home: “What the heck is going on with this Final Cut X thing?” I said “We knew this was coming, we knew that people were going to freak out when we changed everything out from under them. We could have done this better. We should have. Final Cut 7 should be back on the market. We should have an FAQ that lists what this is all about.” He said “Yeah, let’s get out and fund this thing, let’s make sure we get on top of this thing, move quickly with releases…” and he finished by asking: “Do you believe in this?” I said “Yes.” He said “then I do too.””
So apparently the inventor of FCPX and the big Apple himself both thought the release was badly handled — but then what would they know about it.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
39 Replies
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[Herb Sevush] “For those who keep insisting that the Apple rollout of FCPX (as opposed to the product itself) was brilliant, Andrew Kimery, in a different thread, pointed to this interview of Mr Ubillos from last year”
Which would be this zombie thread which I won’t let go of quite yet. 😉
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/89784
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[Herb Sevush] “and every time you bought a copy of X you got a copy of 7. “
Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why in the hell would you do that?
[Herb Sevush] “He said “Yeah, let’s get out and fund this thing, let’s make sure we get on top of this thing, move quickly with releases…” and he finished by asking: “Do you believe in this?” I said “Yes.” He said “then I do too.”””
Hopefully the same sentiment exists.
This is the more interesting quote: ” I absolutely believed it and still do believe it was the right thing to do: that Final Cut X is a better editor than Final Cut 7 was. It’s more popular, it’s bringing more people into editing than ever were before. People who have never used an editor before find Final Cut X much easier to learn than Final Cut 7.”
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
More concerning to me is the current Tim Cook era. Meaning, Apple is so deep into being a “bling” company and their “cutting edge” efforts are along the lines of pushing single-port USB-C onto machines that won’t even run a 4K monitor except at 30f refresh … the concept of “pro” would seem to be lower and lower on the list. “Pro” is now almost a badge at Apple being applied in the same way “Deluxe” was used on products as I was growing up.
In that environment, the best things happening to FCPX would seem to be from small-volume third-party vendors who like the product and would like it to survive into the future. I am not convinced Apple-at-the-top management cares about this product at all. I love using it, but I have a queasy background free-floating anxiety that it will be yanked from under me at any moment. Just my own neurosis, maybe.
My son has been a good editor since 7th grade; he learned on FCP7. He is now in the job market in NYC, and hands down, the skill he has to carry with him, whether working for indie feature filmmakers or documentary producers … is command of PPro CC.
With the ability to move in and out of Resolve Lite as a secondary skill. After Effects is third on the list, IF you are really going to hold up the “post” end of a project, and not just be an “editor-director” who is wrangling content.
FCPX just doesn’t come up in conversation, in his world.
Doug D
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[Scott Witthaus] “[Herb Sevush] “and every time you bought a copy of X you got a copy of 7. ”
Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why in the hell would you do that?”
It was to encourage users to get on board early with X while still having a fallback with Legacy to fulfill those immediate requirements that X version v1.0 couldn’t handle.
[Scott Witthaus] ” It’s more popular, it’s bringing more people into editing than ever were before. People who have never used an editor before find Final Cut X much easier to learn than Final Cut 7″
I understand why a software maker might care, but why would you or I care how easy or hard it was for newbie editors to learn. We’re not newbies and when I hire young editors it’s their problem, not mine, how long it takes them to figure things out.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
Your vision of editing is clear, Herb.
Editing is a thing that happens in a “shop.”
The “shop” determines how and what you edit, the tools you use, and sees video editors as worker cogs – it’s a perfectly valid 18th century mechanical/industrial era workforce model – and yes, it still works just fine today.The thing is that today there are OTHER business models that may work even better going forward.
And some of us, perhaps, don’t necessarily see the “shop model” as the brightest possible future for the content creation industry.Instead of “shops” some of us increasingly just see “teams.”
Teams which may (or may not) be fixed in time, place, or area of focus. Instead they remain as fluid and flexible as the internet. They require a new structure. New thinking. And perhaps yes, even new tools.
Not always, but sometimes.
Your own beloved Adobe gets this. It may be precisely why (aside from the virtual price hike/recurring revenue thing) they moved to CC.
It can easily be seen as a way to enable more focus on disparate teams and less on “shops” as where videos will increasingly be created as the industry evolves.
But don’t get me wrong, Adobe loves shops. So does Apple. Obviously they love ANY entity with a valid credit card – exactly like EVERY other business on the planet, bar none!
So hang in there and continue on!
Perhaps over the next 5 years you’ll get even more features lifted directly from X and added to Premiere than you did in this “upgrade”!
If they work as well as they do in X, you’ll really, really enjoy them, trust me!
(Sorry, just couldn’t resist that last little bit – somebody puts a golf ball on a tee and hands me a club…)
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Herb Sevush] “So apparently the inventor of FCPX and the big Apple himself both thought the release was badly handled — but then what would they know about it.”
Our fearless moderator here has a different opinion… too lazy to find the thread. Also… who cares. 😉
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~ -
[Bill Davis] “Your vision of editing is clear, Herb.”
To me it is, however you seem to see me as through a glass, darkly.
[Bill Davis] “Editing is a thing that happens in a “shop.”
The “shop” determines how and what you edit, the tools you use, and sees video editors as worker cogs – it’s a perfectly valid 18th century mechanical/industrial era workforce model – and yes, it still works just fine today.”I have worked in “shops” as you described, but the majority of my time I’ve been editing at home, working with virtual editing teams before the internet existed, connected by Fax and FedEx and all this back when you were still a VO guy.
[Bill Davis] “Teams which may (or may not) be fixed in time, place, or area of focus. Instead they remain as fluid and flexible as the internet. They require a new structure. New thinking. And perhaps yes, even new tools.”
See above, tell me something new. For the past 10 years I have been working with a variable team of producers, editors, gfx designers and vo talent that don’t live within 300 miles of each other, some of whom I’ve never met in person.
And new tools would be nice – actually bringing back some old tools would be nicer still. Using Apple’s Chat feature I used to be able to screen a project with an editor 3000 miles away, both of us able to see both the sequence and the timeline as we talked through the edit, stopping to try out new variations as we carried on our virtual editing session. Apple gave up on this many years ago, unfortunately, and I don’t find Skyping nearly as efficient – so please, let’s go forward by bringing back the past, and then maybe Avid editors will get ScriptSync back.
[Bill Davis] “Perhaps over the next 5 years you’ll get even more features lifted directly from X and added to Premiere than you did in this “upgrade”! If they work as well as they do in X, you’ll really, really enjoy them, trust me!”
I would hope so. Many innovative features eventually show up in competing software. Maybe, some day, X will have built in Spectral Analysis. You’ll really enjoy it, believe me.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Charlie Austin] “Our fearless moderator here has a different opinion… too lazy to find the thread. Also… who cares. ;-)”
Tim and Bill are the two biggest proponents of the “it was a brilliant roll-out argument” in this neck of the woods – this thread was sort of aimed in their direction.
The reason it comes up is that it is the answer to a question that often arises around here – “why do people who’ve never used it hate on X so much” and it’s corollary “why is X so slow to catch on in the broadcast/feature niche of the industry?” One of the reasons, I contend, is because of how botched up the release was and how much unnecessary additional antagonism it stirred up. Bill and Tim say nonsense – the release was perfect (from Bill this is an extension of the idea that everything from Apple is perfect.) I figure if the two most significant guys in the FCPX project (that’s Randy and Steve, not Tim and Bill) were discussing how botched up the release was, then at least that small part of the never ending argument can be put to rest.
As to who cares? – well nobody with anything better to do, that’s for sure. I’m waiting on client notes – what’s your excuse?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “I figure if the two most significant guys in the FCPX project (that’s Randy and Steve, not Tim and Bill) were discussing how botched up the release was, then at least that small part of the never ending argument can be put to rest.”
I think, privately, more people up there than just those 2 feel the same way.
[Herb Sevush] ” I’m waiting on client notes – what’s your excuse?”
lol… the same actually.
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~ My FCPX Babbling blog ~
~\”It is a poor craftsman who blames his tools.\”~
~I still need to play Track Tetris sometimes. An old game that you can never win~
~\”The function you just attempted is not yet implemented\”~ -
[Scott Witthaus] “Sorry, but this makes no sense. Why in the hell would you do that?
“So you could officially stop selling 7 at the drop of a hat w/o pissing off a boatload of customers so bad that you have to start selling 7 again, but the damage was already done. Randy lived through this once with the iMovie ’08 redesign, launch and backlash and he was keen to not make the same mistake twice. Unfortunately his warning apparently fell on deaf ears.
You also get X into the hands of users that might not have purchased X otherwise.
[Charlie Austin] “Our fearless moderator here has a different opinion… too lazy to find the thread. Also… who cares. ;-)”
I linked to the thread in my previous post (right under Herb’s first post) and since when does caring/not caring prevent us from debating about something in here. 😉
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