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Can Apple Be Trusted Ever Again?
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[Chris Kenny] “A lot of facilities weren’t going to upgrade to a new version of FCP for 12 or 18 months even if it had just been an incremental, backwards compatible update.”
No argument there for those facilities. Others were looking to add more seats. Others also have felt FCP7 features set was getting long in the tooth and are ready to move today. Keep in mind many were already in delayed purchase mode for months. Some going back to FCP6, as FCP7 wasn’t all they had hoped for or needed.
We’re hearing from some of those facilities on these forums. Unfortunately their only avenue is an exit strategy. Once these facilities go through the pain of moving, costs, some learning curve, equipment compatibility issues, they will not be quick to come back under all but unusually (but possible) circumstances.
Apple’s mistake, IMHO, is mismanaging the transition. I think, over time, the transition could have been a major boon to Apple. This is a company that managed the move from OS9 to OSX and PPC to Intel. In each case they designed a reasonably long transition period and had features such as “classic” and “rosetta.” Had they allowed for a year long transition, keeping EOLd FCS2009 available, they could have had another major shift in their favor as FCPX matured.
Instead, facilities who made purchases of FCS2009 are already at the end of that 18-24 month period and some started the clock earlier when FCS2009 was still missing features that competitors were bringing to market.
Much of the hysteria is unwarranted. It’s people who aren’t’ familiar with the new ways of doing things in FCPX. In other cases FCPX is entirely inadequate and they are within their purchase period and they’ve been dead ended. They can’t add FCS suites. They transcode ritual may be costing significant workflow efficiency dollars.
I’m not sure if you saw my other post but I think this is going to have a ripple effect that goes beyond facility purchase decisions.
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You can’t run a business on uncertainty. At my facility we were ready to purchase 3 brand new mac based editing suites running FCP. After the release of FCPx we have decided to go another direction.
Editor/Videographer
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[james carey] “Really? EDL. OMF, XML depended on QT?”
No, that’s a different issue. There are a whole bunch of features that, realistically, 80% of FCP X’s user base never uses, and you’ve just listed several of them. Some people who do use those features seem to have wanted Apple to hold the entire app off of the market until these features were implemented (or hooks were added for third-parties to take over or whatever). But that makes no sense. Basically, these users are saying Apple should have denied this application to users who don’t need these features for a few extra months just to signal that FCP X was a still a pro app by shipping the initial version with them. But that’s, frankly, an unreasonably expensive signal to demand from Apple.
[james carey] “FCP X is not a replacement for FCP7, and it may be years before it is, it’s that simple.”
I think you need to make a list of the critical missing pro features (note: the critical missing features, not everything you’d like to have work differently) and see how long it is. Because my list came down to:
1. A way to export sequence data.
2. More audio exporting features.
3. Support for third-party I/O hardware.
4. Multicam.That does not sound like it will take “years” to fix.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Craig Seeman] “Apple’s mistake, IMHO, is mismanaging the transition. I think, over time, the transition could have been a major boon to Apple. This is a company that managed the move from OS9 to OSX and PPC to Intel. In each case they designed a reasonably long transition period and had features such as “classic” and “rosetta.” Had they allowed for a year long transition, keeping EOLd FCS2009 available, they could have had another major shift in their favor as FCPX matured.”
While I agree that Apple should have left FCS3 on sale for the time being, I just can’t bring myself to take this notion that FCS3 will be literally unavailable to people who need it very seriously. There are millions of copies of this app kicking around in the world. The number of multi-seat facilities that might need to add seats while waiting for FCP X to mature is effectively trivial in comparison. Like, as in, I would be very surprised if we were talking about more than a couple of thousand seats that such facilities might need to add, globally, over the next couple of years. Maybe some will have trouble routing around internal corporate bullshit to be allowed to purchase used software, but that number is even smaller.
[Craig Seeman] “Instead, facilities who made purchases of FCS2009 are already at the end of that 18-24 month period and some started the clock earlier when FCS2009 was still missing features that competitors were bringing to market.”
If there is a compelling reason to upgrade now, then sure, they should pick the best option now. And as of today, it’s probably not FCP X. But we basically knew that was going to be true since we knew Apple was going to do a rewrite… and a rewrite has been inevitable to people who understood the technical limitations of the old architecture for… four or five years now, I guess.
Anyone choosing to make a major investment in Avid/Adobe now, however, should do so with the knowledge that they may be making a long-term choice different from the one they might choose to make six months or a year from now, once FCP X has had more time to mature. The benefits of switching now have to be weighed against the possibility that you might be using Media Composer for the next decade when FCP X would have been a better choice, because you made a decision during the specific window of time when FCP X wasn’t yet a viable option.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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John, thanks for posting our blog post on the Cow. Appreciated. Crazy times.
Marco Solorio | CreativeCow Host | OneRiver Media | Facebook | Twitter | Media Batch
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[Chris Kenny] “That does not sound like it will take “years” to fix.”
Fair enough Chris, but for me it has come down to trusting Apple. I watched as they bought Shake and Color and then abandoned them – perhaps implementing some portion of their features in FCPx, which is good for FCPx users I suppose – but of limited use to pros. They also dropped xserve, xsan. It seems they are abandoning the high end pro market, good for them and their stockholders, bad for those of us who depend on continuity in our purchase decisions. As for XML and OMF, if it’s so easy to fix, why not ship with it. Why not tell us when it will be implemented – how hard is that? Lack of just these two features is enough for me to not use FCPx. Finishing of my projects demands that i share my final timeline with audio people (OMF) and color graders (usually with XML – if not just a media managed FCP7 project) – I can’t do that yet – or ever?
I will continue to use FCP7 but am in the process of upgrading to CS5.5 for PPro, and that looks amazingly promising. AE is of course one of my workhorse tools, and its integration with PPro and PS is just gravy. Maybe i should thank Apple, what do you think?
Jim Carey
Director of Video, Radical Entertainment
linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jcarey256
mobygames: https://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,17212/ -
“The only big ‘optional’ change, really, was the decision to try to improve on traditional muli-track editing and bin-based clip organization. If they hand’t done that … backwards compatibility would have been easier to implement.”
And every one would have been happy.
“But forgoing the implementation of an improved approach because some people will initially be uncomfortable with it is not a recipe for long-term growth”
The key word there is “improved.” And it would have to be radically improved to be worth it, not just a little improved and only in some cases. If FCPX is radically better than traditional timeline editing then it will succeed.
Most editors, including myself, will knee jerk hate anything new, so I pretty much discount most of the editing complaints I’ve been reading. And you have been doing a good job correcting them and showing them new ways to do old things. But I also haven’t heard anything that sounds like a radical improvement either – the items that sound good to me have nothing to do with the new editing scheme and have everything to do with being a 64 bit ap.
My work is 95% multi-cam and so far I haven’t heard anything having to do with actual editing that makes me wish FCPX would hurry up their multi-cam implementation. On the other hand I am curious to learn how you can have a multi-cam function without having a viewer window. Time will tell.
And that time is probably more than you have been guessing. According to the latest accounts the version released is basically identical to the advanced versions seen by Phil Hodgetts and Larry Jordan last February. Despite private assurance from FCPX designers, they weren’t able to add any functionality in the last 4 months. The idea that this is going to be ready to go Pro in less than a year seems very dubious to me. I’m glad your so confident.
“and even if Apple had tried really hard, importing sequences from FCP 7 was never going to be more than approximate, with an entirely different rendering engine, a different library of effects/transitions, different clip parameters, etc.”
If Premiere Pro can open a FCP project perfectly using XML, then FCPX could have done the same as long as they hadn’t arbitrarily decided to change the traditional multi-track system. And even so, a translation that wasn’t perfect in terms of transitions and effects would have been better than nothing.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Chris Kenny] “The only big ‘optional’ change, really, was the decision to try to improve on traditional muli-track editing and bin-based clip organization. “
Improved. mmm. FCP is trackless baby – they improved on multi-track editing by making it trackless.
no more – I’m going to get an ulcer or something.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics -
I’d add importing older FCP projects however imperfect. So many of clients keep coming back for revisions for a few years. One doesn’t need to be a big facility to need this. This is quite common with one person shops and lower budget clients.
I can keep FCP7 going for a while but obviously at some point it’ll break under some OS update. I can keep a legacy machine going but this can become a problem as well. I can understand it not being a priority because, realistically, I can keep those clients on FCP7 for some many more months but at some point I’m going to HAVE TO move those projects to FCPX.
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Yeah – doesn’t premiere look basically fine? I never would have bothered with it – people over the last year have started to say its ok, and I’ve always poo-pooed them, but now, well thank God it’s in pretty good shape. Otherwise it’d be Avid and I’m not sure I could stomach that.
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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