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Dear FCPX team,
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[Simon Ubsdell] “They were pinning their colours to the mast of third party developers in a big way and with the very first example of this in action, the very first, everything goes West in fairly short order.”
An important issue here is that Apple destroyed the FCP ecosystem in the way FCP X was launched. Developers are now hoping that there is a large enough base in FCP X to warrant development. Yet much of this development won’t pay off at the prices they have been able to get. Plus, will non-pro users buy any third party apps and plug-ins at all?
Another issue is that there is no actual plug-in architecture for FCP X filters. You have to go through FxPlug 2 in Motion 5 and then publish rigs. As such, most FxPlug filters that have been modified to run with Motion 5/FCP X (FxPlug 2) are either limited or quite buggy. For instance, some of the FxFactory plug-ins work properly and some don’t, because of FCP X’s effects palette.
No offense to Simon (and please don’t take this personally), but the proliferation of free effects presets based on existing tools, doesn’t exactly encourage developers to put effort into paid filters. I think the freebee filters are a great effort, but there’s probably not enough interest left for a lot of expensive new filter sets.
These are all part of the equation that I feel will tend to keep FCP X in isolation.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Another issue is that there is no actual plug-in architecture for FCP X filters. You have to go through FxPlug 2 in Motion 5 and then publish rigs. As such, most FxPlug filters that have been modified to run with Motion 5/FCP X (FxPlug 2) are either limited or quite buggy. For instance, some of the FxFactory plug-ins work properly and some don’t, because of FCP X’s effects palette.”
Does 10.7.2 fix some of this or is it more the structure of the app? Red Giant seems to be pleased:
The original post seems to bring up interface issues:
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/blog/2011/08/08/update-on-magic-bullet-and-os-x-lion/
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Does 10.7.2 fix some of this or is it more the structure of the app? Red Giant seems to be pleased:”
I think that this post was in reference to Lion and FCP7, not FCPX.
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 -
[Walter Soyka] “I think that this post was in reference to Lion and FCP7, not FCPX.”
Hmm. Seems vague, you are right.
Apologies.
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[Oliver Peters] “An important issue here is that Apple destroyed the FCP ecosystem in the way FCP X was launched. Developers are now hoping that there is a large enough base in FCP X to warrant development. Yet much of this development won’t pay off at the prices they have been able to get. Plus, will non-pro users buy any third party apps and plug-ins at all?”
Great post! Apple’s rough treatment of third-part developers has not gotten nearly enough air time here.
Apple has chosen to move downmarket, and it’s going to be very hard for developers of niche products to keep their margins high enough. By way of example, this forum was filled with complaints over the high cost of the erstwhile Automatic Duck OMF exporter a couple months ago.
Apple also seemed to play favorites for launch. Noise Industries had a launch day release, but others like Red Giant and CoreMelt didn’t get advance notice. Look at Baselight — they were toiling away on their very impressive FCP7 plugin, only to have FCPX sweep the rug out from underneath them.
The fact that APIs weren’t available before launch, let alone months after, suggests to me that third-party support was not a development priority — despite the fact that Apple is relying on third parties to overcome some of FCPX’s limitations.
If Apple was going to break plugin compatibility in FCPX anyway, it sure would have been nice if they had adopted OpenFX…
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 -
[Oliver Peters] “No offense to Simon (and please don’t take this personally), but the proliferation of free effects presets based on existing tools”
Ouch, so it’s all my fault now!!!!!
To clarify, the third party solutions that interest me at this point are the ones that provide essential interfacing that absolutely should have been implemented by Apple and not left to the open market and patently unreliable third party providers.
I want OMF, AAF, EDL (plus of course broadcast monitoring, multicam – which may or may not be coming direct from Apple for all we know) and quite a lot else besides – I think everyone is very familiar with the list by now. FCPX won’t get any serious take-up in the professional market until someone shows a very clear commitment to providing these things.
In my mind the provider should be Apple – I don’t want scissors and paste, belt and braces Heath Robinson fixes from vendors who may or may not be in business tomorrow.
I don’t think the “proliferation” of a few very basic effects is really the issue here – though I suspect you’re not being entirely serious? Actually my hope would be that third party effects creators will raise the bar somewhat as a result the relative ease of making the basics. If you are going to be paying good money for an effects package it should genuinely contain advanced innovative coding that can’t easily be achieved “in the home kitchen”.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
I think that the next version of Logic Pro will also have FCPXML import.
From there it will be easy to make an OMF export or even better AAF. And in between you’d even be able to re-arrange some of the audio to better organize it.
Pricewise Logic Pro isn’t more expensive than Automatic Duck and will be more usefull even if you won’t mix with it.
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[Geert van den Berg] “I think that the next version of Logic Pro will also have FCPXML import.”
Actually, I am very much hoping that the new Logic will be a useful missing piece of the puzzle.
However, I still need to be able to create final mixes in ProTools – and be able to hand off to others to be able to mix in ProTools. It’s not something I have any choice over, which is why OMF is a massive issue for me.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
It’s kinda weird – in the hardware side of business people are always saying “Buy what you need. Don’t wait for the future, since it comes with no guarantees.”
But in FCP X land, there’s a prophet on every street corner.The weakness with Apple’s “let the 3rd party developers solve these problems” is that it makes for an inherently inferior product – for now the product not only has to rely on the ongoing development of a somewhat psychotic company, but also on 3rd party developers who, by and large, are kept in the dark about future developments as much as we are. And if at any time those 3rd party developers stumble, the entire value of the product takes another dive.
We’re not talking about plugin developers who are offering a new “solar-flare” plugin, where a sudden lack of development only effects a small percentage of production. These are critical features that define whether the entire package can be useful or not.Let me present the problem this way. Imagine there is a car on the market that has special tires. These tires have to be made specifically for that model car – no other tires built anywhere will work with this vehicle. Period.
Now imagine the car manufacturer doesn’t make those tires. In fact, when the car is sold, you buy it from the dealer with only its rims. So in order to drive that car into Broadcast Town, you need to buy those special-made tires from someone who makes tires – just for that car.
Oh, and the car has few admirers (mainly instructors and prophets and friends of the car manufacturing staff).
Who here would buy that car? No internal support from the car company – not even a contract with some poor sweat shop. Nada.
I have a bridge to sell, too, if you’re interested.And the argument that this is intended to encourage more involvement of 3rd party development is silly. How can they develop when the price of the FCP X is below the price of the one 3rd party app that used to support it? Where’s the room to grow? I know a little about business, and this is the dumbest model I’ve ever seen.
It’s also terribly vulnerable to competitors. Look at what just happened to AD. Even if Adobe didn’t need them to help design a workflow for their Iridas package, all anyone has to do is buy out or influence those who are coming up with these essential solutions, and – blammo – no competition. Hell, I’d develop a workflow just so I could be bought out!What “muggle” is going to commit to a product that requires multiple companies to keep up development for it to even gain traction into the future? If Apple can’t commit to making these essentials part of the package, then only three types of editors will be using this package: the prophets who can see the future of Apple and 3rd-party development, the disciples of Apple who are terrified of leaving the harbor in which they’ve lived for so long, and those with a curiosity and lots of extra time to explore – knowing full-well they may simply be learning an already dead language.
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[Glen Hurd] “And if at any time those 3rd party developers stumble, the entire value of the product takes another dive.
We’re not talking about plugin developers who are offering a new “solar-flare” plugin, where a sudden lack of development only effects a small percentage of production. These are critical features that define whether the entire package can be useful or not.”Thanks for bringing this up, as it’s been largely ignored up until now.
With FCP, every time there was an update (or even an OSX update), it was common for some number of plugins to quit working. I remember a QT update that broke the keyer from Red Giant. It took months to get it identified and fixed, and only because I did all the heavy lifting. In the case of FCP, they were optional add-ons, not required plugins.
Now, Apple can bring out frequent App Store updates, and then we can all hold our breath while we discover what “mission critical” 3rd party plugins no longer work. Or we could just wait 6 months for the plugin update, though by then we might have another FCPX update, and then we are in a perpetual loop… without hystoris loss to save us.
As an inebriated Avid salesman once pointed out to me, Apple’s strength was vertical integration… they made the computer, the OS, and the editing software (and companion programs). Now it’s gone. Riding herd on all your required plugins will be like being a kindergarten teacher… i.e. like “herding cats”. If you’re using something like RapidWeaver, then you know exactly how serious this can be.
I think Apple may underestimated the effect of this phenomenon…
Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com
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