Dear FCPX team,

[Oliver Peters]

[Simon Ubsdell] “Ouch, so it’s all my fault now!!!!!”….”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?”

See, I asked you not to take offense! 😉 Not your fault at al!! I think all the various free presets offered by you and others here on the COW are great. And thank you, BTW.

The issue is that there is no proper effects architecture in FCP X at this point in time. My concern is that FCP X users – adjusted to a lower cost host and many free options – won’t appreciate the difference between the current status and the other options. Definitely not at the pricing developers have appreciated to date. You can already see that in GenArts Sapphire Edge, which is a template-based version of the Sapphire filters at a far lower price than the full Sapphire filters in FCP 7. Edge is currently in beta for FCP X.

You’ll notice that the UI design of FCP X effects totally doesn’t allow for custom filters, like Colorista II and it looks like there is also difficulty in linking to an external plug-in manager, like Tiffen Dfx or MB Looks. In the end, if the market can’t make up the difference in price with volume, then these developers will simply go elsewhere. As a result the product suffers, because you are left with less versatile solutions.

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Oliver Peters]

[Jeremy Garchow] ”
Does 10.7.2 fix some of this or is it more the structure of the app?”

That’s for the current products, including MB Looks II. In that selection, only Mojo works with FCP X. The trouble RGS/MB have is that they use custom GUIs (Colorista II) and hooks to external apps (LooksBuilder). None of this is doable right now in FCP X and maybe won’t be in the future. Right now, if you can’t do it with a slider, image well or color picker in FCP X, it doesn’t work.

Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Gerald Baria]

“I’m sure there’s a good reason for this but as time continues to slip by I really can’t for the life of me see what that reason could be.
“

Their giving business to their software partners. Its how you snag in more developers and support to your platform, give business partners holes to fill.

Quobetah
New=Better

[Greg Burke]

[Jim Glickert] “If the FCP X team should respond”

I think you mean Apple Marketing team…

I wear many hats.
http://www.gregburkepost.com

[Mark Palmos]

Apples “brave move” will shape adobe and avid? God, I hope they aren’t so stupid as to dumb down and spoil a perfectly good editing paradigm with some gimmicky magnetic nonsense. I expect they are quietly chuckling at apples massive miscalculation.
Mark.

[Bill Hall]

Greg Burke I think you mean Apple Marketing team…

Isn’t it the same thing?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Oliver Peters] “That’s for the current products, including MB Looks II. In that selection, only Mojo works with FCP X. The trouble RGS/MB have is that they use custom GUIs (Colorista II) and hooks to external apps (LooksBuilder). None of this is doable right now in FCP X and maybe won’t be in the future. Right now, if you can’t do it with a slider, image well or color picker in FCP X, it doesn’t work.”

Again, I apologize. I was too eager.

[Ben Mullins]

Glen Hurd
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.

I agree absolutely, if Apple are going to rely so heavily on 3rd party developers they need to build much better relationships with them, and open their communication channels a lot wider. What incentive is it to be forced to play catch-up when 3rd parties can simply develop for someone else like Adobe who seem to handle relationships a lot better. Most businesses try to plan as far ahead in to the future as possible in order to maximise stability, but how can anyone do that and work with Apple when Apple sneak around like a Ninja doing everything in secret?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Glen Hurd] “…”

First, I’d like to ask you, do your clients call you and say, “This time, we want to pay you 3x the money and you will have four times as long to complete it!”?

If so, stop reading. You are a god.

[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.”

So let me get this straight. Because there is the chance of competition (as in more than one plugin or workflow developer) which then creates diversity, you would rather be reliant on one company to supply the format support, the organization, the interface, the codec, the tech support? Or would you rather have a choice? I do not think diversity is a fatal concept and as a matter of fact will allow us as users to talk more directly with the parts of the application we need. To me, that sounds like it doesn’t suck.. Do you deal with tech support at all? In your experience, which is better, dealing with small companies, or big ones? Who is more motivated to makes things work for everyone?

[Glen Hurd] “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 typeIs 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.”

How many “types of editors” are there in total? What do they all need?

How is this any different than FCP Legacy?

Or any other company?

Or any other software? Or life?

One day it’s there, the next it could be gone. Better have fun while it lasts? Other recently re-heralded video product companies have made business mistakes, including completely shutting down support for entire platforms, but now they are forgiven. And who’s to say they won’t screw up again? A point release of their own software might break something. Do you think they do it on purpose? Do you realize just how hard development like this is?

Obviously, Automatic Duck had a decision to make. That decision was to abandon ProTools/Avid, Quantel, Autodesk and of course, Apple, at least for the time being, and good on ’em. They must have seen an opportunity. Do you think Smoke users are pissed? Do you think they won’t survive and their foundation will crumble because the Duck swam to a new lake? Maybe there are other companies/individuals/developers who see this as an opportunity?

Look around here. There are many stories of the gear, equipment, formats, technologies and ideologies that have vanished. Are those people still working? Did their clients notice a difference? Did they quit?

A local dub house here in town had just purchased a second SR deck to handle more and specialized workloads, and then the tsunami struck. They had viable business one day and made the investment, and now they are still struggling to get tape stock, and what has happened in that time? People started looking around for other ways to deliver. They too, have some decisions to make. Does that make them prophets? What does Sony owe them? They bought what they needed, but it’s been a little rough and very tragic.

Nothing is guaranteed. FCP Legacy had an awesome run. It was old. It was time to stop dragging that legacy around. From a technological perspective, the wheels were just about to fall off, and there was plenty of duct tape. Luckily, it was popular enough to make other companies around a bit smarter and more attentive. Who do you think is ultimately going to benefit from that?

Let’s talk about dead languages for a second.

If you study Latin, you might learn something about the greater function of language. The beginning. The roots. After all, it is the basis of many languages throughout the world. It seems to me that by studying the “dead language” of FCP, many other companies have acquired the very foundation of a transfer language that works across platforms. Terrible, isn’t it?

[Glen Hurd] “magine 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.”

You are missing the forrest for the trees. They are tires. Interchange protocols are formats. Tires/rims/axels have standards (6,5,4 bolt, etc), as do interchange protocols. If one person can build it, so can another. It’s the very nature of the game. In your example, you buy a new set of rims and tires. Done.

Here is my thoughts on third party development.

I think this is really smart. The video business is becoming very fragmented. This can lead to specialization (“we only shoot, Red, man”) or it can lead to generalization (“I have SD, 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 59.94, 29.97i, , 29.97p, 5k, 4k, Alexa, Beta, DV, Digibeta, 7000fps, MPEG4, MPEG2, AVI, wmv all going in one timeline. Help me”). Camera manufacturers are developing their asses off right now. There is some really healthy competition out there. Film, is truly dying. This means that every manufacturer is going to have their way of doing things. By creating a proprietary digital system, this means you need to support a proprietary method of handling that media. So, with all the variety out there, would you rather have a specialized system or a generalized system? What if you could create a specialized system depending on your needs? What if you could turn the specialized system in to a more general system ? This is how I see third party support working in FCPX. FCPX will provide the underlying language and method, then people would be able to hook in to this to interact and interchange. When Red’s 28k sensor comes out, we won’t have to wait for Apple/Avid/Adobe to develop a method, Red will have to support it in FCPX. They have the hooks, go to town. Support yourself.

Now apply this to OMF, AAF, XYZ, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Discovery. If you need specialization, you purchase it and interact with that developer who will listen and respond to you directly. I do not see this as a bad thing. Apple broke their own stuff, (Qt/itunes Updates causing FCP craziness) so owning the whole system didn’t prevent them for making mistakes. Things break sometimes. Apple has a pretty decent developer relationship going. They have leveraged that relationship to everyone’s advantage. Why can’t this happen with FCPX and why is it a bad idea? Sure it’s a new idea, but is it a bad one? Look at Lightworks. Open source. Is that a bad idea?

[Bill Davis]

Jeremy,

If you’re ever out here in Scottsdale, I’m buying dinner.

You get it.

Peace.

“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