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Death of Aperture-FCPX Next?
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[Bill Davis] “I’m not sure I buy into the reasoning.”
It’s the reality I’m living right now and I think it’s going to be a growing reality for many freelance editors in major markets. In the last 12 months or so my gigs have been Avid, Avid, FCP 7 and PPro. Once PPro is done I’m not sure what my next gig will be but I’d most likely say Avid. Maybe I’ll keep using PPro, maybe I won’t, but so far for me the CC model has been less expensive than the CS model and subscribing to CC has netted me significantly more money than avoiding CC would have.
With all three of the Big A’s having their own unique problems (and a company like Blackmagic seemingly having a hot hand right now) I think in the coming years freelancers are going to need to know at least two NLEs (probably three) if they want stay flexible enough to shift with the market place.
[Bill Davis] “Essentially, CC is NOT a service for part time or sample users. It’s a service that presumes that you’ll INVEST in learning the apps in depth – and that means months and months and months of subscription. “
I didn’t mean to imply that someone w/no prior experience at all could learn all the apps in depth in a month. Only picking up a month subscription was for someone that already had at least basic working knowledge of the software and could hit the ground running.
[Bill Davis] “Face it, dive in/dive out use is NOT the goal of CC. Perpetual rental income is.”
Dive in/dive out is not the goal of any company. You think Apple doesn’t want you buying only Macs from now until the day you die?
[Bill Davis] “Then if you opt out for a while, and the most vaunted attribute of the service proves correct – that they can rev apps more agilely and more rapidly – then you came back needing to re-learn at least some stuff. “
Learning time is going to be minimal (if even required) unless they redo the whole program again. I’d never used PPro before I started my current gig and in less than two weeks I was pretty comfortable on it (and that included learning things like syncing multiple A/V sources and creating a whole post workflow). After a month a I was cutting nearly as fast as I do on Avid and FCP 7 (though I still had to look up/hunt for advanced features or settings at times).
Even PS and AE are easy to pick up again even though many times I go months without opening them up.
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[Marcus Moore] “Let’s not forget that iMovie IS FCPX, just with a reduced UI wrapper.”
Yup. Just like Symphony was actually MC Xpress Pro.
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Andy Neil] “And Apple isn’t the only company to do the same exact thing. Remember Liquid? Or Soundbooth?”
Well, I think the idea that software does get EOL’d for some reason is completely valid, but the two cases you mentioned each have good reasons and don’t I think make your case particularly well. Liquid was a Pinnacle product (and before that FAST multimedia) that was ultimately bought by Avid where many NLE’s end up and then slowly disappear. If you’re Avid, you focus on MC, plain and simple.
For Adobe’s Soundbooth, it was a reaction to customer usage. The concept of Soundbooth was to make an audio tool for video folks. however, usage of Soundbooth was low and the feedback from users was, ‘give us all of the mixer stuff and the more sophisticated UI’ which of course is what Audition is all about. Therefore, Adobe focused on Audition integration and hasn’t looked back.
Dennis – Adobe guy
…and former Pinnacle employee (Liquid guy) -
[Bill Davis] “But it’s internal semi round trip link to Photoshop (the return file shows up as a separate tiff alongside the unretouched original) is a good indication that Adobe did not try to make it anywhere near a full fledged photo editor.”
Bill, I think you miss the intention here. Lightroom’s focus is the image itself and how to bring it to life as well as organize it. It’s integration with Photoshop is very deliberate because photoshop has so much more (much of which isn’t related to photo editing). Layers is one giant example. Layer Styles, Text engine, 3D are three more examples.
Lightroom – for Photographers exclusively
Photoshop – for all folks who want to manipulate or create still imagesSo, if you want to take your image and make a composite or composition out of it, you want to take it to Photoshop and have a separate physical file to work on.
…and just for fun, you can drag and drop images from Lightroom into Premiere Pro, no problem.
Dennis – Adobe guy
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[Bill Davis] “I think it’s fair to note that a year of CC suite subscription to fully learn just PPro would be significantly more costly than simply buying X. And to explore the slew of other niche apps in the suite would likely take very significantly longer.
Simple at that.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out https://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.”
Undoubtedly, it’s just me, but I do note my own sense of irony of the last part of your quote combined with your signature that advertises a paid way to learn editing. 😉
I agree that learning does require a certain investment of time, but I think you set the table to the disadvantage of the user. Ultimately, creativity is FUN and therefore is not a chore and definitely doesn’t take a year to get started. Yes, expertise only comes with practice and hardwork but the journey is half of the fun.
[Bill Davis] “Face it, dive in/dive out use is NOT the goal of CC. Perpetual rental income is.”
Rather, I’d describe it as choice. Yes, dive in/out on a monthly basis and you’ll pay a bit more. We certainly incentivize a user to do a year. Really, that is the way with many things – If you buy the car with XYZ options, I will give you a better discount and so forth…
Perhaps at the end of the day, we’re just expressing….
…my 2 cents,
Dennis – Adobe guy -
Well Dennis, it isn’t as ironic as it would be if I RENTED out training materials and didn’t let anyone buy them…but I take your point. ; )
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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Touche! 😉
[Bill Davis] “Well Dennis, it isn’t as ironic as it would be if I RENTED out training materials and didn’t let anyone buy them…but I take your point. ; )”
You mean like Lynda.com?
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Herb, it’s just a linguistic convention, nothing more than that.
ts like saying that knocking over a little kids nice arrangement of building blocks is “destructive” – everyone understands and agrees with that. And nobody presumes you have to reduce those wooden blocks to sawdust to be allowed to use the term.
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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Just so.
And if there was some magical way that the Lynda system could lock one out of being able to access anything you had learned there simply because you failed to keep paying a perpetual rent, then I would have a philosophical (and practical!) problem with that model as well.
This, of course, has nothing to do with my opinion of the people who must champion these corporate decisions. And I truly appreciate You, Todd, and my old friend Kevin’s willingness to come here and discuss them.
You guys are great.
But a business model that allows no option but forced perpetual rental of mission critical professional tools still sucks, IMO.
And so it goes.
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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The implication that my examples don’t serve my argument is that Apple doesn’t have as good a reason for EOL’ing Aperture as Adobe had for Soundbooth or Avid had for Liquid. If the new Photos offers professionals and casuals what they each need from a single app, then isn’t that a good reason?
I remember Pinnacle Liquid because I worked with the Pinnacle folks at the facility I ran, putting Liquid through it’s paces in 2004 or so. I was entertaining solutions to replace our Avid Newscutters (ironically) and Liquid was one of my top choices.
It had some clunky features like overly cumbersome buttons and a UI that I wasn’t as sleek as Avid or FCP for that matter, but it also innovated in ways that blew Avid and Apple away. Color correction by adjusting inside the scopes, surround sound implementation, background rendering, far better real time than Newscutter at the time.
When Avid bought Pinnacle, I was sort of happy because I thought they would use Liquid to fuel innovations in Media Composer. Instead, they trotted Liquid out as it’s own product for 5 years and then killed it with as little concern for their user base as Apple is accused of having. My point was that every company has reasons to EOL software, Adobe and Avid included. Oftentimes it’s usually a means to focus their product line so they don’t have competing products. Does it make sense that Adobe killed Soundbooth for Audition? Sure. Just as it makes sense that Avid killed Liquid to stay focused on Media Composer (but why leave all that Pinnacle innovation on the cutting room floor?). It just seems to me that people are far more willing to eviscerate Apple for doing the same thing as every other software company.
Andy
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos
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