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Does anyone think FCPX is NOT a Professional NLE?
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[Andrew Kimery] “All you have to do is go to Apple.com, wonder why there is no software icon on the nav bar, click ‘Mac’ because that seems like the next best option, wonder again why there is no software option in the Mac section, click El Cap cause you think maybe they put all the software under the OS X header. Nope, realize you were wrong, click back, look at the nav bar again to make sure you aren’t overlooking it, scroll down the Mac page because now you are getting frustrated and just aimlessly mousing around, stumble upon FCP X near the bottom of the page, click Learn More, click ‘In Action’ up at the top and *bam* there is Focus… and 8 other pieces that I’m pretty sure have been there for at least 3yrs.
How could anyone possibly miss finding the In Action section? ;)”
Now I finally get it.
Apple doesn’t LOVE us enough to make this easier.
We so sad.
; (
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
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[Jeremy Garchow] “[Shane Ross] “All the marketing for FCX as a professional editor is being done by FCP.co and others like it. FOCUS cut on FCX….did Apple mention it?”
Nope. Not here: https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/in-action/
Not at all!
“That line has been out there for a while that Apple is marketing this product to “prosumers”
but there is no evidence of that in their marketing and never has been that I have seen on their page from day one.Everything on that page is either top end film making or broadcast TV production with the acceptation of a college, but that is training people to be professionals.
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[Bill Davis] “And just like they needed on Gone Girl? IIRC, they had lots of Adobe help plus guys like Phil and Greg helping them make THAT work properly. “
Sorry, I didn’t know we were talking about Adobe. I’m comparing it to Avid, which is the NLE that Hollywood uses on TV and Features. So much that I wonder why Avid even needs to say “Hey! ALL the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture were cut on Avid!” Well…that goes without saying. And it isn’t getting best picture BECAUSE it was cut on Avid…but, OK then.
[Bill Davis] “So whats the point? If you have $100 million bucks riding on an outcome – it’s inconceivable that you’d want a strong back bench ready to help you.”
That if you have $100 Million bucks riding on a outcome, that I’d prefer to use the NLE that’s proven to work, that fits in with all the rest of the machine that’s making the movie.
[Bill Davis] “If a Panavision rig on an early Ron Howard film had issues, I’d suspect calling Panavision – or at least guys with lots of Panavision camera experience – would kinda be step one in solving them. So why is that notable in this case?”
THe point is that they would call them WHEN they had a problem. Not have them there every step of the way to make sure it works. But, then again, I’m sure when COLLATERAL was shot with a Phantom camera, one of the first all digital films, the PHANTOM guys were always on set. Same when they shot SW:EP1 with a digital camera.
BUT, in those cases…those people did what they could to make the cameras work for the needs of the filmmakers. “Oh, it needs to do that? OK, when we make the next upgrade we’ll add that!” Apple? “Oh, you need to do that? Sorry, we don’t care. Look…those guys are making something that’ll work…use them. Oh, NOW what do you need FCX to do? That? Whatever, we don’t see a need for most of our users to do that. Go find some guy to make an app for you to do that. There are plenty of smart people out there.”
It’s THAT attitude that keeps me from not really wanting to try to use them for what I do. They don’t care about the film industry. If they did, they’d work on features we needed, and not rely on third parties. Then again, Avid is COMPLETELY IGNORING us when we go “we need far better multicam support. Oh, and the way your software deals with stills sucks, can you fix it? No? You think what you have is good enough? Uh…OK. Now, the title tool it… is something you aren’t going to even attempt to fix.” And they point at a third party solution.
SO Apple is not alone in doing this crap…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
[Bill Davis] “Apple doesn’t LOVE us enough to make this easier.”
Close. Apple doesn’t make enough money anymore from people buying Pro Apps or Mac Pros to warrant much of a marketing push. Hence the discussion about product visibility between Rich, Oliver, Mark and Shane and my subsequent example of how info about the ProApps is really buried on Apple’s site where it used to be much more accessible.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t like the times I’d go to Apple.com and see a info about a FCP update gracing the front page.
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[Andrew Kimery] “Close. Apple doesn’t make enough money anymore from people buying Pro Apps or Mac Pros to warrant much of a marketing push. Hence the discussion about product visibility between Rich, Oliver, Mark and Shane and my subsequent example of how info about the ProApps is really buried on Apple’s site where it used to be much more accessible.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t like the times I’d go to Apple.com and see a info about a FCP update gracing the front page.
“Did Apple ever advertise FCP in the Broadcast & Film trade magazines? I seem to remember seeing adverts for “Classic” FCP somewhere
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[Steve Connor] “Did Apple ever advertise FCP in the Broadcast & Film trade magazines? I seem to remember seeing adverts for “Classic” FCP somewhere”
I believe so, and they also used to attend conventions like NAB.
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[Herb Sevush] “I still find people who do not and I try to educate them, but the “prefect” roll out by Apple still has consequences.”
Thank you for that tip of the hat. LOL I continue to maintain that the rollout accomplished exactly what Apple intended.
Apple never feared “not for pros” label Quite the contrary. It’s something they already lived through with FCP. The “FCP is not for pros” drumbeat was relentless for years…until it wasn’t.
Sidebar: There’s a myth that persists that Avid guys missed the boat, didn’t get it, were out of the loop, etc etc — demonstrably untrue, in a broad way. To the extent that FCP made headway in Hollywood (which has admittedly always been overstated), it was driven by Avid guys. See as just two important examples: Walter Murch, and Mark Raudonis.
I’d argue that Mark was almost infinitely more important, because TV-style workflows are almost infinitely more relevant for the way that most people work in most markets.
I’ll further point out that Cold Mountain solidified the idea that FCP was definitely NOT ready for professional use. Avid guys read that book and said, “you gotta be f’in kidding me. No f’in way would I put myself through this”…whereas Mark’s experience at Bunim-Murray spread like wildfire — “THIS is a workflow we can embrace.”
Having worked personally with literally thousands of Avid editors, I can assure you that nobody is more aware, or more loudly adamant, about Avid’s limitations than Avid guys.
In fact, there was a massive wave of FCP adoption among Avid guys was as the online tool of choice before the new Symphony was available on Mac. The combination of FCP and Final Touch as the online for Media Composer offlines transformed a whole swath of the industry. It opened the door for Apple Color — ooops — and made Resolve a compelling business proposition for BMD.
What I still find myself resenting a little is the idea that this forum is somehow the epitome of X nay-saying. My assumption is that Steve, as somebody who is the epitome of someone who does NOT believe that 🙂 is underscoring the extent to which that’s just not true.
There are of course plenty of very articulate, highly professional, well-respected X-philes here.
That said, having read every single post in this and other forums for many years, I think I’m pretty on-track that the dominant profile here is people who are using FCPX for some projects and not for others, and therefore have some clearly, sometimes strongly held thoughts on FCPX’s deficiencies.
Their day to day lives as professionals underscore the extent to which the “either/or” position that some people try to put them into is both facile and explicitly, incontrovertibly, WRONG.
And in fact, I’m one of the only people here NOT using X on professional projects, and I was an early and loud voice that it was fully professionally capable option, and for many contexts, the most compelling.
But there can also be the distressing, typically passive-aggressively stated contention that people who have issues, including showstopping issues with X either “don’t get it” or haven’t used it — as if it’s impossible for a cool-headed professional who HAS tried it and DOES get it might possibly say “Not for me.”
Again, demonstrably not true.
Leaving, in the eyes of some X-treme X-philes, a statement like “not for me” to be translated as a combination of “I haven’t tried it,” “I don’t get it,” “I think it’s not professional,” and “I think you must not be professional because you DO like it” — when not a single one of those might be true.
Okay, that’s enough of my whining. LOL
[Oliver Peters] “[Shane Ross] “FOCUS cut on FCX….did Apple mention it? That OJ Simpson doc on A&E cut on FCX…Did Apple mention it?”
Yes on “Focus”. There’s a big “In Action” spread. No on “OJ”.”
I still think that Shane rightly observes a sea-change on Apple’s part. The In Action section used to be huge, and spotlighted a lot more than Hollywood. It told the story that FCP used in many professional contexts that have nothing to do with Hollywood.
Especially unfortunate, because the expansion of what “professional” means is the most important part of what has happened in the industry in the past 20 years, and, speaking officially (the ONLY sentence in this post that I’m doing so), we’re proud of the role we’ve played in that.
But for quite some time, Apple has been trending in a number of ways, in a number of markets, to care less about anything but their own agenda. WHICH IS GOOD. I LIKE that, which is why I continue to insist that the launch of X did EXACTLY what Apple wanted to do, which is to say, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
[Andrew Kimery] “All you have to do is go to Apple.com, wonder why there is no software icon on the nav bar, click ‘Mac’ because that seems like the next best option… Nope, realize you were wrong, click back, look at the nav bar again to make sure you aren’t overlooking it, scroll down the Mac page because now you are getting frustrated and just aimlessly mousing around, stumble upon FCP X near the bottom of the page….”
THAT’s the thing. FCP and FCS used to be super-easy to find front page. Now, they’re just not, even if that’s the only thing you’re looking for.
[Bill Davis] ” it’s inconceivable that you’d want a strong back bench ready to help you.”
The point being made in many threads is that Apple no longer provides that back bench, and both Adobe and Avid do. Not even just for Hollywood stuff. There are literally DOZENS of Adobe guys posting in forums throughout the COW (okay, just two dozen LOL), and many, many Avid folks here and elsewhere who’ll move heaven and earth to help regular shmoes. True for many other companies throughout the COW.
Apple used to do similar stuff, and while primarily LA-NY-ward in FOCUS (see what I did there? LOL), it extended further…but now, is anybody seriously going to argue that Apple is committed to this kind of support in any context?
Which, again, bothers me not whit, and doesn’t say anything about Apple’s commitment to the MARKET at all.
Commitment to individuals across all markets? Compared to other companies? Several of whom are dramatically stepping up their game? C’mon.
[Tony West] “there is no evidence of that in their marketing and never has been that I have seen on their page from day one.”
Well-observed, but I’m not sure that Apple delivering professional software lets Apple off the hook for changing tack away from the trend of increasing customer engagement — even compared to Apple’s
But Steve’s original question was whether FCPX delivers the goods. I want to acknowledge Oliver’s critical observation that the answer “out there” is still regularly “no” — and I want to underscore that the answer HERE is largely a combination of “yes, and I think it’s the best one “yes, even if it’s not for me.”
And that’s okay with me too.
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Do you make a living using it? Then it’s professional. The debate is silly – if it works for you, great…if not – there’s a number of other good choices. I use it occasionally for things other NLE’s don’t easily offer (mostly 3rd party effects) but cut everyday on Premiere Pro because it offers what i need for audio mixing and ease of use between AE and Audition
Andy Field
FieldVision Productions
N. Bethesda, Maryland 20852 -
I could never understand anyone when they said they had the latest professional editing system, be it avid or fcp.
When i started out in non linear editing I was using Ulead Mediastudio 2.5 and upgraded to 5 when it arrived.
This software was shunned as professional as was videostudio pro but they did what i required at a cheaper cost than Avid or FCP.
They could cut, dissolve etc. All the basic requirement for me to make a living.
It is your skills that count not always the software used.
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[Steve Connor] “Simple question, I just wondered if there is anyone left on here who thinks it isn’t?”
Of course but…
It depends on many third party assets
Personally I don’t mind that but what it does mean is that for someone considering “professional” work they need a research assistant to put togther all the components. I think this actually hurts most in the less glamours “pro” markets such as corporate and very small shops where Apple’s lack of marketing makes it very difficult to find the third party tools needed by many of the purchasing decision makers.While most of the discussion here points to Feature Film and Broadcast, there’s not much marketing in the wider “pro” market either where FCPX may be well suited. In fact there’s not much FCPX marketing anywhere. It’s not like they’re pushing it to the Event or Corporate market, not even the “consumer” market.
Or perhaps, we’re entirely wrong. FCPX still seems to be the Top Grossing program in the App Store and ranks Sixth in Top Paid apps. Since this is Apple’s sales vehicle for programs, they may consider the App Store their best and most appropriate marketing tool. A business goes there to get OmniPlan and they’ll find FCPX.
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