-
Facility Management Dilemma re: FCP-X
I currently have 7 seats of FCP 7: 4 for editors, 2 for assistants/interns and 1 in a mobile rig.
THE PROBLEM: I need to hire two more editors and one more assistant this year. Since it’s not ready for prime-time I can neither put them on FCP-X systems nor can I make sound business decisions based on the premise that Apple, might, one day, upgrade (read: fix) FCP-X, raising it to professional standards. Additionally, I can’t purchase new seats of FCP 7 as of last Tuesday. Lastly, I need a product that will allow us, and our hopefully new hires, to share media and projects with each other and our assistants so I need uniformity between all the edit suites and assistant stations.
So, as a facility owner, and editor, what do I do?
SOLUTION #1: Switch my existing 7 systems to Premiere Pro? Easy to do since we have CS5 on every Final Cut rig, plus it’ll work with our AJA cards. No one here has spent a second of their time on it as it has no cache in our market but, people can be trained and can/will learn to adapt if necessary.
SOLUTION #2: If I’m able to overcome a decade and half’s worth of ill-will towards Avid I can try to borrow, and in turn, spend, close to $24,000 on ten Media Composer systems (sans three new computers and related hardware). Given the costs involved, I’d really rather not.
And then there’s this idea…
SOLUTION #3: Apple allows us to purchase additional licenses for the FCP 7 disks many of us already own.
Solution #3, selling FCP 7 licenses, would allow many of us to continue doing business as usual (and growing our businesses) while the product team developing FCP-X has the time they need to either hear our concerns and react, or not, but at least it gives us time to breathe, think and enact a plan. Also, Apple’s gone dark with regards to communicating with their resellers, who, I have to imagine, would quite enjoy being able to sell us some additional seats of a now-dead, but still vital, editing platform.
I fear the worst-case is upon us, but…here’s hoping Cupertino is listening *crosses fingers*
-
9 Replies
-
If you want to keep it simple…Option 3 still can be a choice. I just checked and B & H is still selling FCP Studio 3. Here is the link…
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/639275-REG/Apple_MB642Z_A_Final_Cut_Studio_3.html
I would communicate with Walter Biscardi since as a facility owner he had the same concerns and decisions to make. Best of luck!
Tom Daigon
Avid DS / FCP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com -
Venerable B&H. That is an excellent referral, thank you Tom.
As for Walter Biscardi: it was his podcast with Harrington that got me thinking about this situation on a more macro level. I feel for him, and others, who have an even larger installations of FCP to contend with. I’ll be following his blog-posts about switching with great interest.
Also, I’m kicking myself now for not being more nervous when Apple pulled out of NAB a couple years ago. Given the current state of things, that was far more prophetic than I’d ever imagined.
-
You do realize that the AVID $995 deal is still going on right? I know the date is officially past, but plenty of retailers are still doing it (videoguys.com comes to mind). If you’re having doubts why not just do it? It might not be the most pretty editor, but it’s a guarantee to handle your tasks.
-
I wasn’t aware that the sale was still in effect. I’ve shot a call out to our reseller about this.
I’d love to have the luxury of time before making a purchase like this, but at that price, it’s really too tempting to not go after.
-
I know that Apple has “officially” stopped selling FCP 7 and taken it from the website and Apple Store. However as a larger facility you would deal with Apple Enterprise (do they still exist?) and have a sales rep. I suspect that sales reps wouldn’t turn down an order for FCP 7 seats at $999 each.
Anyone tried this and know if they will still sell FCP 7 to larger businesses?
–
CoreMelt V2 plugins -
Yes, I did ask our reseller if they had any copies for sale and they told me not only no, they don’t have any, but that they were in the midsts of building out a large order of FCP systems for customers and have no software to install and configure for them and that their Apple rep had no answers for how they can/should fulfill their orders.
Apple has gone, for all intents and purposes, radio-silent with regards to their equipment resellers giving them no information on how to handle pre-existing FCP 7 orders, nor what the new procedures are regarding new system sales involving FCP-X.
-
Being that Premiere will open your FCPro projects and likely will use the same hardware you already own, I would go that route.
I am.
McGee Digital Media Inc.
24P HD Production and Post
https://www.mcgeedigitalmedia.com -
Right now, and bare in mind I’m a big Avid fan, I’d go the Adobe route. Premiere Pro is good to go for you right now, you have the software, it will work with the hardware and it can open the projects and read the media.
I think Media Composer 6.0 might change the equation, but that’s just as much a future unknown and FCP X upgrades… Although we do know that MC6 will come and it will do the things pros need 🙂
The other issue with Media Composer is that it’s not as simple for shared editing. Not that FCP was simple about it, but Avid has very specific ways to do it and they are not cheap. You can do it with a basic SAN and Media Composer only, but depending on your needs you might want to look at managed collaboration – either Avid’s Unity systems, or perhaps EditShare.
-
Wow, this is one consequence of the FCP X release that I didn’t see coming. Jan, I feel your pain.
One thing I’m interested to know since you run a facility… FCP X has horrendous project sharing abilities. Basically, it only respects attached storage devices and insists on its own project folder structure. You can only “move” projects/events across attached storages (okay, you can duplicate both and then move, that’s crazy amount of work to track all the events down and rename, etc). Anyhow, I was wondering if you have put any thoughts on this other than to say along the lines of, “Forget FCP X, I’m just gonna stick with FCP7 as long as possible.”
Conrad Chu
Gracepoint Fellowship Church
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up