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FCP Express rant
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I don’t care if it’s an Avid, FCP, Adobe, Sony, etc., I’ve yet to see a perfect tool or operating system. At the end of the day, it’s what can YOU do with it, that matters — not what someone else else can do or not do with it.
To that I say, Amen. Nevertheless, when one runs up against an app with such poor customer support on every level, it is worth noting. And my original point remains unanswered: how is it that such a difficult program beats Vegas in the market place? Costs much more. Much, much harder to master.
The differences between FCP and Vegas have been noted several times before in other threads. But the explanation for the commercial success of one in comparison to the other remains a mystery to me. I have to guess it’s all about clever marketing.
I am told by those who seem to be in a place to know (take this with many grains of salt) that Apple is seriously looking at spinning off FCP and the “Express” version. Compared to the gazillions Apple is making on their cell phones, ipods, laptops etc., FCP brings in chump change. Should that happen, one could hope that whoever takes it over will have a keener sense of customer support. Avid learned the hard way — they used to have terrible customer support. FCP’s inroads into their market taught them to pay attention to the pain they were causing.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
[Rick Wise] “when one runs up against an app with such poor customer support on every level, it is worth noting.”
Final Cut Express is a consumer app that competes with programs like Premiere Elements and the lower end of the market. Traditionally, these programs get no real support and if you call Apple, Adobe and others, they usually refer you to the web for solutions.
[Rick Wise] “The differences between FCP and Vegas have been noted several times before in other threads. But the explanation for the commercial success of one in comparison to the other remains a mystery to me. I have to guess it’s all about clever marketing.”
My guess would start with the fact that Final Cut started life as the brainchild of Randy Ubillos, the creator of Supermac Reeltime (which later became Adobe Premiere) and who had many years of reputation that helped launch the perception of Final Cut — which started long before Apple bought it and it was called Key Grip and was developed on Windows NT and was owned by Macromedia. The fact that Randy stated publicly on a number of occasions that he was gunning for Avid didn’t hurt the expectancy leading up to its release.
Lauren Herr, onetime head of Pinnacle’s video pro products and the head of the TargaCine and Cinewave product lines, once gave his blessing to Key Grip. John Molinari, then president of Media 100, also gave his blessing to Key Grip and said that it would be the front-end of Media 100’s Windows system.
Both of these guys were very respected at the time and helped give a perception of expectancy and anticipation to the release of what would one day be Final Cut.
When it took years more than planned to release, Macromedia looked in another direction (jumping to become a web company) and dumped all of their dynamic media applications, including OSC Deck (that they had acquired), SoundEdit that they had developed, Key Grip and others. Key Grip had taken so long that even Media 100 lost interest and developed their own PC-based system, called iFinish. (Note: Media 100 had the chance to buy Key Grip and turned it down. They kicked themselves in the butt until they were black and blue with bruises following that decision, I am sure.)
The sound apps sold right away. But Key Grip went nowhere and finally Apple bought it — an odd move, based on their longtime record of “not developed here” syndrome — and worked to clean up the code and get it to market when no one else rescued it. Why? Lauren Herr gave a clue to it when I spoke to him about it once: it was the fact that even though it was written in Windows NT originally, it was using Quicktime as its core. Apple was protecting its interests because in the late 90s Apple was in trouble and needed to make sure that companies like Media 100, Avid and others couldn’t opt for another core — as they were speaking then, even Avid announcing that they were leaving the Mac and Media 100 saying they were thinking of doing the same.
So Apple put a lot of work into FCP. Is its perception fair? Probably not. Life rarely is.
The rest is infamy.
[Rick Wise] “I am told by those who seem to be in a place to know (take this with many grains of salt) that Apple is seriously looking at spinning off FCP and the “Express” version. Compared to the gazillions Apple is making on their cell phones, ipods, laptops etc., FCP brings in chump change. Should that happen, one could hope that whoever takes it over will have a keener sense of customer support. Avid learned the hard way — they used to have terrible customer support. FCP’s inroads into their market taught them to pay attention to the pain they were causing.”
This apocryphal legend has been going around for years now and if you believe it, then everyone from Grass Valley to Avid, Adobe to Panasonic and many others, are going to be the new owner of Final Cut — for various reasons depending on whom you mention.
Avid *used* to have terrible customer support? I have plenty of Avid friends who would strike the word “used to” from that sentence. Most of Avid’s wounds were self-inflicted and had been in the process of building to a head long before FCP came along. Avid’s problems were well documented years before FCP was even in the market.
Add this formidable power to the Final Cut legend that it could strike fear in the heart of Avid and inflict damage even before it was released. Now, *that* is quite a tool!
(That last part was intended to be funny as the truth is more that Apple took advantage of Avid’s situation more than they caused it.)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
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Some very valuable and historic info there Ron…
And point well taken.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
Ron, thanks for that FCP history. One wonders why the original version was named Key Grip. Amazing. All those fascinating details of the past still don’t explain the big why: why does FCP continue to grip the market so tightly when the Vegas alternative has so much to recommend? One reason, beyond marketing, I suspect, is momentum. By now FCP is so pervasive almost everywhere, it is the only system being taught at most film schools that spit out thousands of wanna-be editors every year. And once a professional edit house invests the money and time in a system, it is loathe to switch. (Many of the older ones carry both Avid and FCP. It’s really tough to find one using Vegas.)
As for FCP Express, yes, it, like Vegas Movie Studio, is a stripped down consumer version. Unlike Express, Movie Studio holds the newbie’s hand with many, many prompts, making solutions easy to figure out. Hit the “help” button on Express and you get almost nowhere of use.
Indeed, after learning full-up Vegas through much trial and error (and I am still learning years later) and then helping my neighbor with Movie Studio, I wish I had started with the consumer version first because learning and using it is so easy. In fact, I would highly recommend anyone new to Vegas to start with the 30-day free trial of Movie Studio Platinum and decide at the end of the month whether to continue with Studio and later upgrade to the full-up Vegas (at a reduced price) or make the big jump now.
One more difference between the two apps: you can download either full-up Vegas or Movie Studio for a 30-day free trial; you cannot download FCP Express nor FCP for a trial run. In fact, you can’t download them at all.
Rick Wise
director of photography
and custom lighting design
Oakland, CA
https://www.RickWiseDP.com
https://www.recessionvideo.net
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwise
email: Rick@RickWiseDP.com -
Well Rick….i can state from what ive seen, its more than
just marketing that puts these tools ahead…its a mind set
that is embedded in the minds of individuals in the film and
editing world, and its never gonna change for now
(remember i say now) . So as is continuously touted…
Its the end results that really matters..not the tools used.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Creative Arts Director and Film Maker.
Portfolio at:
http://www.youtube.com/hentys -
[Rick Wise] “why does FCP continue to grip the market so tightly….”
Some of that is because it’s on a Mac. Period. There’s a heritage of fanaticism that — sez me — has its roots in the feeling of abandonment by Apple in the BS years (Between Steve). The feeling was that Apple was so out-of-touch with its customers, if not outright hostile, that it wouldn’t take much to topple the whole thang…but it was going to happen “over my dead body.”
These folks came to fight not only Windows, but Apple itself. While Apple is now the good guys, that culture carries on, morphing from underdoggedness to triumphalism: no threat of defeat. Instead, the bone-deep KNOWLEDGE of Apple’s inevitable victory.
As for FCP itself, well, sometimes features DO matter. Regardless of what anybody, including Vegas, does TODAY, FCP was the first to unequivocally stick the landing of the meaningfully combining editing and compositing in one place.
Throw in the rapid arrival of shockingly inexpensive third-party hardware, with the first meaningful support of DV right after that, plus a company committed to marketing, and a user base who had been desperately looking for something to get excited about…and already used to blowing the horn…well, there you go.
If that’s enough answer for you, then time to move along and ignore the rest. But for folks who’ve enjoyed the history chat so far, here’s another vein to mine.
Mac was there first. Avid was Mac-only up through its Technical Achievement Oscar for Film Composer in 1998, as was its sister company Digidesign. (While Media Composer is more evenly split, Pro Tools is still overwhelmingly Mac.) Even good ol’ Premiere, along with Radius Videovision…even Photoshop and After Effects…and other key software: all Mac, only Mac.
Still, Avid was primarily an offline company at the time. Media 100 offered the first finish-quality NLE, and at a fraction of the cost. From there, it all takes off.
Avid created the Xpress product line because Media 100 was wreaking such havoc. This is not speculation. On top of bleeding off sales, and Media 100 had “Avid Sucks” in HUGE letters on its home page. This was full-contact competition, and the judges had scored a few rounds to The Evil Eye. (More fun history behind Media 100, it’s “Kill the Editor” campaign — no kidding — and its Evil Eye logo.)
Xpress was still a hardware-dependent product family because Media 100 was too.
Between DV and a multi-tier hardware ecosystem — ALL of it cheaper than Media 100 or Avid Xpress — FCP’s first “victim” was Media 100. Xpress was able to hold off FCP because the latter was…ahem, unfinished…but so was Xpress! Neither one played for keeps before version 3 (sez me), at which time the gloves were off. With the Windows fight way, way on the backburner, FCP now had a new target: big bad Avid.
Ironically, Apple is of course the far larger company, with a far larger installed Pro Apps base…which isn’t quite yet as widespread at the top of the production chain for historical reasons that deserve their own discussion. But the mix of “we have to win” and “we’ve already won” is working for those folks.
Sony Media Software has neither dynamic. More broadly featured? Absolutely. I can’t imagine anybody at Apple arguing. Even the partisan users who see Vegas agree. I’ve witnessed this again and again.
But the other pieces to create a perfect storm are missing. No “wronged” user base looking to be delivered to the promised land. No missing hardware options. The landscape has in fact changed: very little cluelessness among major vendors. Most of the products are mature. Even if vendors themselves don’t offer much support, the Cow does. There’s no more bleeding. Nothing is on fire.
The only fire was lit under the community that, bless ’em, is still fanning it.
The lighting round:
a) Pro Apps is huge business. Start with over 1 million customers (the real number) paying $1000 or more, and you get to the first billion dollars. The number grows quickly from there. Nobody walks away from a billion dollar business with a positive, and growing, cash flow.b) Avid said it was leaving Mac? Never happened. The guy who said that thing was left for dead by Avid soon after. I have no idea if anybody knows where he is these days.
Strong Mac customer base to this day, especially in Hollywood. Most Avid employees I knew were radical Mac-ites. Many of them started working there BECAUSE Avid made the coolest Mac products. Most used Macs at home. Many a jolly roger hanging from ceilings and cubicle walls in the office.
Anybody remember the history of the jolly roger in Mac lore?
c) The Avid RUMOR was enough. I hear it repeated, adamantly, as truth to this very day. Avid didn’t help, though, for still other historical reasons.
d) My semi-educated guess is that Premiere may be being taught more than Avid or FCP. Cheap edu pricing, compelling bundling (PS, AE), easy to teach and learn without sacrificing much power, etc. etc. I have no idea if this is still true…but even if not now, I really think it was true quite recently.
e) Sorry for the long post! But hey kids, is history fun or WHAT? 🙂
Yr cranky uncle,
Timmy -
[Tim Wilson] “b) Avid said it was leaving Mac? Never happened. The guy who said that thing was left for dead by Avid soon after. I have no idea if anybody knows where he is these days.”
It happened at NAB 1998 where the announcement was made and then Avid back-pedaled like beasts to undo the damage when Avid-L and other hotbeds of Avid contempt sprung into action.
Now that my NDA has expired, I can say that I got hired for 18 months right after the announcement to help undo some of the damage and consult with them on marketing efforts to both broaden the base into Windows and to help soften the “nasties” caused in the wake of the 1998 announcement at NAB.
So, was it made? Yes. Was it ever enforced? Never.
But it did happen, I was there when it was made and I heard it with my own ears. And I worked with some mighty highly placed Avid VPs and the like for something that never happened.
Just to clarify,
Ron Lindeboom
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With not a lot of excitement, I have finally decided to join my first technical forum. CC is definitely one of the best out there, as I have spent the better part of 10 years reading forums to find solutions to hardware, software, and os bugs that in my opinion should not exist.
I read that CC has many industry professionals involved in it, and I shouldn’t be disrespectful or rude. I must however admit, after reading this thread, I find myself somewhat confused and insulted.
The general attitude here seems to be that life isn’t perfect and us users should just get used to it and do our job…yada yada yada.
I do not share this happy-go-lucky philosophical outlook that has been so artfully presented by certain people on this thread. Do you have any idea what it is to have a deadline for a project, then find out your software is somehow deficient or bugged out? I wonder…
If there are so many people “in the know” that work for these big companies (mac, sony, microsoft…) out there listening, then why is nothing getting fixed? It is not my job to solve all these technical problems that never go away – and never seem to really have a solution. Each successive version of software seems to be as deficient as the previous – just in different areas.
Your forms are filled with questions about crippleware that rarely get answered. Nothing is getting solved! Where are all these industry big-wigs when it comes to taking responsibility for putting defective software on the market and leaving us small fish to flap around in the mud with no real answers? I paid my money and read my manuals…I feel like it was all a waste of time!
In case you can’t tell, I am in the middle of a very frustrating period with my current projects and shudder to think that I will need to spend yet even more of my valuble time sorting out issues and work-arounds.
So here is my question to all you Phd’s out there… Is this fourm doing anything Pro-Active to lean on the product manafacturers to provide fixes for all the stupid defects that are wasting 70% of my time? Or is this forum just an excuse to put up banner adds?
At the end of my rope,
Mike Bozik
Wilmington, NCps: As sad and pessemistic as it souds, I don’t really expect to get a satisfactory answer, but I’d love to be surprised!
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[Ron Lindeboom] “I was there when it was made and I heard it with my own ears. And I worked with some mighty highly placed Avid VPs and the like for something that never happened.”
My ambiguity. Of course a guy said it. The thing that never happened was the company establishing this as an official policy. The fella who said that it was was very quickly no longer with the company. History has shown Mac’s continuous importance to Avid’s overall strategy, beginning with hiring you for damage control.
At that point, the customer base was still virtually entirely Mac…especially in the markets that mattered most to Avid, like Hollywood, which remains overwhelmingly Mac…ironically enough, because of Avid back in the day! If you wanted to hop the non-linear train early, the one on the fast track, it was Avid on Mac or nothing.
Again, yes, the words were definitely spoken. They just didn’t reflect a widespread, official policy.
Although the timing certainly didn’t help anything, the addition of Windows to the product line had nothing to do with any love lost between the two companies. Windows had come on strong as a fully equal, and in some ways superior, platform for media creation. There was a long line of potential customers with big bags of money. If video products were to remain their core business — which they are — they HAD to follow the money. Broadcast remains to this day overwhelmingly Windows, as does government — especially the military, by far the world’s biggest broadcast network — large sectors of education, etc. Adding Windows was the right plan.
But yes, the damage was done, and yet to be wholly recovered from ten years later. People at Avid are still talking about it, even more than folks outside the company. Although the majority of the NLE community has established itself long after those events, Avid still feels the aftershocks.
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You definitely joined the right forum. Your chances on finding solutions to your problems are probably greater here than any other. In addition to the forum leaders, the people that respond to requests for help here have often experienced the exact same situation. Occasionally, an industry pro may comment, but it’s people like Douglas Spotted Eagle, John Rofrano and others here that can often help bring light to the end of the tunnel!
John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore
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