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FCP-X – Application or Platform?
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[Walter Soyka] “In my view, a platform provides basic functionality and interesting data to an application. Imagine if plugins extended functionality, not just added visual effects.”
What you seem to be saying is that a platform is defined as a program that encourages increased functionality from third party vendors, not just from internal “studio” style bundles.
If so then I/O hardware makers like AJA and BMD extend functionality. Plural Eyes and Boris Soundbite read data from Legacy projects and extend functionality back into the program through revised timelines and markers. Colorista extends functionality by providing masking within the color corrector. Does this make Legacy a (dead) platform ?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
I think it will almost be a platform, yes. I pontificated a bit on it here, wrapped in a hardware discussion:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/43226
Maya is kind of like a platform as well.
The MacOS is a platform. Windows is a platform.
__Andy, I like your mockup, and I agree the video animation pop up is less than elegant. I am also surprised you are even tossing around and mocking up ideas of trying to improve this software. wink
I don’t understand why the video animation window can’t show just one parameter, or just the parameters you need.
Timeline keyframes in FCP7 kind of sucked, too. Even the motion tab wasn’t that great, but it worked OK for really simple shit.
For simple two keyframe things, FCPX works fine, but if you need more, the video animation screen is really weird.
If we had a Motion room, I think this kind of thing would be moot.
Jeremy
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[Jeremy Garchow] “Maya is kind of like a platform as well.”
Maya is the perfect example of an app that’s also a platform. There are TDs who do nothing but write tools which extend Maya and enable artists to do all sorts of things in Maya that Maya can’t do out of the box.
After Effects is a step or twelve down from Maya in this regard, but a step or three above the NLEs. In addition to the plugins, there’s Ae scripting which can automate all kinds of tasks, but generally does not add new functionality that wasn’t already present in the application.
All of the NLEs are at the bottom of a list like this — there’s very little a third-party developer can do to add on to the application itself. NLE extensions have really existed outside the NLE. Look at all the cool things that you could do with XMEML before, or with FCPXML today. They use data from the application, but they can’t use it within the context of the application itself, control the application, or borrow any functionality from the host app.
If FCPX were a platform to the degree that Maya is, you’d be able to mold it any way you like. You could do things like replace the Event Browser with the DAM of your choice, or extend the keywording system to pull from your own DAM, or automatically version localized outputs for a nationwide spot, or run reporting on usage statistics, or add multiple viewers, or automatically default to Giberti tracks, or add that roles-based color coding that everyone seems to want, or, dare I say it, add your own timecode windows and sync indicators.
I happen to think that Motion and Compressor are more suite-like than platform-like, as they operate with both separate data and separate functionality.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
I don’t think Apple will go that far. They don’t like to lose that much control, but I do think it will be more platform like.
More akin to Ae level platform than Maya.
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I would like to see AirPlay to Apple TV and Color board and other controls like sound mixing on iPad.
Nikola Stefanovic
https://www.vimeo.com/nikolastefanovic/reel -
i would like to see
keyframing as suggested above
colour wheels and controller integration
multiple scopes
customisable and recall for window layouts
metadata mapping and verbatim logger tools similar to CatDV or final cut server, while your at it a watcher type tool that automates more complex tasks would be good
audio analysis and script sync like tools
auto line up of scences, shots, takes as auditions
abstracted storyline/storyboard view like imovie has but with steriods like first cuts software
ganging
a tracker
send to motion
proper versioning and notes around that
versioning tools for deliverables, like roles but done better
audio mixer that works and connects to external controller
AVCintra MXF export for UK DPP
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In my opinion, the main difference is pricing. Apple’s cut the pricing so low, that the old style platform companies are struggling to compete. Sure, they might have better features or better match existing workflows, but new editors and new businesses are going to be attracted to the low price. In this context, “good enough” always wins.
So ultimately, if you can field a product that costs $299 that good enough and supportable, you are going to gut the companies who’s business models require a $1500 product.
Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I don’t think Apple will go that far. They don’t like to lose that much control, but I do think it will be more platform like. More akin to Ae level platform than Maya.”
Let’s start with baby steps — can developers create custom UI elements in effects yet?
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Steve Modica] “In my opinion, the main difference is pricing. Apple’s cut the pricing so low, that the old style platform companies are struggling to compete. Sure, they might have better features or better match existing workflows, but new editors and new businesses are going to be attracted to the low price. In this context, “good enough” always wins. So ultimately, if you can field a product that costs $299 that good enough and supportable, you are going to gut the companies who’s business models require a $1500 product.”
FCPX + Motion + Compressor is about $400. Creative Cloud is $50/month.
Adobe has a hidden advantage in price: if you need Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects — and an awful lot of post-production can’t get away without at least one of these tools — then you get Premiere in the suite for free, and FCPX is suddenly at a $299 disadvantage. Alternately, Premiere Pro could stall in the post-production market without affecting the Creative Suite sales driven by Ps/Il/Ae at all.
I think that FCPX will do (is doing?) fabulously well, but I don’t see it “gutting” Creative Suite — there’s too little overlap.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Adobe has a hidden advantage in price: if you need Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects — and an awful lot of post-production can’t get away without at least one of these tools — then you get Premiere in the suite for free, and FCPX is suddenly at a $299 disadvantage.”
I have to say, though, at least for us the fact that you can’t split the different Creative Suite apps from a single licensed copy up over multiple systems significantly reduces this advantage. There’s not 100% overlap between the machines we need Photoshop/Illustrator/AE on and and the machines we want to edit on.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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