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FCP X – food for thought
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Over here in the UK from my bubble I am beginning to sense that FCPX will remain ‘Niche’. Many companies I know waited and waited and waited and then went with Premiere even in the last year.
Why? Because they couldn’t be bothered to learn from scratch new workflows and ways of thinking about editing when their previous workflows suited them very well. How can I argue with them on that?
May hell freeze over but Aindreas may yet be proved right.
We’re sitting waiting for upgrades whereas in reality all they have done with X is fixed what was wrong with it in the first place.
Is that fair?
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Because Apple are not exactly coming our of their corner with all guns blazing are they? (Excuse the mixed metaphors).
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Bill, one condition doesn’t negate the other. There was also nothing said about shutting anything down.
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Possibly because there’s too much money to be made making hundred dollar digital pencils?
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
[Bill Davis] ” I suppose the recent Creative Summit sojourn to Apple where a hundred of us met with many of the product managers and the ProApps development team could have been an elaborate hoax designed to continue the facade that the software is an on-going commercial product with enough value to the company to support the building, and dozens of developers all trained well enough to “talk the talk” with a group of industry pros?”
Many years ago, after Autdodesk bought up Discreet, who had bought D/Vision and renamed it edit*, there was a big meeting at NAB with hundreds of edit* users with big time presentations to roll out the new, long awaited, and very impressive upgrades. After the big meeting there was a special closed door meeting with editors who were influential in the users groups, I believe David Weiss was there, and somehow I was invited. We met with both Autodesk and Discreet brand managers, our input was solicited, we were told the plans for the upcoming year, promises were made about allocation of resources, and everything was very Kumbaya. 6 months later Autodesk announced that edit* was EOL.
This does not mean that FCPX will be EOL’d.
It means that sometimes there are much larger forces at work than an outsider can ever be aware of and I don’t put any stock in developer meetings – because developers don’t control the purse strings and it’s like asking the actors on a set if the movie is gonna be any good – even though they are intimately involved in the project they have no way of knowing.
We are all reading tea leaves without a license.
I think the only thing one can logically surmise is that future development will match past development, until such time as it doesn’t, and then things will change either for the better or the worse.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
Personally, I like the fact that Apple makes tons of money on other products. If they only made editing software (and were in Avid’s financial situation) I would be much more concerned about the future of their NLE.
—> Jarrod
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[Herb Sevush] “Many years ago, after Autdodesk bought up Discreet, who had bought D/Vision and renamed it edit*, there was a big meeting at NAB with hundreds of edit* users with big time presentations to roll out the new, long awaited, and very impressive upgrades. After the big meeting there was a special closed door meeting with editors who were influential in the users groups, I believe David Weiss was there, and somehow I was invited. “
Sigh…I was there, too. Recalling the glowing future that was painted for us, juxtaposed against the black days that followed the EOL announcement, I’d say whatever fanboi tendencies existed in any of us were forever obliterated by the hard realities of the business decision. No one should suffer any illusions that it will be any different with any other NLE.
David
https://AllinOneFilms.com -
Good point, Jarrod, but doesn’t it give one pause for thought that the lower revenue yielding products are always the first on the EOL list?
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I asked a hypothetical question on the Avid Editors of Facebook which company could best weather the EOL of their NLE as part of the overall company offerings. For me, easily the top of the list would be Apple. In the middle was Adobe, and I put Avid at the bottom of the list as everything Avid offers is mostly tied to the NLE. It is a rare thing to see an ISIS and/or Interplay without an Avid NLE on it. I still only know of one ISIS in China that has no Avid NLE on it.
Which then sort of begs a follow up hypothetical question. What if Adobe and FCPx worked equally well as Media Composer on ISIS and/or Interplay- how committed would Avid be to its own NLE?
I am referring to video NLE’s Media Composer, Symphony option, and NewsCutter. Pro Tools is a different conversation.
The discussion becomes interesting as well with Blackmagic – but I suspect it would be fine as well as “editing” is a growth market for them in addition to the color correction. And I don’t think EditShare is dependent on Lightworks for its other offerings that are mainly used with other NLEs and workflows.
Always an interesting conversation to have after 3-4 beers and a shot.
😉
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[Oliver Peters] “What if Randy left because there was no more for him to do?”
I think as far as Randy was concerned, that was EXACTLY the case. Not because of anything about X, but because of Randy.
There’s always been a cycle for his primary engagement, and it looks to be about 5 years long. He came to the end of that cycle working on X, and has moved on.
You can see the pattern from the beginning. He birthed Premiere, waited until it was weaned and walking, then moved to Final Cut.
Final Cut really didn’t change substantially after Apple bought it and made it Mac-only. It really didn’t change substantially, EVER, until it became X. In the meantime, Randy moved his primary focus off FCP roughly – what’s that you say? – five years along.
So while not meaning to diminish the role he DID take in Legend’s ongoing development, he did indeed shift focus to iMovie.
I have of course strongly objected to the idea of X as iMovie Pro from the very beginning, but somewhere in the iMovie development is where a new idea clearly began to bloom, reaching full flower in X.
There’s an obvious overlap in any case, which means that this may be the longest he’s stayed with any generally related set of projects. If anything, then, he left LATER than usual this time.
That said…
[Oliver Peters] ” If FCP X is basically in the form that we have now, is that good enough for the next 5 or 10 years?”
Five years, definitely. There are plenty of people still using Legend. Even the 2009 release hadn’t been substantially updated since…when? Reports from that forum suggest 2007 at BEST, and maybe not since 2005 with multicam. Codecs — including Pro Res, admittedly large-ish…but still — and really not much else.
So, for most people, the last structural, non-Pro Res revision of Legend was…2005. And that thing is a dog with fleas, full of bloated code, and a profoundly NOT Mac-like product experience. Maybe the ugliest thing Apple ever put their name on.
X is nimble, modern, and adorable. Ten years from now seems well within reach.
Which also begs the question — if X is on a ten year plan, what’s supposed to happen AFTER Year 10?
In the meantime, Legend has lasted as long as it has because, other than codecs, features are irrelevant.
I say this as a former product manager and corporate marketing weasel whose life was judged largely on features…but what I found people REALLY cared about was performance and efficiency.
I mean, Oliver, you presented an carefully considered, elegantly elucidated list of features that I think was on the money, and the conversation quickly turned to things like it runs or doesn’t run on my hardware, it’s fast or it isn’t, beach ball or no beach ball, etc etc — AND tracks/no tracks, easy to organize for maximum efficiency, etc.
Performance. Efficiency.
The flip side for my corporate life was, “You know what our customers want? Codecs, performance and stability,” which received the reply, “True, but you can’t SELL that and ONLY that.” Which is also true….and yet, apparently not.
As we enter Year 5 of the 10 Year Plan, though, it’s time to reckon that we’re MUCH more than halfway through the feature set rollout. The iterations in Legend were very much front loaded. Through version 3 happened really fast…and after that, happened really slow.
So if you say yes to Pro Res as a major feature, then I say okay, along with multicam, that makes two MAJOR features in the second half of Legend’s life.
Which shines another angle of light on Oliver’s question: if there are only 2 big ones left, what might they be?
My theory remains that it doesn’t matter. People will still use X for the same reasons they always have, without respect to whether a single new feature ever arrives.
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