Final Cut Pro X And The Future – fcproxuniversity

[Dennis Radeke]

I will chime in on one part of this one:

FCP X is powerful, it is here to stay, and it will be the dominant player 7 was. That is not a rumor, that is not the mindless ranting of a fanboy, that is not wishful thinking, that is the cold, hard fact, dear readers.

No, it is a cold, hard opinion – and nothing more. To state otherwise would be ‘ultra-maroonic’. 😉

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Craig Seeman] “Last year, Apple participated in the Blackmagic Road Show. “

I remember you saying that – and fair ball basically, but, in a way, the point does go to the intent to fundamentally market and communicate.

the senior engineer for adobe premiere probably has one or two things to do in his day right?
His presence popping up at these junctures, and I’m not saying its on the clock – seriously – watch al mooney describing getting to work with the coen brothers– these guys are effectively bleeding the product –

but this back and forth represents a company wide considered effort – they are at it toto. it feels like a truly effective process on their part.
the dividends are huge right? I’m almost surprised apple are not in a position to answer what is a very serious mix of honestly keen and marketing smarts.

Adobe are not lashing out at apple at all, they are running, like total mad men, with the ball.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Joseph W. bourke]

OK – so the guy who is writing this owns a company which makes its’ money selling classes on FCPX, right? What else is he going to do but try to make it look as if FCPX is going to rule the world, and Adobe is out to rule the world, but in a most evil way.

Anyone can take it for what it’s worth – but I don’t ask a barber if I need a haircut…

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Chris Harlan]

[Herb Sevush] ” Chuck Jones is one of my gods, and Mel Blanc is his oracle.”

And, Doc–Bugs is their Prophet.

[Joseph W. bourke]

And if you’ve never read Chuck Amuck, you’re in for a real treat:

https://www.amazon.com/Chuck-Amuck-Times-Animated-Cartoonist/dp/0374526206

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Chris Kenny]

Quoting:

Updates will be free and incremental every 3-4 months or so. This has always been the plan from the beginning. There will not be any one big, huge, overwhelming update at any time. What has been will continue to be.

This is a very interesting model, and I speculated that’s what we might be seeing with FCP X. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Adobe move to something more like this once they’ve got more of their users on Creative Cloud (there are already hints of it). This approach is certainly going to get features to market a lot sooner than waiting for the old 12-24 month release cycle to roll around, and it lets the direction of the product respond to market changes much faster.

But this also raises another interesting question about the way the market is evolving, and about the divergent needs of different market segments.

Right now, with most desktop apps, there are two development ‘branches’ at any time — one for the current release, to which bug fixes are applied, and a second for the next release, where major new features are added. Sometimes bug fixes are even provided for older major versions, even.

FCP X development seems like it’s going to occur on one branch (at least as far as the external world is concerned; there might be other internal branches to deal with features that take more than one 3-4 month release cycle to implement). This means you’re not going to be able to get bug fix updates without installing updates that bring new features and possibly changes in UI or other behavior. For most users, this is a great trade off for getting new functionality sooner. But some customers — I’m thinking here particularly of core Avid-type customers like major broadcasters — probably aren’t going to be happy about this. Larger shops tend to value consistency and predictability above new functionality.

So, the adoption of this model makes FCP X less appealing to those customers. But then, if Avid doesn’t adopt the same model, that will make Media Composer less appealing to other customers.

Of course, with enough resources you could do both of these things. You could push out new releases containing both features and bug fixes every 3-4 months, and also, every 12-24 months or whatever, ship a particular release that you designated as one you would support with fix-only updates for two or three years. But Avid probably won’t do this, because they’re looking to cut costs to return to reliable profitability, and Apple probably won’t do this, because Apple in general has little tolerance for investing resources in legacy support.

The next few years sure are going to be interesting….

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Oliver Peters]

I will point out that a lot of that blog post comes straight from Apple’s talking points. There is absolutely no basis for making the statements about pricing that were made. In fact, making such claims in some official capacity would probably be a violation of financial rules, were they to be made by a public company.

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com