Final Cut Studio 3 still available anywhere?

[Ryan Holmes]

eBay or Craigslist is probably your only options now.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Tom Matthies]

Yeah, I’m seeing it on eBay but I need to get it from a “reputable” i.e. “retail” outlet. Corporate rules.
Any new old stock at a dealer?

E=MC2+/-2db

[Shane Ross]

A year and a half after Apple discontinued it…you’ll be hard pressed to find it at a dealer. And the people on ebay and craigslist know that it is still in demand, so you won’t see it for $500. It will be used, and going for $1000 or more.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Ryan Holmes]

Exactly what Shane said. Since it’s dead (as of June 2011) “retailers” don’t stock it anymore. The excess supply that may have existed has dried up. So you’re only looking at used copies.

If corporate purchases this it may be time to look at what’s next – Avid, FCPX, or Adobe.

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Mark Suszko]

Dealers were actually ordered to return unsold copies of FCS 3 at the time X debuted. Apple phone order had some NIB ones for a time, you could try calling a Customer rep direct to see if there are any copies left but you are probably too late there. That said, I scored my home-use copy off ebay, and was quite happy.

You *could* dip a toe in the world of FCPX on this one workstation (if it’s not too old to run it). X is significantly better now, versus when it was first released, and it may work okay for you depending on your needs. Right now it is very hard to beat the Adobe bundle and current Premiere/AE/PS combo. If I was starting from scratch, that would be my current choice.

[Ryan Holmes]

[Mark Suszko] “Right now it is very hard to beat the Adobe bundle and current Premiere/AE/PS combo. If I was starting from scratch, that would be my current choice.”

+1 to this. Adobe is where I took my team once FCPX came out and we determined it wouldn’t meet our needs. But as Mark notes, X has come quite a ways. Apple has been quite faithful in updating it. Additionally, Adobe offers a free 30-day trial of their software (for a time Apple was allowing people to demo X as well…not sure if that’s still an option). We affectionately call Premiere Pro CS6 by it’s pet name – Final Cut Pro 8. 😉

Ryan Holmes
http://www.ryanholmes.me
vimeo.com/ryanholmes

[Tom Matthies]

If this was a start up, Premiere or Avid would make sense. Unfortunately, this is simply an upgrade to one of the older edit stations here. New computer to replace an older G5 running FCP 5.1 still. All of the other stations are running FCP7 still and I’d like to have the option of any editor going to any edit station and start cutting with a minimum of hassle. Corporate might need to bend the rules a bit this time and entertain other options.

E=MC2+/-2db

[Mark Suszko]

Well, it isn’t exactly ethical, but since it is EOL and unavailable, what’s to stop you from cloning one of the other workstation’s existing system drives and installing it in the upgraded suite? Strictly as a theoretical exercise, understand.

You’re putting off the bigger question, anyhow, which is; what kind of company pegs its livelihood and customer’s needs on no-longer-available software that’s been End-Of-Lifed? Sure, you can limp along for another year or two like this, but then you will have to upgrade everything, all at once. Look at this not as losing an FCP7 work station, but setting up and advance-testing the stuff that will replace everything in the shop sooner or later. Or were you just planning to have everyone switch cold-turkey on the same day? You should test FCP-X and Smoke and Adobe on this machine, its a great advance scout. Who knows, but that you’ll grow to love a new platform?

Watch Walter Biscardi; you might not do exactly as he did, but his process is informative.

[Tom Matthies]

Well, the answer to “what kind of a company?” is actually pretty simple. A TV station. Speed and consistency are important especially when time tables are not. These stations are used for production and not news editing. Everything from programming to promos to commercials are cut at the computers. There is a fair amount of rotation of editors involved and having each station as similar as possible to the others is a big plus. That’s why the upgrade to the older system is happening in the first place. It’s not easy to retrain the entire staff on a new platform while meeting tight deadlines at the same time.

E=MC2+/-2db

[Jeff Meyer]

Cloning won’t work. The software looks for duplicates of the same serial number while it’s running. Sometimes I forget I have Final Cut open on my desktop and try to open it on my laptop. Fail.

In addition, that isn’t an honest way to do business.