Final Cut Volume Licensing Question

[David Roth weiss]

Stefan,

If you buy five separate boxes of FCS3 you spend about $300 extra over the volume price, which is nothing for a “fairly large institution,” and you save a great deal of hassle.

It’s not a big hassle to keep track of discs, boxes, and keys, all you have to keep track of is the serial numbers, you can throw away the boxes and all discs except for one set.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Stefan Delanie]

Thanks, David. I appreciate you replying to my thread.

I understand your thinking on the matter and that may well be what ends up happening but I am looking for a slightly more direct answer to the issues I raised. It may well be true that for my organization it isn’t a hassle but let’s assume it is a hassle and that adherin to a non-retail licensing model is important within my particular organization.

I would love to hear from someone who has direct experience licensing Final Cut that can answer my questions about the program.

[Tom Wolsky]

I don’t believe there is volume licensing for five units. If I remember correctly education volume licensing is a minimum of 30 units.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Stefan Delanie]

Actually, there is. It’s a minimum of five. Here is the link to the Apple Store’s page for it.

https://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/MB648ZM/A

Also, before anyone mentions it, know that I called Apple following this information on the page:

“Customers wishing more details should contact Apple Store at 1-800-747-7483. Option 2.”

Option 2 is for education customer which is NOT what the listing on the Apple Store was classified under in the first place. Option 3 is for “business and government” but deadends immediately and tells you to call a different number which is for Government purchasers only and ever prompt is a total dead end. I tried option 2 and it took me to Education but no one knew anything there and kept telling me I was in the wrong place. So basically I am stuck in purchasing hell trying to figure out information about this product Apple offers for people like me who need more than 5 copies.

Yes, I realize I can buy five boxes like probably 99% of people here do. But I don’t want to and there seems to be a product Apple offers for corporate purchasers like me and can help me understand all the implications of going the VL route. I’m just trying to find someone who has experience VOLUME LICENSING Final Cut. But all help and comments are appreciated. Thanks

[Mark Raudonis]

Stefan,

We have a volume license for all of our seats (approx 100).

So, I can tell you it IS possible to buy a commercial volume license. However, as you pointed out, the upgrade path is tied to “maintenance” which essentially means you’re buying the software over again every year or so.

All things considered, it would be cheaper to just go retail. Same thing with the OS licenses. We did a volume “business” license for all our OS needs… would have been much cheaper just to buy individual consumer seats.

As for “breaking through” to the right person… can’t help you there. Maybe call Steve’s office and ask them to point you in the right direction???? 🙂

Mark

[Stefan Delanie]

Thanks Mark, what you said was exactly what I was looking for. And I wasn’t looking for help breaking through. Apple is a very different and special company from Dell, IBM, and Microsoft but they aren’t much different when it comes to issues like this.

Thank you for the analysis of the Final Cut licensing. That is exactly what I wanted to get confirmation on. It is a little insane that the only upgrade path is to pay $900 for 3 years of upgrades which, given the release history of the product, will probably translate out to $450/upgrade.

At the point I am certain of what I’m looking at in terms of cost/benefits of a VLA vs cost/benefits of a retail-box solution, it seems like a retail box solution is probably going to work out better (as the other posters said but did not offer reasoning for) since the price of all that licensing elegance I spoke about earlier is now about $800/seat. FAIL.

Thanks again!

[Craig Alan]

Interesting. So that’s the model that Apple turned to when they (just) revamped their education site license.

https://www.apple.com/education/licensingprogram/

Unlike the commercial versions, there is no upgrade price for FCS education version.

Typically the last two versions of the education FCS will amount to the same as one version retail and one upgrade. In essence, no discount at all.

The new ed site agreement requires a yearly fee that would cover any new versions. The problem is most schools do not have an on-going budget to maintain computers and software. Or anything else for that matter.

Each year, media teachers need and hope to get funding. So you’ll have labs all over the country with expired license agreements. And this includes the basic OS with Ilife too.

So Apple anticipates this by adding that when you renew the next year, it will be backdated to when the last yearly period expired. I wonder if they will try to crack down on expired licenses?

I think they are shooting themselves in the foot with all this. Some admins and funding sources will simply tell media teachers to use window-based systems.

Or Apple may be being very smart and forcing educational institutions to start budgeting like the real world and plan for a yearly investment. This will mean that Apple will control the versions installed at educational institutions and since they will all be on the same OS and FCP versions, it will be easier for apple to trouble shoot and maintain their user base. Maybe they are hoping the funding sources will not balk since labs already have Apple computers in place and trained teachers as well. Time will tell.

The alternative is to buy individual Ed versions of the software (for more per seat) and upgrade when you find funding for it. In large labs this gets very costly.

OSX 10.5.7; MAC Book PRO (EARLY 2008); Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30, Sony vx2000/PD170, Canon xl2; Pana, Sony, and Canon consumer cams; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.