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Goodbye FCP
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He could change my mind if he could provide a past example that demonstrates Apple’s desire to be in post production and professional products for the long haul.
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I can still open a project from an AVBV avid from the 90’s, without making it so it can’t be reopened on the original machine. A testament to the thought that went into Avid’s original database and project structure. A project is a folder at the finder level and every single bin within the project is a new file. This is why Avid excels at shared projects, everybody has read/write access to the project (a folder) but only the first person who opens a bin (a file) has read/write everybody else has read only. Very elegant.
Chris
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On the other hand, Avid is making incremental changes to address the needs and desires of the new breed of mouse-based (ie: FCP) editors out there, while trying to appease their long-time customers. They’re not getting is 100% correct, but they’re trying. The next step is a 64 bit engine for speed and memory. But bear in mind, Avid will already play and cut .r3d natively, no transcoding needed. It’s realtime engine is one of the best out there. Adobe is making a big deal about their Mercury playback engine, but I can get more formats and more effects to play natively on MC5.5 than I can in CS5.5.
I’d argue that Avid doesn’t NEED to make the kind of changes that Apple also didn’t NEED to make but just did. Avid’s metadata engine is already incredibly strong, they just didn’t make as big a marketing deal out of it as Apple. They also invented the compressed HD codec for NLE editing as a matter of course, because their customers needed it. Then a year later Apple released ProRes and the world went crazy like God had just shined his graces on the editing world.
Avid knows what their professional customers need and they work to deliver.
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[Will Griffith] “He could change my mind if he could provide a past example that demonstrates Apple’s desire to be in post production and professional products for the long haul.”
They bragged about broadcast and post facility NLE market share at the event where FCP X was announced. Had Apple not been interested in the pro market in the long run, they wouldn’t have bothered with a long and no doubt expensive rewrite of Final Cut in the first place.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny] “Had Apple not been interested in the pro market in the long run, they wouldn’t have bothered with a long and no doubt expensive rewrite of Final Cut in the first place.”
I will agree it was long.. but it is yet to be extensive since half of it is missing. 🙂
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[Chris Conlee] “I’d argue that Avid doesn’t NEED to make the kind of changes that Apple also didn’t NEED to make but just did. “
But that’s precisely my point — Apple just did it. The holy grail is a fully-modern foundation and workflow features supporting a robust ecosystem. Having done the former, and being virtually assured of selling enough copies to make the latter happen as soon as they add the required features, Apple is probably 85% of the way there with the work they’ve done at this point.
Apple prefers fast transitions to slow incremental ones. We saw this with e.g. Microsoft’s approach to transitioning to a modern OS (took basically six years) vs. Apple’s (took about two). It’s more intensely painful in the short run, but it leads to a less compromised product. (I know the Avid fans will reject this out of hand, but to folks who haven’t been using it for years, Media Composer, while it sure does have a lot of features, has kind of turned into a confusing tangle of a program these days.)
About the only way it’s possible for Apple to not have a significant advantage in the coming years is if they really do decide to exit the high-end market, and e.g. never implement video I/O or features for interfacing with external apps. But I’d consider that extremely unlikely. First, because it doesn’t make sense to come this far and then stop, and secondly, because we already have some specific indications that it’s not the case.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Fair enough. As I’ve indicated in other posts, Avid is my preferred NLE by a wide margin, but I own licensed copies of FCS 3 and CS5.5. I’ll also buy FCP X at some point so I have all the tools. As a long time computer geek, I find the whole thing very interesting.
I gotta say, though, I’d rather be dependent upon Avid solutions right now than FCP solutions. Maybe the long term will prove me wrong. Who knows.
The thing Apple did do was show the rest of the world a bunch of cool things, and set the bar in terms of speed and background rendering etc. I’d be surprised to not see some of that creep into other apps that maintain the editing paradigm that people know, use, love, and feel didn’t need to be changed.
We’ll see.
Chris
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You guys are hilarious. Have you never ever been through a 1.0 release? DO NOT BUY FCPX yet. Wait 6 months or so and then make the move. Right now they have what they want, a very healthy population of testers and such. Its easy to say, well they should have tested it in house for all foreseeable problems. Thats just not realistic with a program this complex. In addition, I think their point was for you to get used to the interface and then the more advanced tools will make their way into software. IT IS NOT AN UPGRADE TO FCP7. Would you guys please get that out of your mind.
I want everyone to take a DEEP breath and realize that your FCP7 didn’t quit working at 5:30am yesterday morning. Your brain told you it did due to FCPX coming out. Double click on it and I bet it loads up.
Who in their right minds would EVEN upgrade their software from a 1.5 to 2.0 when major projects were on the line. If you raised your hand, then you need to stick to lining up film clips and leave the software to the programmers. The simple fact you guys are going ape shit bonkers right now tells me that either A: You are just a general complainer or B: you have never been through a 1.0 release or C: Part of both, which in that case you definitely need to roll your belly out from under desk, pick it up so that you can breathe in deep because your brain is deprived of oxygen.
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[Buddy Couch] “I want everyone to take a DEEP breath and realize that your FCP7 didn’t quit working at 5:30am yesterday morning.”
Nobody is saying it did. FCP 7 will be running here for some time.
However this IS a response to years of Apple behaving the way they do. -
I work for a company that makes 3D modeling software and a wide range of components that make it up come from other companies. I am not saying what you professional editors do is simple by any means, however in comparison to software design / implementation on the scale of Final Cut Pro X. Its like comparing learning your ABC’s with writing string theory down on paper in mathematical form.
I am NOT an apple fanboi or whatever you like to call it. I am just saying relax and realize that Apple is working hard on addressing your concerns. Do you seriously think they are this blind?
I am disappointed with the software myself in regards to rendering. Why is it still not flawless like Vegas Pro is. I do not have to render each time I apply an effect in Vegas. I can even see my effects on the fly in IMOVIE instantly without render. What is the deal with this “PRO” software having to render each time. FCP7 did it constantly and FCPX does it still in background. /gasp
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