Interesting take on Apple’s view of “Pros”

[Jeremy Garchow]

I’m not defending FCPx, but:

Isn’t that how FCP 1 started? Everyone laughed and thought it was a joke.

It grew, got 3rd party hardware support which brought professional deck connectivity and uncompressed codecs when Apple didn’t provide them, and then it grew some more. A lot more.

FCP up until about v5 was still WAY cheaper than hardware tied system from Avid and Media 100. So much so that eventually, all other NLE companies bent to a more software centric approach and provided cheaper hardware. It almost killed M100 completely, and Avid wasn’t doing really well for a while there either.

If it weren’t for third party support, FCP wouldn’t have been that “pro” either and would have been for firewire DV based products only.

So, this should be no surprise. FCP/Apple never really had the pro in mind did they? Yet, a lot of people used their software with third party hardware in professional environments around the globe.

I don’t know for sure, but I feel this story isn’t over.

Jeremy

[James Culbertson]

Yep. FCP v1 was considered a toy.

Certainly Premiere Pro was considered a toy fairly recently by most, but is now being considered by “pros” as an alternative to FCPX.

After Effects was considered a toy in the mid to late ’90s.

MiniDV was also considered non-pro.

I wonder what “pros” thought of the first AVID release?

Same story repeated over and over.

I wouldn’t want to bet at this point that FCPX isn’t history repeating.

James

[Tangier Clarke]

Perhaps we can think of this release like the release of the Wii. Nintendo decidedly realized and enacted on the fact that they didn’t have to make the most powerful system. Frankly there wasn’t enough market penetration of HD televisions to warrant the expense of a heftier system. They decided to rethink how gameplay happens; the human interaction and experience. Low and behold, Wii sales trumped PS3 and XBOX 360 combined for a while and yet it was a technically inferior system. It didn’t have to do everything, be the most powerful, play movies, or be loved by hardcore gamers to qualify it as a competitive system. Nintendo brought people to gaming who never played and never thought they would. Nintendo shocked the world and many nay-sayers with their inferior-system-that-could and just like FCPX, people screamed bloody murder about how Nintendo screwed up big time and the screamed very prematurely

This is perhaps one way to perceive Apple’s FCPX and if you really think about it, it is what happened with Final Cut Pro prior to X. FCPX represents a new paradigm in editorial and it’s relationship to digital acquisition, organization, and delivery. It is a now application that is unfinished with it’s sites on the future. The old stuff will be rolled in later or brought to you by a third party near you.

Apple (in my opinion) did not abandon the pro. I can’t make that assertion yet and I am actively using FCPX by the way. Rather, Apple built an application that can be applied to many differing “pro” spaces that’s more accessible, prepared for the future, and of course to sell it’s hardware.

Sure I’m not happy about a few things that just really make FCPX an inconvenience, but so far I am really enjoying it and significantly more productive with it.

Tangier

[Jim Giberti]

Regarding Tangler Clarke – to paraphrase Burt Reynolds from Boogie Nights, “that’s a great name”.
And I agree with your general take on X.

[Dennis Radeke]

The ‘democratization’ of technology has always been one of the cornerstones of this industry IMO…

[Ian Bailey]

Initially I was positive about FCP X and could understand why Apple was moving in that direction. However, when so many useful and easy to use features from FCP, STP and Color have been lost, it’s time to be polite but firm: https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro.html

[Robert Brown]

I think most people realize fcpx probably has some cool stuff and God knows what the story will be in 5 years but the turmoil is really just from the way Apple decided to do this. After years of buildup with huge events at NAB for example, where every year for a while they would announce more and more new features to make FCP compete with Avid, they finally ditched that game and almost everybody they managed to get on their side. Kind of like a kid taking his ball home so nobody else could play.

Maybe they do “revolutionize” the prosumer market. But I think the bread and butter pro market is slower to change as people aren’t interested in a whole new way to edit as most of us are sick of learning new software. We just want everything to work and work well and also software that plays well with others.

[Michael Belanger]

Let’s get one thing straight.. FCP is a tool for editors just like any word processing program is to a writer. I don’t even think the idiots at Microsoft would be so dumb as to release a new version that made all of your previously saved manuscripts UNOPENABLE. That is just plain stupid and of course it goes downhill from there. It is plain arrogance and ignorance on Apple’s part. If they want to capture the Prosumer market then release the damn thing at CES not at the National Association of Broadcasters. Are they simply stupid or psychophrenic … wanting to appeal to a mass audience but releasing to the pros at NAB. People give Apple way to much credit… They are a fat and bloated institution that acts like they are hip and modern but are the General Motors of the computer industry.. All the computer parts are made for Apple by the real heavy weights and Apple is essentially a design, marketing and assembly company. Now they can add top heavy and meandering to a descriptive list. They buy Shake and kill it… They buy Color and then kill it… They never seem to finish what they start. SO I have little hope that Apple will ever develop completely.
If I were a betting man I would say Apple will never gain back the pro market now or EVER… There is just too much ill will and bad blood between the pros and Apple now. AVID and Adobe will clean up.
As for the comments from the prosumer that wrote that Adobe AE was just a toy they really show their lack of knowledge because truly AE and most Adobe products were truly pro and had great features and performance .. Render times were long because of the hardware not the software. The quality of what was rendered was truly great.
ALL HAIL ADOBE AND AVID .. APPLE YOU ARE DEAD TO ME !!!

[Dennis Kane]

If your business is broadcast TV or high end film production, FCPX probably is not for you. You can stay with FCP 7 or move to Avid or Adobe and continue. These two groups are no longer the main drivers of video editing for Apple. I personally am not in TV or high end film production, although I too make a living editing. I am a “pro ” also because my profession relies on editing. I find many of the dedicated applications like Color , Resolve and ProTools to be too complicated and not necessary. I am very happy with FCPX and I know I will be more pleased in the future as the program matures.

[Bret Williams]

Always had RS-422 built in. Even if you had a dv deck you could run a betacam through it as your capture card. Or use a targa which was as good as Avid’s offerings. It also was much more advanced in otter ways. It had Rez independence, layered ps import, composite modes, real nesting/precomps, and ae plugin support. Right from the beginning it was no toy. It lacked some niceties like an audio mix tool or any sort of media management and super high end features like film cuts (which was an add on to composer anyway) but it played real nice with the post environment at the time. In fact, with everyone still on AVR77 systems cuz Avid screwed them with no suitable Meridien upgrade path, FCP had potentially better image quality when you consider it brought in DVCam natively via fw, and even Meriden had to recompress it both on capture and then again on layback to tape. It was no toy IMHO.