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Is FCP X part of your five year business plan?
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[TImothy Auld] “It’s an investment in where the technology is going. How do you not see that?”
I think you are using those words in a way that may not accurately address what you’re trying to say.
What do you mean “investment”? Learning the software? If you feel that the software needs an “investment” of learning time, then you should buy it. Unless $300 is too much for you to spend to do that. If you think the price is the investment, well, that can’t be it because you were smarmy about my point on that, right?
What do you mean by “technology is going”? That everything is going to the Mac OS? That everything is going to the magnetic timeline? What explicitly? 4K? FCPX isn’t the only NLE that can work with 4K.
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My five-year plan has the peasants back on the steppes harvesting, and increased steel production for milk bottles (aka, tanks). World Dominance by Year 7 is a forgone conclusion.
Seriously, with the way technology moves these days, if I can’t get a ROI inside of 3 years on anything but lenses, it’s a poor purchase. If someone releases the BSSB (BestSinceSlicedBread) NLE on OSX, I’ll drop X and switch. I do wish to stay on OSX for various reasons, but my NLE choice is what works for me, now. And after finding it wasn’t an issue to re-learn the mechanics of driving an NLE (Legacy -> X), I’m not concerned if I need to re-learn again in the future.
We’ve had discussions here how we can’t “trust” any software vendor. Inevitably they’ll do what’s best for them, not each of us individually.
As for my business planning, it has little or nothing to do with either software or hardware. It has to do with content and partnerships.
“Constituo, ergo sum”
Bob Woodhead / Atlanta
CMX-Quantel-Avid-FCP-Premiere-3D-AFX-Crayola
“What a long strange trip it’s been….” -
OP:
The program seems to be awesome. You can get editing right away and work gets done fast.You are working in both a standard editor and a composition program again, getting work done fast.
Problem is, you cannot save it unless you close the program and re-open it. Otherwise you will have to wait 15-minutes for the software to save it. Here is the question: why would anyone code the software like that? That alone speaks volumes of where apple is.
Not to mention, you could not use the software unless you had a full blown i7 iMac and even then it stuttered and, in a word, ridiculous. The new mac pro is set up for it. Years after releasing fcpx.
Bob W,
With you on this one.Andrew,
Good assessment. PPro could have run with the ball to the TD zone, but they didn’t, did they. Now why would they do that? Indeed.Brett S.
They have constantly improved? They have constantly added back in what they took out for one. And it is still lacking. Huge.Gary H,
Who are you? Investment: ‘putting time and effort into something’. Maybe you can leave your address and we will all put together a fund and send you a dictionary. -
[TImothy Auld] “should I trust Apple for the next six months, let alone the next five years?”
My question back is that if you put your trust in any company you’re making a mistake.
I have very good reason not to trust Avid or Adobe either.
I do trust that Apple intends to use FCPX as part of a strategy to sell Macs.My business model is to be nimble enough to change as companies change their directions. Long gone are the days where $100,000 plus systems getting abandoned wreaking financial havoc to a facility.
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Er. FCP X has paid for itself many times over already because of increased productivity. I can give the client a better product quicker and that’s already got me a couple of extra clients.
If Apple pull it and don’t develop it I’ll still use it over Pre Pro or Avid until it falls over or if something better comes along. If that happens in less than five years I’ll be impressed.
To be fair as a one man shop my economics are different to a post house.
Michael Sanders
London Based DP/Editor -
For me it seems my main workhorse will be the CC (creative cloud) at least for the next few years simply because I constantly use Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects… and being proficient with those other ‘industry standard’ apps is part of my plan. But in saying that I am quite keen to also have FCPX on my system as a few higher end cinematographers I know are using it to cut their own material.
PS. I’ve just updated a personal website project https://www.thedigitalslice.com (currently just a survey) that I’m hoping will be useful in gathering data about who’s using different NLE’s… if you wanna add your data, would be much appreciated!
Filmmaker | Motion Graphic Artist
http://www.saltmedia.net
http://www.TheDigitalSlice.com (beta) -
I am keeping my eye on Resolve for the moment. At present it is not meant to be a NLE like Avid, FCP, Premiere or any other NLE out there. It does like it could be a competitor to Smoke should it continue to go where I think it is going. That would be a great thing. Resolve is powerful, gets the job done and could very well become even better. Interesting times are just around the corner.
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“My question back is that if you put your trust in any company you’re making a mistake.”
“I do trust that Apple intends to use FCPX as part of a strategy to sell Macs.”
Well it appears that skepticism has it’s limits.
With corporations, I think the best practice is to look at past behavior. Apple’s track record is bad enough to raise doubts in any reasonable person. Of course Avid and Adobe are not angels, but at least their business model is narrow enough to suggest some restraint in alienating their customer base. Apple on the other hand has no such inhibitions. They could drop FCPX tomorrow and the negative impact, if any, on their corporate health would be relatively small.
Gaining true proficiency in an NLE is not a trivial task. It takes a lot of time, effort, and often additional expenses beyond just the cost of the NLE software. I think the number of editors still on FCP7 are a testament to this fact. Like it or not, the selection of your primary editing tool requires a unavoidable level of trust in who you buy it from.
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[TImothy Auld] ” Is FCP X part of your five year business plan?”
Yes. So is CC. And Maya. And Logic Pro X. And Office 365 with email hosting. 4k monitors. And macs. Lots of macs. Plus, Thunderbolt RAIDs, IP over Thunderbolt, multiple RAIDs broken down between clients so that servers don’t get bogged down with several people working on the same RAID, etc. More talented people are also part of the plan. The number one thing on the list is exploring new avenues of creative and challenging myself and the team to never settle for passable work.
What’s not in the plan 5 years down the road? Pro Tools. Avid. PCI anything. Thunderbolt displays and monitors that aren’t 4k or Retina. RAID cards. Spinning drives. Tape.
Sheesh – in 5 years FCPX will be phenomenal. I’m not saying it’s perfect now, not by any means, but there’s enough good stuff about it now that keeps me mostly pleased with it’s progress. I think most of it’s issues right now are related to 10.9.1 being a bit buggy. Very hopeful that 10.9.2 will drop this week and right the boat a bit. FCPX 10.1.2 should also help out some, but I have no idea when that will come out.
Personally I think Apple is very focused on this industry. More so now than any time in the last 5 years I’d say.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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[Patrick Murphy] “Of course Avid and Adobe are not angels, but at least their business model is narrow enough to suggest some restraint in alienating their customer base. Apple on the other hand has no such inhibitions. They could drop FCPX tomorrow and the negative impact, if any, on their corporate health would be relatively small. “
You may want to re-examine the business models of Avid and Adobe. Media Composer and Symphony are a very small part of Avid’s revenues. They’re a hardware sales service and support company.
Adobe could drop Premiere and it would likely not cause anyone to shift away from Photoshop, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, their Server software.
Maybe you just perceive them as NLE companies but they’re not and in both cases it’s a small part of their business.
Apple is all about commodification and dependencies and FCPX keeps users in the Apple hardware and software services eco-system.
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