just a suggestion, Apple/Adobe

[Dennis Radeke]

Anything I say will simply be a tease because I cannot and will not comment on future products.

I will say that a) we do understand color (Photoshop, InDesign, Lightroom, After Effects, Illustrator) and b) know that more sophisticated color effects/solutions would be good for our customers.

See, it was a tease…

That said, I think there are a LOT of great solutions out there for Premiere Pro users today. They include:

– Premiere Pro’s 3-way color corrector: the UI is clunky, but functionally, it is quite good.
– After Effects Color Finesse – bring your Premiere timeline into After Effects and grade it there. Finish and render via AME…
– Red Giant’s Colorista II
– Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Mojo/Looks/Suite (pick which version you like)
– the forthcoming DaVinci Resolve Lite (FREE!)
– more expensive dedicated grading systems

Cheers,
Dennis

[Walter Soyka]

[Dennis Radeke] “We (Adobe) believe that we need to hit both sides (high-end post & broadcast and education) simultaneously. Broadcasters need talent, students need jobs. It just makes sense.”

Dennis, I want to thank you (and Todd) for your many contributions here. I recognize you can’t always comment on future product development specifics, but the fact that you can and do articulate positions like you have in this thread is a welcome contrast to the stony silence from some other developers.

Of course, all of your direct product-specific help is appreciated as well.

Thanks again.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Bret Williams]

I don’t know much about your shop, but I would figure the bigger the shop, the more the situation is like yours. Unfortunately I think Apple sees that the larger shops are on the way out. Or possibly they want to push them out. And you’re doing what you should do. Vote with your feet. As just the little guy editing corporate stuff, I’m pretty much all mac, and not in a position to do that yet.

[Tim Wilson]

[Dennis Radeke] “I agree Tim – this should be a hit with users all over. I spoke to Blackmagic about the details and for a ‘free’ product, it should be downright amazing.”

Not that Adobe couldn’t create a marvelous standalone color grading application if that was on the agenda. 🙂

It’s just my opinion that Apple Color is most emphatically not it.

I also suspect that buying it and trying to turn it into something that meets contemporary standards would cause more trouble, and make vastly less money, than it would be worth — even for a company like Adobe that has made a couple of clever acquisitions this century….

[Chris Borjis]

[Dennis Radeke] “[Craig Alan] “Adobe could develop a 64-bit FCS 4″

We did – it’s called Premiere Pro CS5/5.5. ;-)”

I was going to say that!

[Michael Hendrix]

Adobe doesn’t need Final Cut. Premiere, with a few more tweaks, is already there.

Here is what I want (aside from the few tweaks), a name change! Personally, I don’t fully buy into “I edit on ______ so I am great.” But the Premiere name still carries a prosumer reputation. I work for a video department of a large corporation, we run 8 seats of FCP. Have started the discussion of “What’s next?” if Apple doesn’t develop FCP X to where it needs to be. We also run 8 seats of Adobe. My first arguement, we can switch tomorrow if we wanted too! Not a dime spent. My next 100 arguements are all of the features and functionality. But when I say Premiere, everyone goes, huh? The next question is, “when’s the last time you opened the application?”. “A few years…” is the response.

So… continue to develop a great product… and next NAB, announce the new Adobe X (wouldnt that trip people out).

[David Mathis]

I do love Colorista II but I still think that Adobe taking over Color would make the Production Premium even a more valuable tool set. I will continue to cross my fingers and knock on wood that Color will somehow find its place in Adobe CS 5.5 or later versions.

[Craig Alan]

Here’s my logic.

There would be huge interest in FCP 8 even if were just FCP 7’s interface/feature set with 64 bit and background rendering. It is by far the most famous NLE. FCS was the best deal in town.

As for Premiere: Why didn’t FC users switch over when FCS fell behind in terms of raw speed and modern architecture? If the Premiere suite had already surpassed FCS, then why were the vast majority of FCS users waiting for FCP 8/FCS 4 and not moving over to Adobe?

Color was a selling point for FCS considering that DaVinci was a much bigger investment until well … now. Color was free and it wasn’t specifically designed to need a control surface. But mostly, I think, it’s the need, or the perceived need, to be on an industry standard app. Premiere has not crossed that line yet. Maybe it is crossing over now.

I’m not saying I know. Maybe perception was the only reason. Maybe by version 5, Premiere’s interface had caught up. But I always got the impression that FCP users felt Premiere was catching up but hadn’t equaled FCP’s interface, even if it had passed FCP in terms of speed and native format support.

I think Apple is underestimating the influence the current crop of pros has on the upcoming generation. If future editors, producers, videographers, etc are doing anything, they are researching/thinking through decisions on-line. Can’t get much bigger than the Cow for this. If all the well-respected current gen are telling the next gen that FCP X is not for pros, then they’ll go learn whatever the pros recommend. Same with schools. They need to teach what the industry is using now.

Many more golf clubs and baseball bats are sold to weekend warriors than pro athletes. Weekend warriors want the brand the pros use. If they can afford it, the exact same equipment. A $300 app is not an impulse price point. Anyone interested is going to read about it on-line first.

FCS is used at most High School, College and professional training facilities because along with AVID it is the software that the pros use. Now the debate is to switch, at least for the time being, to either AVID or Adobe. For those who are already comfortable with AVID, it’s a no brainer. For those that aren’t, Premiere is looking attractive because it has copied much of FCP’s interface and is compatible with old FCP projects.

What started me thinking about this were posts like

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/335/10177
“Go try Premiere for a week. You’ll find it isn’t anything to get excited about. It’s trying to be FCP, but it’s not. I’m bewildered that the company that brings us Photoshop and AE can’t make a better editor.

Try Avid, its software from a company that knows a lot about Video. But not quite so much about software usability and interface design unfortunately. But it adds to the mystique because it’s so ridiculous to learn. It too has been trying to become an FCP esque interface in 5 and 5.5 iterations. But now they just have more buttons and keystrokes to accomplish a task than ever.”

I haven’t tried the latest release of Premiere. I tried a version 3 release on a XP system and although I use XP at work I just am not comfortable on windows. I have tried AVID 3.x and I noticed how rock solid it was and fast. But I did find the interface less Mac-like. There also seems to be less support for it in terms of being a student of it. I can do a search on goggle about almost any aspect of FCP and find a ton of links at all levels of professionalism (where as AVID is really just pros).

That said, I have loaded Avid 5.5 on a Mac pro and will give myself a chance to learn it as I finish projects in FCP 7 and figure out what to do with old projects.

Considering Apple acquired FC and DVDSP and COLOR from other companies, I don’t think it is without precedent. Adobe certainly has the resources to buy FC, but I agree that there is no way Apple would sell. They have never sold anything as far as I know. They want to control the future. The engine they built might be very impressive but the FCPX interface is not being embraced.

I will be looking for a solution of what to order in my next grant proposal. I teach a lab that serves over 150 students at a time in 16-20 production teams. If the industry moves to Premiere then I will consider it along with Media Composer. That might seem superficial, but my grants depend on teaching beginners on industry standard equipment (practices).

My original post was just, for me, a fun idea. What if FCS was not dead but passed on to another player that already had AE and Photoshop? If Premiere is already there, fine with me, but I haven’t heard this from the chorus of FCP users. And if that were true, than why would anyone even care that FCS is EOL?

OSX 10.5.8; MacBookPro4,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz
; Camcorders: Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.