my guess to what will happen to the suite

[Stephan Walfridsson]

I think you are basically correct.

My guess is also that color is dead as a separate product. I actually think that the revamped colorcorrection tool we saw in the sneak peek is everything that is left of Color.

Motion will probably live on as a separate application, and depending on the number of sales on App Store may or may not have a long and prosperous future.

Soundtrack Pro is more of a problem. They’ve already moved some of the film/video-centric features (eg. noise reduction) to FCPX and Apple already has Logic as their prime audio tool. So I think Soundtrack Pro may disappear quite soon.

DVD Studio Pro is in direct opposition of Mr Jobs view of the future (iCloud) and developing it further would be the same as creating “a faster horse”.

Compressor will live on as a stand alone conversion tool.

Thats my two cents.

[Devin Crane]

Yeah Soundtrack Pro is done for,IMHO. However I would not be surprised if you see a Motion/Shake hybrid of sorts pop up. DVDSP was dead several Studio’s ago and will probably not be supported any longer.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

Well, don’t forget; the more pieces of software they can produce, the more revenue streams they will have. That’s a motivator – they stand to make around 1.5 – 2.0 billion off FCPX in the first year alone.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Stephan Walfridsson]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “they stand to make around 1.5 – 2.0 billion off FCPX in the first year alone”

Yeah, but that’s less than 2% of Apple’s total revenue. With over 50% of their revenue coming from iPhones and iPads they have a strong incentive to focus their resources on many other things apart from the studio apps.They can use FCPX to lure more people over to mac and sell more computers, but spending money on the other Studio apps that only benefit a tiny fraction of even the FCPX users is just money wasted for Apple.

[Devin Crane] “However I would not be surprised if you see a Motion/Shake hybrid of sorts pop up.”

Sure, if they figure out a way to add “awesome” and “jaw dropping” features that makes hardcore compositing easy for the average prosumer I’m sure they would try. It definitely would be interesting to see what they could come up with. But after dumping Shake they have fallen so far behind both AE on the low end and Nuke on the high end that it would take a lot of money, sweat and a miracle to catch up.

Stephan

[Aindreas Gallagher]

that’s not quite right – revenue versus profit is different for a Mac Pro or an iPad assembled in multiple locations using exotic materials than it is for a software play developed in house and dropped onto the appstore as a pure profit play with no distribution costs. If say 1.5 billion is the revenue -then say, conservatively, 1 billion of that is pure profit – that billion would represent 20% of Apple’s total profit for the last quarter – over the financial year it would run to about 4-5 % of apple’s total profit for the year. that’s not shabby. As there are no material or distribution costs, its all cream – if they can do it three times, say with Motion and Colour too, or Soundtrack Pro – then you’re getting into quite a serious revenue stream for apple.

Hence I think they would be strongly motivated to keep a few other pieces of the studio in play.

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Richard Herd]

They don’t have to “catch up.” They just have to integrate a tool set into the app. And it’s usability and results have to make the user decide “hey I can just do that here, don’t need to round trip.”

For instance:

— Titles
— pan and scan (Ken Burns effect)
— glowy shimmering travel matte type things
— blending modes

[Stephan Walfridsson]

I think you and I have very different expectations when it comes to the capabilities of a “Motion/Shake” hybrid.

/Stephan

[Richard Herd]

I hated motion. Never used Shake. For mograph, I use After Effects, and unless they integrate expressions they’ll never tap that market. Also to make a difference for me they’d need to integrate animated cameras and 2.5d.

[Stephan Walfridsson]

Aindreas, you are absolutely right, but what I am saying is that I’m not convinced that everybody who bought the Studio package will invest in the other separate applications. If Apple takes the basic/most needed features from Color, Motion and Soundtrack Pro and incorporates them into FCPX then my (absolutely uninformed) guess is that only around say 20% of the FCPX users will have a need for the extra features that the other applications bring. So the revenue and profit would be substantially lower. So either they have to sell them for a much higher price than FCPX, or sell them dirt cheap to increase volume which they of course could since they have more or less zero distribution costs. But I don’t think apple has any interest in developing niche products, if they can satisfy 80% of the users I doubt they will spend much resources reaching the last 20%.

But I may be wrong, it’s happened before.

Stephan

[Aindreas Gallagher]

yeah, I’m really not sure at all what’ll happen here either – and Apple do like their 80/20 ratio after all..

http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics