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my guess to what will happen to the suite
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[Craig Seeman] “Paul, that’s what I meant by common timeline integration.”
Hi
It all comes down to semantics 😉[Craig Seeman] “Motion specific assets…”
I reckon those are gone. In future everything will be a shared asset.[Craig Seeman] “I’m not sure what’s likely given that Apple hasn’t mentioned or shown…”
I reckon Apple have been very shrewd and focussed with their Sneak Peek.
They knew there would be a barrage of reaction (mostly anti) from the existing post production fraternity about the changes in the new software, and have carefully dropped enough hints for the most forward thinking brains (like Larry Jordan and Philip Hodgetts) to get some sort of damage limitation out there before the official FCP X announcement.
Which is what is happening all over the FCP-focussed parts of the web.
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[Paul Dickin] “I reckon those are gone. In future everything will be a shared asset.”
Semantics but that’s not really “gone” though. It may not be ready for the June release though.[Paul Dickin] “I reckon Apple have been very shrewd and focussed with their Sneak Peek.”
I really think the whole thing is a work in progress. That’s one reason why they were showing a February beta (likely being the most stable). It’s not like the June release ends development nor does it mean a two year wait for the next major feature set roll out given the new App Store distribution model.
[Paul Dickin] “They knew there would be a barrage of reaction (mostly anti) from the existing post production fraternity about the changes in the new software”
The ultimate focus group actually. They didn’t show the “work in progress” aspect and, with the response, they can see how to prioritize the progress.
[Paul Dickin] ” carefully dropped enough hints for the most forward thinking brains (like Larry Jordan and Philip Hodgetts)”
Larry has very limited information (saw the February private demo) but seems to have some access to Apple. Philip is just using his own insight as he’s said he has no access. Steve Martin of Ripple Training on the other hand is a beta tester and I suspect will be doing the first “official” tutorials, quite possibly the intros that will be on the Apple site.
[Paul Dickin] “some sort of damage limitation out there before the official FCP X announcement.”
I”m not sure I’ve seen any damage control as of yet. I don’t think there’s been any real damage yet. Just wild speculation. I think all those, except the most rash, claiming to jump ship are really waiting and that’s EXACTLY what Apple wanted to happen, given major purchase decision are made as a result of NAB. Apple put the jumpers on hold IMHO.
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[Oliver Peters] “happy to concede”
Never ever ever will you here any CEO say “happy to concede.”
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[Paul Dickin] “Obviously they have got to ‘make-this-all-happen’, which may take a while.
Possibly until 2013 according to some rumours….”So, stick with an antiquated version of FCP until the new version restores the efficient workflow I had before? I suppose I’ll need to download the app and do some good ole-fashioned efficiency studies to see if it’s quicker for me to transcode but use existing motion templates, versus native editing plus title generation for each project. Of course, it’s all wild speculation and they may not have gotten rid of motion templates anyway.
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[Craig Seeman] “I think all those, except the most rash, claiming to jump ship are really waiting and that’s EXACTLY what Apple wanted to happen, given major purchase decision are made as a result of NAB. Apple put the jumpers on hold IMHO.”
Very true.
It’s quite funny how divided our initial response to this sneek peak has been. Some see the proverbial glass as half empty and others as half full. Everybody speculating wildly as we don’t really know anything except that the flavor of what is in the glass is new and presumably “improved”. Probably to the taste of some and disgust of others.
Some here on the Cow really give Apple the benefit of the doubt, others just doubt. My personal point of view is that I’ve seen Apple release shiny, innovative, gorgeous things before that were in many ways lacking in features compared to the competition. Just think of the iPhone, a truly new way of thinking of a mobile phone (well some had thought of similar ideas before but Apple obviously set the standard). But the first iPhone was not top of the line in features or specs. The camera sucked, no 3g, lousy batterylife and much more. And they are still behind in many areas. Yet A LOT of people bought it and keep buying the new iPhones, including me. Apple with all their marketing wisdom were able to make the iPhone a success story despite all of it’s shortcomings. It’s actually what they are really good at, isn’t it?
I think FCPX looks very promising, 64 bit and background rendering are things that I’ll really appreciate. But I don’t think that Apple has discovered the holy grail of editing when creating FCPX, and I am convinced that many things that were present in FCS3 will be missing, and missed by a lot of people. Building new software from the ground up is difficult and many features will have been pushed way down on their list of priorities. Some will even be gone forever because they don’t make business sense to Apple. And history shows that they have no qualms about skipping features or killing apps if it makes business sense to them.
Some things will reappear in future updates, but software as complex as FCP and the other studio Apps aren’t easy to update every 3-6 months or so. Bug fixes sure, but not adding major features. Beta testing and development takes a lot of time. The AppStore distribution model isn’t that different from the software updates that we are used too. And we all know how hesitant we are to install those.
Stephan
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[Richard Herd] “Never ever ever will you here any CEO say “happy to concede.””
Well, “say it”… No. It’s a good philosophical position to take, but it isn’t true in actual practice. Apple is an 80/20 company that is focused on delivering a great user experience to a broad market. The focus is on broad, not deep. Just compare Numbers versus Excel. Both are a nice spreadsheet app for the typical user, but Excel blows away Numbers when it comes to the needs of a power user. Just try running a 3,000 entry spreadsheet through the two and it becomes obvious. Jobs knows what a niche company looks like. He founded NeXT and pulled Apple out of the pit. That isn’t his focus.
FCP X looks like it appeals to a much broader potential user base than FCP 7. It will have a lot of advanced technology and very cool features, but it’s unlikely to be a high-end leader, like Autodesk or Quantel or Filmlight. After all, FCP 7 greatly lags behind Premiere Pro (and even Media Composer) in flat out media performance and it lags behind Media Composer and DS is pure advanced features. So FCP X has to leapfrog them for what a broader editor base wants an NLE to do. It will likely do that and be a leader in the mainstream desktop NLE business.
Apple has done a brilliant job of balancing R&D investment against mass market products. But it certainly has been quite willing to concede sales when products hit too small of a share or don’t warrant the level of investment Apple has to continue to put into them. Prime examples are Shake, Xserve RAID and Xserve.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Stephan Walfridsson] “Some see the proverbial glass as half empty and others as half full.”
But even the people who claim the glass is half empty will buy FCPX at $299. If “the marketer’s” goal is to get the product on your machine, Apple has already won (I expect). Even those saying they’ll switch will buy a copy. Even if they start using another NLE, there may be the one job that FCPX feature may excel at that will say, “for this job we’ll use X” and as the feature set grows it may pull them back.
[Stephan Walfridsson] “Apple release shiny, innovative, gorgeous things before that were in many ways lacking in features compared to the competition.”
And generally Apple eventually won against the competitors. As I’ve mentioned before FCP 1.0 wasn’t even close to Avid Media Composer’s capabilities in 1999.
As long as FCPX gets it foot in the door, it will at $299, it will eventually win people over based on Apple’s past pattern with new products.
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[Craig Seeman] ” If “the marketer’s” goal is to get the product on your machine, Apple has already won (I expect).”
I’ll buy it, no doubt about it, I wish it was already on my machine. And I have no doubt in my mind that Apple will succeed in growing their marketshare even more with FCPX. That was partially what I tried to say in my post.
[Craig Seeman] “As long as FCPX gets it foot in the door, it will at $299, it will eventually win people over based on Apple’s past pattern with new products.”
But the question if the new release of FCP will remain my main tool of choice doesn’t depend on wether other people are won over (by the low price or the feature set). I need to make sure that it’s still the best tool for me and currently I have no clue. Very little was shown and since it isn’t based on the old FCP architecture I can’t make the assumption that it will have the same features as FCP7.
Their past pattern also shows that they aim for the mass market, not the niche market (which I have a sneaky feeling that I may belong to). As Oliver put it:
“But it certainly has been quite willing to concede sales when products hit too small of a share or don’t warrant the level of investment Apple has to continue to put into them. Prime examples are Shake, Xserve RAID and Xserve.”I usually find choosing NLE a matter of choosing the lesser of a number of evils, no reason to think it will be different this time.
Stephan
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[Stephan Walfridsson] “But the question if the new release of FCP will remain my main tool of choice doesn’t depend on wether other people are won over”
It depends on your needs. When first released it may be missing features that are added later. Just as happened with FCP1. FCP1 was nice but not an Avid killer. By the time FCP3 rolled out some people began to move. By FCP4-5 range many more moved. It depends on your needs and the speed at which Apple rolls out more features (which should be faster IMHO).
GENERALLY SPEAKING, Apple will win over those who need more advanced features as they roll them out.
With SOME FEATURES it will EXCEED FCP7 right out of the gate and building a system based on those features will cost less. For those using file based media needing high speed Thunderbolt based storage, it’ll likely win out of the door. For those who must export XML or OMF, we do not know yet. For those who need tape input, we do not know yet. For those who fast render, multi codec sources without transcode, it’ll be a MAJOR time saver and it can win those right out of the door.It may well depend on what projects walk into your facility. You can set up a blazing fast file based edit system on a new iMac for a lot less then other systems. It may win that market out of the door.
When Video I/O with tape control (likely third party) happens, it may win that market as well.
Eventually I believe they’ll manage the XML OMG output features if that’s not there out of the door. When that happens it’ll win over some more.
It’s not like a given point of time is the END of development. As FCPX meets more needs it’ll win that market unless the competitors can match the price at a given feature set.
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[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.”
DVDSP is dead? What’s going to be the new DVD program? If it was dead several studios ago what have people been using to create DVDs?
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