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My NAB Show takeaways on Apple, Adobe & Avid
First off, this is coming from a guy who’s used FCP and FCPX during both products entire lifetime, I’d consider myself an expert at both, and then of course used Media Composer my entire career on large projects like Discovery shows, feature docs etc.
Apple:
Not much to say here, they were not on the floor with anything new, only there to promote what was new in 10.0.8 and then specifically only as it related to Sony’s new stuff. I absolutely love FCPX for what it is, and am currently cutting a feature doc on it with over 10,000 clips of video and about 300 hours of raw footage with very little issues. Having said that, I was pretty disappointed Apple didn’t surprise us with a preview of what 10.1 will have in store, even if it wasn’t coming any time soon. I figured they had to be thinking about it since it was well known the other big boys would be releasing totally new versions.Avid:
Finally Finally Finally removing all the stupid limitations working with AMA files. Avid never wanted to admit it before, but there are countless instances when “waiting” to use their native mxf file system just didn’t work on jobs that couldn’t afford the time spent. Yeah if your a big hollywood production you don’t care about all that, but for everyone else it wasn’t helpful. Also, I dont care what anyone says, yes the media management in Avid is the best in the business, but, only when it works. When something goes wrong, its the worst in the business for you trying to figure out what the heck is wrong. So this is huge, good job! and of course now Background Transcoding helps mitigated some of what I said above here too which is great. LUTs, audio, cool stuff. My issue with Media Composer is and i guess will always be, its still MC at its heart in terms of how you actually edit on a cut to cut basis. I don’t care what anyone says and I’ve seen some master level editors work, theres no way to be as fast/efficient on a macro basis with Avid as you can be with FCP either version. Again, big hollywood features don’t care about that, but the rest of us do. Protools 11 looked awesome actually. 150X speed improvements in some places, crazy.Adobe:
Again remember what I said above, FCP and Avid guy all the way. Never edited with Premiere ever… I think many people on the floor agreed, Adobe probably won NAB this year, and not just in comparison to the other two, but literally the whole show. Closest in my mind would be Blackmagic who continues to put out ingenious products and updates to their software (Resolve 10 fixes nearly every nitpicky thing i could think of). You couldn’t help but feel the infectious vibe meeting the Evangelists and actual Developers instilled in the crowds that came to see the demos. I dont think I’ve ever felt more that a developer actually “cared” about what we the end users need. They had no problem being humble, even making fun of themselves for features that were missing for too long or stupid decisions they had made in past versions. They would literally take notes on the floor from people who had good ideas saying things like how they think it’d be no problem to incorporate in a small update in the future. It just feels good to know theres guys passionate about what they do, and what they are passionate about is making sure your work can be made even better.. And I haven’t even mentioned the actual software yet.I’ve always joked with people that my ideal NLE would probably be something like if FCP and Avid had a baby. Well it kinda seems to me thats exactly what Adobe is doing with Premiere. New paste attributes, ripped right from FCP. New script sync abilities, right from Avid but better. New media relinking, the ease of FCP, but with the flaggable power of Avids relink. Really cool stuff.
I have an entire production and post agency with locations in NYC, LA, Vegas, and Virginia to switch over in the coming months. I’ve been devising ways to “make FCPX work” hoping a 10.1 would bring proper shared collaboration abilities, but after all this I will strongly be considering Premiere.
Adobe Anywhere looked great too. The engineer i spoke with said it relies on an Iframe codec for now (he wouldn’t say it was h.264 or not) so bandwidth up speeds need to be good, but they are working on a long gop version that will make it work fine from crappy hotel connections anywhere. That to me could be the biggest game changer since the advent of NLE to begin with.
very very impressive performance from Adobe, great job guys!
Director, Editor, Colorist
http://www.trsociety.com -
20 Replies
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It does appear that Premiere has caught up with FCP7 which is a good development. Time to finally put in some time learning Premiere as I assume I will start getting requests for it at some point in the future.
On the other hand, our local PBS affiliate just put out a call for someone to train the whole staff in FCPX.
Interesting times.
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The NAB crowd isn’t Apple’s target market for FCX. That market is very small compared to all the other markets it enjoys.
We are 2% of their business.
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Hi Nicholas,
Glad you enjoyed what we have to offer at NAB. The team is working really hard because we love allowing you guys to make great stuff. If you want to have a longer conversation reach out to me…
Cheers
Dave
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David McGavran, Adobe Systems Incorporated
Senior Engineering Manager Adobe Premiere Pro
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But they don’t show up to CES or Mobile World Congress either; and consumer electronics IS a majority share of their business. So does that mean they don’t care about those customers either..?
The simple fact is that Apple long ago stopped formulating their product release schedules based on anyone else’s timetable; the end of their attendance at MacWorld was the final nail in that coffin.
Every FCPX feature update adds back more Pro functionality to FCPX- I can’t think of one “consumer/prosumer” oriented thing that the FCPX dev team has chosen to focus on since 10.0 was released 2 years ago.
FCPX isn’t explicitly for any market. Just like Premier or AVID, it’s constrained purely by it’s current feature set. Premier’s announced update will allow it to be used where it couldn’t before. And FCPX’s use cases will similarly expand as the software matures. It’s as simple as that.
Marcus R. Moore
FCPX Certified Pro [NAB 2013] AND Creative Cloud Subscriber. -
[Marcus Moore] “FCPX isn’t explicitly for any market. Just like Premier or AVID, it’s constrained purely by it’s current feature set. Premier’s announced update will allow it to be used where it couldn’t before. And FCPX’s use cases will similarly expand as the software matures. It’s as simple as that.”
Exactly. We have an evolving NLE market that will be guided by personal preference much more than in the past. That seems to me to be a good thing. Having one NLE dominate the market isn’t good for anyone.
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I would have to agree Marcus,
When you set-up for Red, Alexa and now the Sony F55
You have some of the top cameras in the world.
Who uses those cameras? On What type of productions?
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Indeed. If Apple is going after the consumer market, they’re making the most illogical development choices imaginable.
After seeing Blackmagic’s new offerings at NAB, I just hope that native CinemaDNG RAW support follows soon. Perhaps by the time the new cameras ship in July?
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The new camera does support Cinema DNG files. They screwed up in their literature. I asked the lead engineer about all of that. It’s def in there
Director, Editor, Colorist
http://www.trsociety.com -
there is no way under god you could call FCPX consumer focused software at this point.
I may have tried once upon a time, but even I have stopped that racket.
https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos http://www.ogallchoir.net promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics
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Is that why this gentleman quotes
I Saw it running at many vendor booths. Lots of software and hardware systems work just fine with FCP X. If you’re in broadcast, film, web, any type of media production, know that everything you need is there for FCP X. Here is what I came away from NAB Show 2013 with, FCP X wise.Final Cut Pro X And The Future
https://www.fcproxuniversity.com/FCPro_X_University/Extra_Credit/Entries/2013/4/11_Final_Cut_Pro_X_And_The_Future.htmlNot saying I agree… but there is a good point
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