One year later…

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Walter Soyka] “If I were a freelance creative editor that used to use FCP7 exclusively, you can bet I’d be learning MC, Pr and FCPX.”

yes – I’m in a round robin email with a few other editors on getting an order in on box set deliveries of Avid Symphony, with printed manuals for £862.50.

there is no way on God’s earth I’m not, and this goes for a lot of us, buying and learning that application at that once in a lifetime price point.
(once in a lifetime unless blackmagic buy Avid that is 🙂

Premiere is a lock – its very close to current practise coming from 7, and I’m swimming in Adobe seas for the rest of it, those seas are Mediterranean for me.
I think Premiere is going to eat FCP7’s market share to a really significant degree – that just makes sense to my head, given Adobe’s policies on communication, and their obvious strong desire to advance in the editing market. 6 is a transformative upgrade to that application.

FCPX, to a certain degree, really isn’t hard to get ahold of, and Alex Lindsey swears by it as his daily editor, Steve Connor just cut a film shot in India on it, and with .04 – he reports that it takes the entire 90 minutes without hiccuping, he’s had it broken down into three or four segments before.
That said there are real issues with the autosave architecture, and some posts here on what has happened to work in progress are fairly terrifying.

It’s new though like, and Apple are after the market.

[Jeremy Garchow] “The “buy them all and use them all” approach is unsustainable, not from a cost standpoint today, but from an management and data archive standpoint, and let’s not forget the sanity standpoint as it’s rather important.”

Sure – but the point is, given the extreme fluidity of the situation, the completely unprecedented position we’re in with all software providers going like gangbusters for the market, as a freelancer, you really have no choice but to be fairly well gamed up on Avid and Premiere in addition to7 – I give less weight to X, because as of right now, in the world, we can point to two to three facilities and a German guy.

that may well change, but right now, if you expect to get paid to edit, you should not expect to be editing on FCPX.

there may well be this ‘wider world of editing’ but it doesn’t take invoices.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Aindreas Gallagher] “Sure – but the point is, given the extreme fluidity of the situation, the completely unprecedented position we’re in with all software providers going like gangbusters for the market, as a freelancer, you really have no choice but to be fairly well gamed up on Avid and Premiere in addition to7 – I give less weight to X, because as of right now, in the world, we can point to two to three facilities and a German guy.

that may well change, but right now, if you expect to get paid to edit, you should not expect to be editing on FCPX.

there may well be this ‘wider world of editing’ but it doesn’t take invoices.”

Yes, freelancing on other’s gear is different, as I mentioned before.

Jeremy

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Walter Soyka] “FCP7 was very flexible, and people forced it into all kinds of workflows where it may not have been the best option. It was a Swiss Army knife, and people used it to slice fruit and fell trees.”

I would say that XML was immensely flexible (after a lot of work on it), but FCP itself was not that flexible. It was poplar because of price, wasn’t tied to an other hardware besides a CPU, a lot of creatives were using Macs back in the 90s/00s.

FCP was not flexible, it was Mac only, and you needed to be immensely tied to quicktime which made sense when everything was on tape, but outside of that and in this digital age? FCP7 is not very flexible.

[Walter Soyka] “I was saying that a director of photography chooses a specific camera or lens for what it will contribute to the project or even the shot at hand.”

It’s a different model, and that was my point. You can’t rent NLE’s (although Adobe, very smartly, is trying to change that), but you can rent a $125,000 Optimo for a couple of days for way less than the down payment on that lens and attach it to a wide variety of cameras, cheap to expensive.

I think we are getting off topic, sorry.

My point is, I have heard over and over to throw it in the tool box. I won’t be buying everything, I will make a decision, just as Mark has. I just happen to be one of the ones who hasn’t moved on quite yet as the answer is not that obvious.

[Jim Giberti]

I think most of this comes down to the simple differentiation – Is yours a dedicated editing/finishing company or a creative firm that has edit suites.

Mine is the latter, and as the creative director that moves between TV spots, narrative and doc work, I’m not interested in multiple tools. I just need the platform I can continue to build our creative around as we did with FCP for 10 years and Media100 before that.

As I meet and talk with other pros outside the editing metros it seems that I’m hardly unique as a writer director who also knows how to design and finish film and audio. We have enough tools that we need to maintain our skills with already. This demographic is definitely interested in one platform going forward…it is a crossroads thing for a lot of us.

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “My point is, I have heard over and over to throw it in the tool box. I won’t be buying everything, I will make a decision, just as Mark has. I just happen to be one of the ones who hasn’t moved on quite yet as the answer is not that obvious.”

Well — you will almost certainly be buying Premiere Pro, if you have a need for Photoshop and After Effects. Premiere licenses will end in a lot of people’s hands, even if they never park that icon on their docks or task bars.

But given that standardizing on a single NLE is a better decision for your company, I’d be curious about a couple questions on your decision-making.

What was it about FCP that encouraged you standardize on it in the first place?

What are the questions you need answers to about your other NLE options in order to make your decision going forward?

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

[Aindreas Gallagher]

for sure, you swim in different scale facility waters – we’re more darting our gaze madly in all directions –

Although nicely, everyone seems to be holding out choccie bars and profoundly better software?

it does feel like Adobe are stepping up in a particularly serious way – and with clear meaning and intent. Thank God frankly.
that adobe guy who was demoing at Nab on fresh DV- he was making camera eye contact as often as he could when he was outlining the scale of change in the app. right down to the nitty gritty, like footage in use indicators in the bin, scrubbing IO set clip methodology in the bin etc.
nevermind the new trim architecture.
You have to feel Adobe are palpably serious here. And the only way they make money is if we buy the thing.

….and then, in the case of Avid, we’re getting crisp twenty dollar bills! and a lot of them – simply to get on board with an industry lodestone.

it’s not too shabby really.

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[Michael Gissing]

One year later it seems clear to me that FCPX is further behind the competition. The past 9 months has seen a lot of improvements but mostly in the area of re establishing functionality that was already there.

The Apple 52% market share stats mean very little in terms of what my sector of the industry is actually doing. If they were true then being at the end of the post pipeline, I would see the flow on effect. Sure I am in a small isolated market, but it used to be 80% FCP, 15% AVID (the rest Adobe) and at the moment it is zero FCPX. You can’t have 52% market share and fail to make an impression on my business but so far it is zero, with no-one even asking if I can handle FCPX. But I am a realist and so knowing that FCPX XML is being supported by others is comforting.

This NAB was really about people who could afford to wait being rewarded with Smoke, AVID and CS6 offering more than credible alternatives. I waited and nursed my facility with FCP7 and da Vinci plus Automatic Duck’s free tools. The landscape to me is about to change as newer cameras and codecs drive people off FCP7 where they have camped nervously for the past year. I expect the % in one year to be 50% FCP7, 45% AVID/CS6 and 5% others including FCPX. Most who are switching are going to get both AVID & CS6 so I lump them together. I think Walter Soyka is right that people are now looking at owning more than one edit system. That is exactly the feedback that I am getting.

So is FCPX a player? Of course it is but it will be a long slow road back for Apple, partially because of the comparative facility of the software but mostly because of the trust broken. I am most inclined to Smoke for finishing. My clients seem most inclined to a mix of CS6 and AVID (or both) as they slowly change. Also many tell me that they will switch hardware/OS to WIN when it is time to upgrade boxes. I am building a WIN screamer for da Vinci but hope my late 2009 MacPro will work well with Smoke.

I think now that the dust of NAB is settling the big change away from Apple is going to happen. So despite the moves that Apple has made to improve FCPX for the broadcast market, one year later I find them further behind the competition. Ironically I also expect to buy FCPX in the next year as support for editors who will start using it. It will be more like having a plugin or ancillary software on the system to handle the odd client who will bring in a FCPX job and need me to manage the project and output to Smoke/ da Vinci.

[Aindreas Gallagher]

[Jim Giberti] “We have enough tools that we need to maintain our skills with already. This demographic is definitely interested in one platform going forward”

My blurbing here –
I’m generally in the broader creative/not just editing thing – in a lowly fashion – on the one solution thing say: in my day, I tend to push out a ton of after effects finishing stuff, or pure AE generated stuff with the edit I put together, and might occasionally interact with an art director, who would say take the rough guesses for type time and placement I’ve plopped in FCP and hand back storyboards of brand correct stills of type placement from PS for me to master the FCP output in AE…

so rather lengthy spiel that but –

my thing is: I basically agree that, having drifted out of telly into any old thing, this kind of broader creative interflow is, I think, likely to be rather big going forward: am I mad in thinking that, for a large sector, if PPro proves an easy stable swallow, a lot of us are quite likely to find ourselves walking into Adobe Premiere town?

https://vimeo.com/user1590967/videos
http://www.ogallchoir.net
promo producer/editor.grading/motion graphics

[David Lawrence]

[Michael Gissing] “Ironically I also expect to buy FCPX in the next year as support for editors who will start using it. It will be more like having a plugin or ancillary software on the system to handle the odd client who will bring in a FCPX job and need me to manage the project and output to Smoke/ da Vinci.”

I think the plug-in analogy is exactly right. FCPX is cheap and a good thing to keep in the tool box for the things it does well. But as a replacement for a 10-year old day to day editorial workflow based on FCP legacy, Premiere Pro CS6 looks like it makes much more sense.

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Walter Soyka] “Well — you will almost certainly be buying Premiere Pro,”

I’ve bought Premiere Pro since it came to the Mac CS Production Permium!!!

They have done a nice job with CS6, we will see if it fits the bill. 😉

[Walter Soyka] “What was it about FCP that encouraged you standardize on it in the first place?”

What encouraged me to even try it in the first place was when I was thinking about moving out on my own.

I was in school working at an edit house a couple of days a week. There were a couple of M100 SD stations that had After Effects as Media 100 didn’t have great graphics/layering capabilities in the early days. I wanted a system that I could work on when ever I wanted, and not wait for extra time at the studio, and FCP3 was the one I could afford. After I graduated, that studio hired me full time and I edited in Media 100 for years.

At that time, everything was going DV. Beta was in decline. As much as people talk about budgets getting slashed and equipment getting cheaper, that was the beginning of it, we’ve seen it all before. Then there was HD. The “same” workflow that I had learned in FCP 3 was going to apply in 4.5 in HD (I remember FCP 4.5 being a huge update…and it was free. Blew my mind at the time). I had luckily hooked up with some Varicam gigs, and tried it all out. I quickly realized I was going to need more than my current gear set. After using FCP in real gigs coming from Media100 (which was all SD at the time, Media 100 HD was just being released, and it was an uncompressed monster. It had totally kick ass hardware, but it wasn’t doing the Varicam VFR stuff that FCP was over firewire, and we would have had to really update our storage systems at that time).

I kept going on FCP after that, and then amicably left that place, and stuck with FCP. Then it was time for the G5, the Kona, the HD monitor, etc and so forth. Organically, it become the NLE of choice for the people that I worked with. The bigger houses that mostly standardized on Avid sadly went out of business. The world changed. The rest is history.

Since everywhere I was looking for work was using FCP, it made the decision easy. If Avid was kicking butt at that time, I’d be editing on Avid. Media 100 was bounced around to different sales partners and wasn’t really “innovating”. BorisFX finally caught up with them, but we were all in to FCP at that point. 720p VFR was what really kept me to FCP. That’s kind of crazy now that I think about it that way.

[Walter Soyka] “What are the questions you need answers to about your other NLE options in order to make your decision going forward?”

I’m not sure if I have questions so much as I am waiting for someone to arrive at the same conclusions. I also know that building systems like these takes a ton of work (and time), so I need to be realistic on what I can expect from any particular company. I know what I want, and FCP7 ultimately isn’t really what I want, but it got me started and it stuck for a good long run.

Now?

I am waiting it out as nothing has hit me over the head, Captain Obvious style. There’s a lot of shiny, blinky toys to try out. I am excited to give them a look and I certainly can’t make sight unseen decisions when it comes to an interface. We aren’t in a huge hurry. Realistically and honestly, FCS3 will probably last us to the next NAB if we really need it to. Look at Red, they introduced the Red Epic package for FCS3, woot! The next NAB will have given developers real time to catch up and focus. That is the best part of this whole situation, it will force other developers to listen as there’s a big wad of patient FCP refugees to potentially capture, at least that’s how I see it.

Jeremy