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One year later…
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[Greg Andonian] “It appears that not many people asked Adobe to remove the source viewer and put in a magnetic timeline with no tracks.”
I’ve heard people asking for the ability to open more than one project at a time. Is Adobe listening?
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] ” Is Adobe listening?”
It doesn’t work like fcp, it works like AE.
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[Andrew Kimery] “For better or for worse Avid and Adobe need higher-end users so, as long as there is competition, those companies will cater to those higher-end users.”
I agree Avid needs the high-end customers, since they buy the big iron that makes Avid its real money. Adobe? They make money by selling as many copies of CS6 as they can (among their other product lines, which are actually a much larger portion of their overall business), and they sell more CS6 if they target the broad middle as much or more than the very high end. Courting the high end is good for Adobe’s marketing and mind-share, but it doesn’t make them proportionally more money since they aren’t in the hardware game. A seat of CS6 sold to a wedding videographer makes Adobe the same amount of money as a seat sold to a Hollywood editor. There are a lot more of the former than the latter out there.
Best,
Andy -
[Jeremy Garchow] “It doesn’t work like fcp, it works like AE.”
Yep. Different. For some, different is only bad if it is Apple’s different.
Best,
Andy -
[Andrew Richards] “I agree Avid needs the high-end customers, since they buy the big iron that makes Avid its real money. Adobe?”
Poor choice of words on my part. I was trying to avoid the ‘what is pro’ bear trap and it didn’t quite go as planned.
What I meant was, the core demographic for Avid and Adobe are professional users. The same isn’t true for Apple. Apple could drop Logic, Motion, FCPX, Compressor & Aperture and it would be like a semi running over a squirrel.
-Andrew
2.9 GHz 8-core (4,1), FCP 7.0.3, 10.6.6
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (7.9.5) -
[Andrew Kimery] “When/if it does how many of the high-end users are going to be the market to switch NLEs… again?”
This question assumes they’ll switch to a competing product in the meantime. Truth is, most of the critical higher end features have already been added back to FCP X (or are available from third parties in its ecosystem), and no mass exodus seems to have occurred. When classic FCP users do look for something new, FCP X should be right there in the running.
[Andrew Kimery] “And why toss the baby out with the bathwater on the rebuild if that’s a market you want to keep? If FCPX didn’t ship with Import from iMovie or Share to CNN iReporter I don’t think anyone would’ve raised a fuss over those missing features at launch.”
I find that very unlikely. The only realistic way Apple could have changed the perception of who was being targeted with the first release would have been to hold the entire release until additional high-end features could be implemented. Even then, the pump was primed — there were many people already buying into the “Apple is abandoning pros” narrative (ironically because an FCP replacement hadn’t shipped yet). People were looking to fit anything Apple shipped into this narrative — it would have been very hard to avoid.
[Andrew Kimery] “Obviously they couldn’t go from nothing to king of the hill over night but that was the long term goal. To go toe to toe with Avid.
Maybe that still is the goal but they are going to do it by building a more profitable business as opposed to building a better product. ;)”
There are two ways to unseat a competitor — build a better equivalent product, or build a product that redefines the market to make their product irrelevant. Apple is to some extent taking a hybrid approach with FCP X. They’re supporting some standard industry formats and practices, but also trying to push the industry the way they think it should go.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Chris Kenny]”This question assumes they’ll switch to a competing product in the meantime. Truth is, most of the critical higher end features have already been added back to FCP X (or are available from third parties in its ecosystem), and no mass exodus seems to have occurred. When classic FCP users do look for something new, FCP X should be right there in the running.”
I suspect this is wishful thinking. My read of the market in my area is that FCPX is not on the radar as a replacement for FCP7. Some have already jumped to AVID or CS5.5 but many more are now saying that sometime this year they will add AVID and /or CS6 to their system. Many still want to squeeze life out of their MacPros and FCP7.
Almost no editors or facilities that I talk to consider critical high end features to be sufficient in FCPX in spite of efforts by third parties. Indeed the perception is that only because of third parties is FCPX vaguely a consideration.
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[Chris Kenny] “there were many people already buying into the “Apple is abandoning pros” narrative (ironically because an FCP replacement hadn’t shipped yet). People were looking to fit anything Apple shipped into this narrative — it would have been very hard to avoid.”
I remember hearing it first when FCS3 came out in 2009. They were underwhelmed with the upgrade feature set. In fact I think that’s why some jumped so quickly after FCPX. They’d been waiting since 2007 for a “big” feature upgrade.
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[Michael Gissing] “I suspect this is wishful thinking. My read of the market in my area is that FCPX is not on the radar as a replacement for FCP7. Some have already jumped to AVID or CS5.5 but many more are now saying that sometime this year they will add AVID and /or CS6 to their system. Many still want to squeeze life out of their MacPros and FCP7. “
I’ve seen zero interest thus far in Premere among real-world contacts, and a lot of FCP users chose FCP over Avid for reasons that continue to hold, or perceive Media Composer as a risk because of Avid’s dicey financial situation and long-term market share erosion.
[Michael Gissing] “Almost no editors or facilities that I talk to consider critical high end features to be sufficient in FCPX in spite of efforts by third parties. Indeed the perception is that only because of third parties is FCPX vaguely a consideration.”
We seem to keep hearing that FCP X’s feature set is still considered insufficient, but I can’t help but notice that unlike a year ago there aren’t many specific features being mentioned.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Andrew Kimery] “What I meant was, the core demographic for Avid and Adobe are professional users. The same isn’t true for Apple. Apple could drop Logic, Motion, FCPX, Compressor & Aperture and it would be like a semi running over a squirrel.”
Adobe wouldn’t suffer all that much without Premiere. After all, it hasn’t been taken very seriously to date, and they’ve been doing just fine. It’s not clear how many additional copies of Creative Suite Adobe can even sell by improving Premiere. For instance, if we decided to migrate to Premiere here, it would result in zero additional sales for Adobe, as the systems we’d use it on already have Creative Suite licenses which were purchased to get Photoshop/Illustrator/AE/Encore. This is probably true for a lot of potential Premiere users.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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