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“Or Not” was born of the FCP X Launch. So…
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[Steve Connor] “BTW I like the style of the Tutorials Bill”
Me too! Important to keep in mind for what follows. 🙂
[Bill Davis] “Some folks may well have been “in the know” in advance of the intro, but I definitely wasn’t one of them. (Not sure if I’d done more than simply kicked the tires here at the Cow at that point What I WAS was very active in the FCP Legacy community – to the point I was at the inaugural LAFCPUG meeting and knew all the early players – was a regular on the early days of 2-pop.com when the OTHER Larry Jordan was running it – and had been with FCP Legacy since it was announced at NAB in 1999.
The point being, I wasn’t without contacts in the FCP community.
And nobody I knew let word ONE drop about what Apple was doing. “
Exactly my point, Bill.
You mentioned using FCP v.1? I was running the Macromedia beta on Windows.
My own involvement with LAFCPUG goes back not to the first, but to the third-ever meeting, which was my first presentation there in my capacity as product manager and director of marketing at Boris FX. To this day, I hold the record for most presentations by a non-Californian.
I was living in Boston at the time, and was THE VERY FIRST presenter at their VERY FIRST meeting.
I helped found the New York group, and recruited its original leader. I went to literally every single FCP user group in the US at the time.
But no matter how engaged you are with every other part of the Final Cut Pro community, you simply cannot possibly know everything important about FCP if you’re not in the COW.
Yes, you’re engaged with FCP, but you’re literally over 5 years behind some of the most talked-about topics in our history. You weren’t here for it, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It did.
I think you just don’t understand some basic facts. You write:
Nobody in the broad spectrum of global FCP editing – 2 million strong at that point – had a clue about what was coming.
Bill, Creative COW IS the broad spectrum of global editing. How many people pass through LAFCPUG? A couple of hundred per meeting. How many people went to 2-pop at its peak? A couple of thousand per month.
Creative COW? Up to TWO MILLION PER MONTH, over 18 MILLION PER YEAR, from nearly 200 countries.
How many members do you think LACPUG has? We have over 300,000.
Looking at the most basic numbers, more people pass through the COW on a monthly basis than pass through all those other sites in a year, combined.
(And of course not all those numbers were driven by FCP…but until 2011, FCP was by far our biggest source, and if you read my history of the COW’s first 15 years, you know that it was very much brought to life by the first wave of professional FCP broadcast editors.)
In other words, THIS is what the broad spectrum of global editing looks like. Millions and millions of people. Right here in the COW. Not “out there.” HERE.
The only people who DIDN’T know this are the comparatively miniscule number of them at 2-pop.
I don’t mean to insult them, Bill, and I certainly don’t mean to insult you. As I noted, I was every bit as engaged in the FCP community as anyone anywhere, and I know you have been too.
But when you say this wasn’t widely known, you are demonstrably, quantitatively, unambiguously WRONG about this. The facts are the facts, and you not knowing them is irrelevant to whether or not they’re actually facts.
[Bill Davis] “he “hair on fire” nature of the reaction simply COULD NOT have come from natural internet chatter.”
Again, easily, demonstrably, quantifiably not true.
I said this before, and it bears repeating because I think you either don’t understand it or don’t believe it.
THE INTERNET IS BIG. lol Seriously, Bill.
More important for this angle of my post, Creative COW is BIG. There were THOUSANDS of posts about this in Creative COW, Bill.
When we saw HUNDREDS of posts going up DURING the presentation (on average, 10 per minute – one every six seconds), we started this forum to handle the traffic.
And Bill, when there are thousands of posts a day on a topic in Creative COW, Google takes notice. Before the night was through, every single search for anything related to Final Cut Pro had Creative COW as the MULTIPLE top results.
You may not have noticed this, but there’s typically only about a 15-minute gap between when a SINGLE post goes up and when you can find it at Google. When there are thousands of ’em? Google knows that too. 🙂
Thousands of posts, millions of people, plus potentially billions of viewers on Google, YouTube, Vimeo — Bill, this information was EVERYWHERE…
…except for places like 2-pop and the handful of user groups you were running with who look mostly to themselves and a tightly-knit phalanx of closely-related bloggers for information.
Again, no disrespect intended. Those user groups were my life, and some of those folks will be my friends for life.
So state as strongly as you like the fact that “nobody I knew” knew anything about this. I can’t argue with that. If you say nobody YOU know knew anything about this, then it’s true.
But I’m telling you that it was WIDELY known. It was known to literally everyone who cared enough to do the most basic internet search. Hell, probably even Yahoo figured it out. LOL
And for folks inside the COW, it was impossible to avoid this knowledge.
[Bill Davis] “If there WERE a bunch of people who had a fair inside look and didn’t step up and push back against the ” it’s jus iMovie Pro) thing – shame on you.”
You’re not being fair to the people who still think that’s true. LOL Disagreement with you doesn’t necessarily equal ignorance.
You’re also not being fair to the fact that FCPX was NOT feature-complete on the day it was released.
It was without precedent that Apple talked about a product this far in advance. But it was also unprecedented that they immediately announced a roadmap for when Apple would deliver features that they KNEW were mission critical, which is why they SAID they knew these were mission critical features, and would be delivered in a timely fashion.
I don’t say this as criticism of Apple. Quite the contrary, I continue to laud them for doing this exactly the right way. Show key industry leaders in private, unveil at the key user event which you allow to be taped and disseminated, make a highly-publicized release, be transparent about what’s missing and when it will arrive.
Perfection.
The fact that people don’t like what they heard is likewise irrelevant to whether or not Apple did it right. Apple did it EXACTLY right.
Which also means that people are right to still be mad about the outcome if that’s the way they feel. It’s not the product they wanted or needed from Apple, and they’ve had plenty of time to settle into that position out of KNOWLEDGE, not ignorance.
So again, I submit that nobody who thinks they know what’s going with FCP and FCPX knows ENOUGH about what’s going on with them if they don’t include Creative COW as part of a well-rounded diet of FCP fandom.
And again, I thank you for continuing to make Creative COW part of YOUR well-rounded diet of FCP fandom. 🙂
[Steve Connor] “Type “IMovie Pro” into Google and you get to relive all those early reactions to it!
“To be fair, if you sort by results for the past year, you still get an eyeful!
It hasn’t helped that even now, in this past year, you have FCP stalwarts like Larry Jordan and Steve Martin and Provideocoaliton doing tutorials on moving your iMovie projects into FCPX. I’m not saying that Larry, Steve, or Provideocoalition speak only to pros. Of course they don’t.
Nor would I suggest that pros don’t use iMovie.
But even now, the distinction being made between iMovie and FCPX ***by some highly respected FCPX trainers*** is….
….wait for it….
….wait for it….
…that FCPX is like iMovie for pros.
Which I suppose is different than calling it iMovie Pro, though, right? LOL
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[Tim Wilson] “But even now, the distinction being made between iMovie and FCPX ***by some highly respected FCPX trainers*** is….
….wait for it….
….wait for it….
…that FCPX is like iMovie for pros.
Which I suppose is different than calling it iMovie Pro, though, right? LOL
“
When I said in my first post that there was nothing controversial in Bill’s blog, I may have been mistaken 🙂
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[Steve Connor] “BTW I like the style of the Tutorials Bill”
Thank you Steve.
I’m reminded of that Blaise Pascal paraphrase thing I used to have hanging over my desk every time I sit down to write a batch of XinTwos.
“I would have written you a shorter letter if I had more time.”
As everyone here knows, my default is typically never to use 50 words when 1000 will also do the job. So this has been interesting, for sure.
; )
Creator of XinTwo – http://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
Interesting and informative. Thanks Tim.
I’ll just point out this…
Your words:
“(And of course not all those numbers were driven by FCP…but until 2011, FCP was by far our biggest source, and if you read my history of the COW’s first 15 years, you know that it was very much brought to life by the first wave of professional FCP broadcast editors.)In other words, THIS is what the broad spectrum of global editing looks like. Millions and millions of people. Right here in the COW. Not “out there.” HERE.”
And note two things. The first graph highlights “professional broadcast editors” and the second graph shifts to “the broad spectrum of global editing.” NOT, to my thinking the same thing at all. There were obviously NOT two million professional broadcast editors in 2011. Not even close. So the Legacy constituency was FAR broader than that. And I suspect the constituency that the Cow continues to be built upon is exactly the same. People are interested in what Broadcast Pros think, for sure. But just looking at YouTube alone, it’s obvious that there are orders of magnitude more folks who fit OUTSIDE that criteria than inside it.
The second point i’ll make is that you guys have done an AMAZING job of helping millions learn about this stuff. But I still contend that IF the default defensive position here is over-focused on the the preferences of those 100 folks who got the Apple sneak peak in 2011 (and their subsequently spreading so much IRE simply because it didn’t meet their needs at the time – that runs directly COUNTER to the core of the larger theme that even MORE helped build your wonderful continuing success.
Here’s my 2 cents.
Innovation is RARELY the problem. It’s to be celebrated and defended. Even when it fails or is imperfect.
Most of my disappointment in those early days was THAT was what I was reading and hearing right here. This thing sucks because it doesn’t work like I’ve been conditioned to work. I’ll always believe that perspective was short-sighted then, and it’s still short sighted today. Not in a global climate of rapid change and evolution.As you know better than most, you don’t build a global platform by catering the 100 influencers, or even 50,000 editing pros (if there are even that many “traditional facility editors” out there.) Ron and Katherine and you built this success by BROADENING the discussion beyond any single “elite” class of editor.
And I hope you continue to do that.
That’s all.
Again, personal thanks for being such a huge pillar in building this wonderful platform. I can’t imagine my personal business life without it. Without so many wonderful people in this virtual neighborhood to spar and share ideas with, I might have focused my inherent need to debate on my wife – and I doubt THAT would have turned out well.
Creator of XinTwo – http://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Steve Connor] “When I said in my first post that there was nothing controversial in Bill’s blog, I may have been mistaken :)”
Dude, you’re posting in the “or Not” forum on the Cow. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G here is controversial.
It’s kinda the default rule.
; )
Creator of XinTwo – http://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “As you know better than most, you don’t build a global platform by catering the 100 influencers, or even 50,000 editing pros (if there are even that many “traditional facility editors” out there.) “
I would offer this supposition. Maybe that initial sneak peek with influencers was not to convince them. Maybe it was Apple’s way of gauging what the reaction would be and to internally prepare for the backlash and possibly tweak their own marketing targets.
It might have also been to determine which of the missing items were most critical in order to get the right 3rd party developers on board early to plug the holes. For example, Automatic Duck’s first X to ProTools software.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
And while all this revisionist history is being argued and FCPX users have only had Automatic Duck to bring any excitement in May, the third public beta of Resolve 12.5 has been in the wild for a week with another dazzling array of new features and performance improvements.
Some of it may well be catchup but take a look at the keyframing enhancements, metadata management and a bunch of new FX built in without needing third parties to pick up the slack.
Round tripping to Fusion is now working and built in, not needing a smart third party developer. Sure much of Blackmagic’s dev is catching up to X & Pr editing features (it clearly has a great headstart on grading) but the speed and determination is worth noting while we debate about how many years it took Apple to put ‘must have features’ back into X in those early years.
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[Bill Davis] “But I still contend that IF the default defensive position here is over-focused on the the preferences of those 100 folks who got the Apple sneak peak in 2011 (and their subsequently spreading so much IRE simply because it didn’t meet their needs at the time “
I think it’s a bold claim to say that the people Apple hand picked to get a private viewing of X (all under heavy NDA I would assume) spread around negativity (out of spite?) and were the cause for reaction to X when it launched. Or am I misunderstanding you?
[Bill Davis] “This thing sucks because it doesn’t work like I’ve been conditioned to work. I’ll always believe that perspective was short-sighted then, and it’s still short sighted today”
I agree though I think you are severely overplaying that sentiment in this situation. Many people had been waiting for years for Apple to give signification upgrade to FCP and when that upgrade launched as very much a work in progress that was the final straw. They needed a viable tool today, not the possibly of a viable tool at some point in the future. It’s just hard for me to discount people by saying “you just fear change” when they might have transitioned from film to linear, from linear to NLE and from one NLE to another (ex. Avid to FCP Legend).
I know you have been bullish on X since day one, but a common theme among many of case studies I’ve read over at FCP.co is that X at launch wasn’t really viable but a year or two or three (depending on the situation) it was and that’s when these people/companies switched and have been happily using it ever since. On the flip side, just casually in 2011 or 2012 I’d talked with a couple of post houses in LA that were on FCP 7 and they were optimistic about X. One of them ultimately went with PPro and the other went with Avid.
But not everyone had that luxury of time. When some people moved to another NLE rather quickly it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction, it was pulling the trigger on a decision years in the making. Many people were underwhelmed with the meager update that was FCP 7 but, being long time Apple users, they were holding out another yet another 2yrs in hopes that Apple’s next upgrade would deliver the goods (even though both Avid and PPro were racking up new features like mad compared to FCP at the time). Apple showed their hand with X and that was the final piece in the decision making process that was needed. To me that’s not short sighted, that’s just making a business call based on the best available products at the time. If X had launched with more feature parity maybe the decisions would’ve been different. Maybe not.
To your point about people being mad mainly that X didn’t work like 7, at the time of the X launch I was working with around a dozen relatively young (late 20’s-early 30’s) editors that had grown up on FCP, only knew FCP, and almost to a (wo)man they were pissed because they just saw their NLE knowledge get a big, fat expiration date. The older editors I knew (and/or editors that knew multiple NLEs) seemed less likely to share this mindset. I assume because they’d been around this block before. I had used the old Premiere and Avid prior to FCP so when X dropped it was certainly comforting for me to know that I could fall back on my Avid experience to get work.
And of course there are the ‘iMovie Pro’ people and there always will be. I mean, I know people that have dissed FCP for over a decade and I think the only thing that might sway their opinion is Tim Cook gifting them a few million shares of APPL.
[Bill Davis] “As you know better than most, you don’t build a global platform by catering the 100 influencers, or even 50,000 editing pros (if there are even that many “traditional facility editors” out there.) Ron and Katherine and you built this success by BROADENING the discussion beyond any single “elite” class of editor.
And I hope you continue to do that.”
I wouldn’t worry too much about that. I think the ‘elite’ class of editor is probably the least represented class of editor at the COW or any Internet forum for that matter. Between NDAs, the rigors of editing high end films/TVs and having AE’s to do trouble shooting for you I don’t think there’s much reason for them to venture into Internet forums too often. We have conversations about them way more than they have conversations with us. But influencers are called influencers for a reason so of course what they say in an interview or at a panel discussion is going to ripple through all of us ‘little people’ that are ripe for the discussion. 😉
[Oliver Peters] “Maybe it was Apple’s way of gauging what the reaction would be and to internally prepare for the backlash and possibly tweak their own marketing targets.”
You mean do things such as taking over a Supermeet at the last minute? 😉
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[Andrew Kimery] “Many people were underwhelmed with the meager update that was FCP 7 but, being long time Apple users, they were holding out another yet another 2yrs in hopes that Apple’s next upgrade would deliver the goods (even though both Avid and PPro were racking up new features like mad compared to FCP at the time). Apple showed their hand with X and that was the final piece in the decision making process that was needed.”
To add further context to this, FCPX launched after a string of Apple withdrawals from the professional video space. This included the demise of Xserve, Xserve RAID, and Final Cut Server. Add Color to that, although that was part of the FCPX launch. Another data point, but a bit behind the scenes, was that Apple’s custom sales and support personnel, who serviced professional customers, were reassigned. Those services were turned over to resellers who did a far worse job. Plus the withdrawal from major industry shows, like NAB and IBC. So what sort of message do those things suggest?
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
I agree with what you are saying. On the other hand FCP X does not include so many features for the build as you go camp. Neither approach is wrong just goes with what works for you.
I prefer to add on as needed and the way Final Cut is built does encourage third party products which is a great thing. I can choose what I need and go from there.
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