Risk and failure

[Walter Soyka]

Chris, let’s say you were opening a boutique digital cinema production company that acquired on RED today. Would you choose FCPX as your editorial platform? Would it offer you everything you need to do your job if you were opening your doors today?

[Chris Kenny] “Because while all of the stuff about Apple not caring about pros is essentially misdirection based on screwy market definitions, it is the case that Apple legitimately does not care about people who’s primary focus is on legacy approaches and legacy compatibility.”

This isn’t about “screwy market definitions” or “legacy approaches and legacy compatibility.” It’s about Apple opening a gap in the market that they use to cover, and current FCP users trying to figure out what their next step should be.

Anyone making a forward-looking projection about FCPX is just reading tea leaves. That includes Julian, that includes me — and that includes you, too. I respect you for adding some balance on FCPX’s positives, but what good does it do to badger people who rely on features that FCPX doesn’t have?

I see four options for current FCP users:

• They may transition to FCPX and have faith that Apple and/or third parties will provide what they need
• They may run FCP7 for a while and try to wait out the development of FCPX to see if it will offer what they need before transitioning
• They may transition to a different product
• They may drop the notion of allegiance to a specific editorial platform

My money is on the last option. In a time of change, fortune favors the nimble, not the faithful.

Please note that I apply the notion of faith equally to the literal FCP transition (FCP > FCPX) as well as the “conceptual” FCP transition (FCP > Premiere?).

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

[Chris Kenny]

[Walter Soyka] “Chris, let’s say you were opening a boutique digital cinema production company that acquired on RED today. Would you choose FCPX as your editorial platform? Would it offer you everything you need to do your job if you were opening your doors today?”

I like what Apple is doing. I believe they have the most compelling long-term vision in this market. But there are critical features missing.

I guess my approach, if I were getting started today, would be to buy Creative Suite, because we’d need Photoshop/Illustrator/AfterEffects/Encore anyway, and use Premiere until Apple added the necessary features to FCP X. But as it is, we’re just going to stick with FCP 7 until then.

We actually don’t need multicam for our indie feature work, so the truth is, if FCP X supports (according to Apple’s timeline) XML exporting in a few weeks, audio track assignment by the end of the summer, and ‘real’ video output somewhere in that time frame, we might only be two or three months from being able to integrate it into our Red pipeline. Even if Resolve doesn’t add support for the new XML format right away, I could probably write a script to bridge that gap. I’ve certainly written enough to fill in gaps in FCP 7’s functionality over the years.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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