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Since when was the law written you had to upgrade to the latest?
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[Herb Sevush] “Being an old discreet *edit’or myself, you raise the point that hasn’t been made clear before. What we are seeing is an EOL for FCP. The fact that the same company is coming out with a new product, FCPX, that might or might not be an acceptable replacement for a given shop is not the point – the EOL for FCP is. And I fear it will be just as painful and costly as moving from any other dead NLE. For myself, after dismissing as “silly” all the rumors of Apple wanting to sell FCP, I’m now wishing they had.”
I think it has been pretty widely understood for some years now that the old Final Cut Pro codebase was going to have to go. Adobe did the same with Premiere a few years back (moving to Premiere Pro).
There seem to be a bunch of people (not necessarily you) who last year were using the fact that Apple hand’t yet rewritten FCP as a 64-bit Cocoa app to argue Apple want neglecting the product, and who, now that Apple has done precisely that, are spooked about it.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read Does FCP X make project files obsolete? on our blog.
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I think it has been pretty widely understood for some years now that the old Final Cut Pro codebase was going to have to go. Adobe did the same with Premiere a few years back (moving to Premiere Pro).
Re-writing the codebase is one thing, coming up with an entirely new NLE is another. Premiere did it because they were trying to go from hobbiest software to a professional product. FCP already had a large and fairly happy following who, for the most part, were looking for speed increases in rendering time and increased ability to handle various codecs natively and on the same time-line, along with better media management. There was no hue and cry for them to re-invent the wheel. While it sounds like they have addressed the various speed issues, only time will tell if they have indeed come up with an improved NLE, or merely a different one.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions -
[Herb Sevush] “Re-writing the codebase is one thing, coming up with an entirely new NLE is another. “
The product is the codebase.
I mean, I suppose they could have set out to deliberately replicate the existing application, feature for feature and UI element for UI element, with entirely new code. But they’d have been passing up a really, really big opportunity, I think. UI has come a long way since the original FCP as well.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read Does FCP X make project files obsolete? on our blog.
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[walter biscardi] “But again, nothing we’re asking is secret. These features already exist in the current Final Cut Pro.”
Right, the idea isn’t secret, but whether or not it’s in FCP X is. I really think they wanted to show the newest stuff rather than go through the old at the sneak peek. I probably would too. Doesn’t mean the old is there, but sure doesn’t mean it’s not.
Do you really think that the folk at Apple don’t know what a pro would need? I think they do. Same guy oversaw Premiere, FCP 1-7, iMovie versions, and now FCP X. I don’t think they want to give up the pros with a release that’s totally unusable by them. I think the attempt to create a new paradigm in workflow is laudable. Without the professionals backing a piece of “pro” software, it ends up going nowhere, and I’m pretty sure that Randy U and team understand this.
Shoot, no one’s really attempted a really new interface coming from a position like Apple’s FCP holds in the market, so I’d assume they’ve thought long and hard about what this next version needs to do for a professional, no matter how large or small the company involved is. After all, the source/record monitor manual bin thing has been around for 23 or more years now. Getting long in the tooth compared to other software innovations. Not that it’s bad, it’s just OLD.
It’s too early to tell what the future holds with this new NLE, but I’ll bet it sells tons of users out of the gate. If it doesn’t hold up by version 2, Apple will lose some of the market share that they’ve had for the past few years, and then maybe they’ll have to rethink. There’s just too little public to make any sort of iron clad decision on whether they’ve made a mistake or not. Wont’ be able to tell that for a while yet.
In any event, it was “jaw dropping” alright. Is it better? From what I saw some of it is better than FCP 7… speed changes were pretty cool, automatically helping you log was pretty cool too. That it addresses as much RAM as you can throw at it bodes very well for long form actually. Sequences soak up tons of RAM… There’s much to like, much unknown, and waiting is tough, eh? It will be here before you know it. What? 6 weeks or so? Certainly before June 20 or the end of the fiscal year for Apple I’d guess. Not having to package it will move it up a bit too.
Avid will likely work with Kona cards before long too… It’s still a 32 bit app though. In any event change is one thing we can always count on in our industry. FCP X is just another one. Again, Apple didn’t have a choice here. They had to start over, so why not leverage code from iMovie 11 and make it so a pro would be happy. Certainly that’s what they are attempting.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.
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[Craig Seeman] ” my guess is that since they’re no longer tied to replicating and shipping discs, if there are features missing, they will happen much faster than 1.0 versions in the past. Of course that’s no guarantee that it will happen.”
Hey Craig,
You keep saying that but I can’t see that online distribution will affect the development cycle in a substantial way. Dot releases are done online already by everyone. Full point upgrades take their time and readying the shipping package is normally started in parallel with the end of the cycle so we’re talking about a few weeks at most added at the end of an 18-24 month development period (which is pretty standard these days). Of course Apple can throw a huge amount of resources and try and try to speed up the cycle but I can’t see that online distribution will make any difference except to their bottom line.
So please explain your reasoning.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[David Cherniack] “Full point upgrades take their time and readying the shipping package is normally started in parallel with the end of the cycle so we’re talking about a few weeks at most added at the end of an 18-24 month development period (which is pretty standard these days)”
With the disc replication and printing one is more likely to gather several features to put out a release. With online they can get a key feature out the door while others are still a work in progress. Yes, I’m talking about major updates, not just point upgrades, and yes I don’t think it will be 18-24 months to see that with online distribution. If there are major features missing in the June release (and there may be) I’d expect them to be rolled out in a much shorter time frame.
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[Craig Seeman] “With the disc replication and printing one is more likely to gather several features to put out a release. With online they can get a key feature out the door while others are still a work in progress. Yes, I’m talking about major updates, not just point upgrades, and yes I don’t think it will be 18-24 months to see that with online distribution. If there are major features missing in the June release (and there may be) I’d expect them to be rolled out in a much shorter time frame.”
Maybe so. But the way all aspects of NLE software interconnect makes the coding, testing and QA processes more cost and time efficient to do with bunches of new features. Rolling out each new feature as a one-off means doing the QA for petty much the whole package each time. So a more likely scenario will be groups of features rolled out together. Which is the same things as point updates. Independent modules, like a new version of Color, for example, are a different story.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[David Cherniack] “But the way all aspects of NLE software interconnect makes the coding, testing and QA processes more cost and time efficient to do with bunches of new features. Rolling out each new feature as a one-off means doing the QA for petty much the whole package each time. “
I think Apple is in an unusual position with FCPX. It’s a 1.0 app and it may have to play feature catch up. Of course it depends on the feature, it’s interrelationship to other parts of the program, the demand. If there’s a major demand over a feature, I suspect it would get developed and pushed out as quickly as possible. I just don’t think they’d wait 18 months for a “package” if it were critical.
It seems the doom and gloomers here are absolutely convinced FCPX will be unsuitable for anything other than home movies. I, on the other hand, am convinced Apple has Post Facilities in mind (Thunderbolt for example) although I wouldn’t be surprised if a major feature or three may still be under development come June release and Apple is not going to be waiting 18 months to get those out the door.
It would be expensive to do major disc and ship every 6 months but major upgrades are much easier in the Mac App Store.
Obviously all speculative but I just can’t see Apple waiting 18 months if there’s something major missing.
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I might be wrong but Apple took over two years to get FCP Studio 2 out and it’s been almost two years since FCP Studio 3 came out. In between those releases no major features were introduced. Bugs were squashed and some file format additions were added between major releases but that’s pretty much the extent of their updating history.
Cam Khoury
One Eyed Dog, LTD
oededit.com
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[Craig Seeman] “It seems the doom and gloomers here are absolutely convinced FCPX will be unsuitable for anything other than home movies.”
I think this rather exaggerates their concerns…which are, for the most part, reasonable, given Apple’s choice of not addressing the obvious questions of their pro users. It’s natural to worry and human to speculate. I for one, believe that was exactly one of their reasons for holding back…it increases the buzz…which is considerable, looking around here. And like you I do believe they have more up their sleeve for June….as that’s their style. But I doubt it will be much more…the rest will take a year or three.
David
AllinOneFilms.com
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