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The Future is an iMac, Thunderbolt Storage, FCP-X and a DSLR
Hello happy campers,
Firstly (stating again) I am disappointed by this release, but I do believe that Apple will add in a lot of the missing features with each new release. I must say however, I am quite shocked by the attitude and comments of some of the members on this forum. Apple is not responsible for your business or your mortgage. What Apple is responsible for, is changing the industry for the better and most likely enabling many of the editors who around today and who are on these forums to become editors. Apple owes you nothing!
For those of you who can remember the pre- FCP days, would have marvelled at the introduction of the Media 100 (The what?). That was the “game changer”. Desktop non linear editing on a Mac for only $35,000+. YES $35,000.00! They were great, I know I bought one in 1992-1993. I mean, no one single person could actually afford a real AVID back then.
Media 100 and Avid sort of battled it out until the late 1990’s when the Media 100 Group (Who use to charge $1000’s for updates) finally fell due to endless poor management decisions (I never did get more than 2 video tracks). Just when we thought it was going back to a one horse race, Apple purchased a small software suite from MacroMedia (anyone remember them), re-branded it and released FCP. – The revolution was not only televised, it was well edited. BTW: Premier really did suck back then.
For approx 10 years (2000-2010) Apple (and the endless array of 3rd party vendors) really did change and drive innovation in the industry and I would say most editors would not be sitting in their little and large suites and production houses today if it had not been for Apple’s FCP team. Did we all cry or complain or even spare a thought for those “established” post houses that eventually went under due to the onslaught of small boutique post studios and one man set ups. HELL NO! We all celebrated that we could also do what they could at less than half the rate and 5% of their set up cost.
I think credit to AVID for matching Apple blow for blow and then some. Even Adobe got serious thanks to FCP and now Premier Pro is a great tool. Goodness, The Media 100 has also come back with a totally functional package thanks to Boris. Just over 10 years after the launch of FCP 1.0 we have at least 3 serious editing systems on numerous platforms that we can choose from and all are affordable. YES APPLE changed the industry for the better.
If you edit for a living being as a FCP editor (being 143 years old I don’t anymore) then I am sure you have generated many times over whatever you paid Apple for the FCP software and you, being the Pro you are, can slowly and seamlessly move your workflow over to whatever platform you choose, whilst keeping an eye Apple and FCP-X developments.
The key point.
What most editors are missing in this whole storm in a tea cup is that it has taken 10 years for the camera industry to catch up with the post industry. The camera industry right now is where the post industry was 10 years ago.
In 1999 (FCP 1.0) I was shooting on a Aaton XTR Prod with a Canon 8-64mm Zoom. The whole kit cost close to $100,000. That exact same kit (minus lens) was selling on eBay a few weeks back for $4999. I still have an Arri S35mm, which if I sold 5-6 years ago would have netted me enough for a new car. I would be lucky to take the family on a holiday when I sell it next month.
The real game changer for the camera industry (RED aside) has been the Canon 5D. In the last 2-3 years we have seen the future. Apple has seen the future. A whole eco system of 3rd party companies have sprung up, just like they did for FCP. “The Kids” are shooting awesome looking footage on a 5D that 5 years ago would have only been possible with a whole “Professional Crew” with a budget. I am not saying it’s perfect, but the writing is clearly on the wall. Sony and Panasonic have already responded with the AF100 / NEXF100 and of course the awesome F3, which funnily enough, the 5D shooters are saying is “far too expensive” at $13K. Wow, how times have changed. Vincent Lafore’s web site gets millions of hits, has tens of thousand’s of followers and this is just one guy. Apple knows this and positioned FXP-X accordingly.
The Canon 5D II is the first on the Supported Camera’s list provided by Apple for FCP-X. I am sure the Canon 5D III (and other DSLRs) will be there when it comes out as well. Those 14-16 year old kids currently making FCP-X youtube demos etc, will be, in a couple of years, if not much sooner (via presets and templates) and for very little out lay, doing most the things that “pro-editors” took 5-10 years to learn and invested reasonable sums of money in. Apple wants to sell 1,000,000s of downloads of the “Cool and Funky” FCP-X to all those DSLR, HDV and new S35mm Senor video cameras users.
The pro’s can handle the Epic’s, Alexa’a, CineAlta’s and Genesis’ etc etc .. for now.
That’s the thing, democratisation (the dumbing down?) of the industry is great when your on the winning side. How many people on this forum jumped for joy when Blackmagic bought Da Vinci and released it for the Mac for $999? Lots, I did! I am sure there were quite a few long standing Da Vinci owners who thought their world was ending and you know what, for lots of them, it probably was.
Kai
ps: In the end these are all just tools, it is the person that makes the job, story, edit, shoot, production, the connection … the feel. That will never change. Talent is talent.
pps: Accordingly to the big recording studio owners back in the 1980’s (yep I was in that industry as well back in the day), digital computer based recording was going to destroy the “Real Recording Industry”. It didn’t, the poorly run studios that relied on their expensive equipment (instead of talented people supplied with the right tools) to justify their high prices disappeared. They are not missed.
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13 Replies
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Not everyone who dislikes FCPX is scared of neighbors nephew with VDSLR. I don’t. For the last three years I made more fixing their stuff than I made cutting the professionally produced projects. The curious part it was not the format of the footage they brought — it was HDCAM, R3D, ARRIRAW and even film — that put them into the neighbors nephew category but their I-just-invented-filmmaking attitude and incredible sloppiness of the product they make.
What I’m venting on this board is the anger at the situation that the tool I find worn down but acceptable is going to stop working, the brand new tool from the same vendor doesn’t work at all and few other tools left on the market are rather unrefined.
Avid after ten years of FCP eating away at its market share still didn’t teach Media Composer basic rules of screen hygiene. It still shits all over the display with overlapping windows, ugly widgets and wasted space.
Adobe Premiere though finally having an almost complete editing toolset doesn’t give you access to this toolset from keyboard.
And FCPX is just a freak-show of rejected interface ideas from long gone NLE’s.
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Kai:
I am at least as old as you are, and have lived through every event you called out in your post.
Regarding your observations about iMac, Thunderbolt and DSLR — and Panasonic and Sony’s attempts to do “large sensor for video” the right way (no over-heating, no moiré, camcorder controls, pro audio on-board, etc) — I have made exactly those points elsewhere on COW. I agree.
And with the demise of DVD, Hollywood films (except the big EFX blockbusters), the online fragmentation of TV and all forms of mobile video… I think we really ARE entering a new phase of media, for which FPCX will begin to rule almost immediately.
I have speculated, along with others, that for the few pro editors who must continue to use the FCP7 functionality we’re accustomed to, we may need to work on PPro, Avid, Smoke etc etc. And for high-end work, post may once again be a specialty business as it was in the ’80s. You already see it in high-end special effects and animation, where software is a constantly evolving-in-house affair.
I have only one gripe: that yanking FCS3 as Apple did — probably for “clarity” as they want current and future users to think “iMovie” for free with the OS, or FCPX for all other editing — creates a logistical issue for many pro users.
Your brutal statement “they owe you nothing” is harsh. Good companies, especially giant ones who can afford it, often try to ease the transitions, and keep their evangelizing pro customers in the fold. Apple is not a small mismanaged outfit like Media 100. They are the leaders. They can afford to support FCS3 for a year or two until everyone adjusts. They can create an obscure link called “Legacy Pro Apps” that will confuse NONE of the FCPX users, but that will support FCP7 through Lion etc, and allow us to slowly and economically move all of our current projects to other apps during the natural flow of work.
As for not “owing” longtime users, that is a matter of corporate philosophy. Many companies DO recognize their base. Even the hated AT&T, who took so much grief they have revamped their Customer Service Department and now bend over backwards to treat me, as a longtime 3-iPhone customer, to all sorts of deals and favors. And Toyota, who has had trouble with their Prius (brakes, accelerator issues) has given me price breaks on electronic repairs, at the corporate level, thanking me for being a loyal owner (I have two of them).
You CAN treat your loyal base that way, if you so desire. In the pro edit world, we are talking about a few thousand of us who would like a little more time to sort this out, without pirating serial numbers, buying illegal FCP copies from eBay and relying on hackers to give us ProKit updates well into the future.
We pros have thus far been good emissaries for Apple — it was the graphic, music and video pros who got the company through the dark years when everyone else said “But PCs are so cheap, and they run a jillion more apps!”
When we used to do promo films for Ziff-Davis Publishing back in the ’70s (Car & Driver, Pop Photo, Stereo Review magazines), the concept was “the ripple effect:” If you sell to professionals, they will pass their recommendations on to the layman when asked for advice. That has been true about Apple forever and still is; every family with a kid comes to me, asks whether they should by a 13″ or 15″ MBP, should they buy FC Express or FCP and so on.
Of course now I’ll tell them to get FCPX, possibly on a MacBook Air with Thunderbolt. I teach film/video in a private high school and that seems like an appealing setup.
The point is, everything you say is true and I agree. Except that it is NOT inevitable fact of life and force of nature that Apple HAD to pull FCS3 without any sort of notice or recourse. That just isn’t true. It is a choice, and their choice was simply, “Oh those whining, needy, finicky perfectionist pro users are a pain in the rear; let’s just ignore them and they will go away.”
That may be the brutal reality of too-big-too-fail global capitalism (are you a Republican by any chance?), but if they feel that way about me and my access to FCS3, why should I simply lay down and whimper “thank you for getting me to go cold turkey off the junk?”
It is only logical that we complain about that decision; it doesn’t make us FCPX haters or delusional about “the future.” It just means we were uneccessarily treated poorly by big business.
Doug D
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[Michael Aranyshev] “Adobe Premiere though finally having an almost complete editing toolset doesn’t give you access to this toolset from keyboard.”
Good Grief! As someone who’s complained for a few years about functions you couldn’t assign to a key I can report that in CS5.5 there are very few things you can’t configure the keyboard setup to do. What are you missing?
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
Open clip from Bin in Source monitor?
Select Clip in Timeline?
Roll, Ripple, Slip (can Slide)?
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@ Douglas Absolutely spot-on, many companies do actually treat their customers rather well
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[Michael Aranyshev] “Open clip from Bin in Source monitor?
Select Clip in Timeline?
Roll, Ripple, Slip (can Slide)?”
Michael, I’m guessing you’ve never really looked at the program for longer than a few minutes?.
If you hover over the tools in their panel, you’ll see their keyboard shortcuts which are configurable. If you look in edit/keyboard shortcuts you’ll see where, and also find that opening a clip in source is assignable, if it doesn’t have a default – mine is Ctl-Enter.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
I’ve fired up Premiere as soon as I closed FCPX last week. My list of things I need to work is rather long so it took a while but I’ve found most of them. Now I want to learn how to access them from keyboard. You volunteered to help so please do.
The search for “Open” in Keyboard Shortcuts shows only “Open Project”. Eyeballing the list I don’t find many things either.
I know how to change tools via keyboard. What I want to know is how actually ripple trim a few frames from the head of a shot without a mouse.
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Hi Michael,
Thanks for your input. You can trim with the keyboard, however, you’ll have to open the trim window first (T). You can also do an extend edit with keyboard shortcuts.These may not be ideal for your workflow, but they do work. If you want to trim more with the keyboard in the timeline, please make a feature request.
The Premiere Pro team is pushing for a more keyboard driven workflow, so your requests really do matter.
You can send those feature requests to: https://www.adobe.com/go/wish
I’d love to take a look at them too if you’ll send them along to:
kmonahan -* AT * Adobe – DOT – comKevin Monahan
Sr. Content and Community Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter! -
[Michael Aranyshev] “The search for “Open” in Keyboard Shortcuts shows only “Open Project”. Eyeballing the list I don’t find many things either.”
That’s because searches are specific to the modality selected in the drop down menu in keyboard preferences. There are three: Application (which is where you searched), Panels, and Tools. The command for opening a clip in the source panel is, obviously :), in Panels.
Most of the keyboard settings are in Panels. I wish the search function worked across all three modes but it’s new to CS5.5.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
I’ve figured it out eventually but thanks anyway. I got myself a nice “Reveal in Project” too!
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