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The numbers don’t work out…
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[Chris Kenny] “To be honest, some of the items on your list are things that aren’t really all that critical for pro-level software. As far as I know, Avid Media Composer, the supposed gold standard for “serious professional editing”, also doesn’t support arbitrary frame sizes”
Chris, these features were absolutely critical to my workflow with FCP, and to many others. If you don’t need them in yours, that’s cool. I’ve seen your many posts with very pointed and vocal support of FCPX, and if it works for you, that’s fantastic, but can you appreciate where any of the rest of us are coming from? I checked out your work to try and get a better idea of where you’re coming from. We’re relatively neighbors, our studio is off the Bedford L stop in Williamsburg.
As a colorist, how do you feel about FCPX color grading tools and auto-match color correction? What about the absence of Color? I would wager most of your work is done in Resolve these days? Are you an offline editor as well? If not, how can you vehemently defend the editing capabilities/lack thereof in FCPX for high-end or even similar legacy workflow?
Features definitely don’t need custom frame sizes 🙂 We do a lot of interactive work for web delivery, installations, video walls, etc where custom frame sizes are paramount. I find their absence especially odd given FCPX’s strong commitment to web delivery and the general death of tape-based broadcast.
If you envision you can accommodate all of your clients with FCPX software, that is a real game changer! To me the missing tools and feature sets are somber deal breakers, and diametrically opposed to the expansive feature set of FCP, and with Apple totally mum it’s a bit unnerving. I think that’s why we’re all posting in this forum in the first place.
To you, what is a “critical feature” beyond the ability to sequence and sync video and audio in a timeline and export?
I can’t speak to custom frame sizes in Media Composer… I haven’t used it in about 7 years. Maybe someone else can speak to this. I’ve never been a fan of the AVID ecosystem and have based my career the last 8 years upon FCP without ever looking back. Also to me, and to the dominant 52% of the market, Final Cut Pro had become the “gold standard” for serious professional editing.
Again, most of all, whether the bells and whistles work for you or they don’t, it seems impossible to defend that FCPX looks and feels, from design and included feature set alone, to be aimed at a different market. Until we hear definitively from Apple, all of the back and forth is just pissing in the wind.
JONATHAN DORTCH
BLACK WOLF CREATIVE -
[Jonathan Dortch] “As a colorist, how do you feel about FCPX color grading tools and auto-match color correction? What about the absence of Color? I would wager most of your work is done in Resolve these days?”
Yeah, pretty much exclusively Resolve, so the discontinuation of Color, I can’t say I personally care much about.
FCP X’s built-in grading tools are pretty good, in my opinion, by NLE standards, which admittedly isn’t saying a ton. I can see automatic color matching being useful to offline editors (which I’m mostly not) for producing better looking rough cuts, which is not as silly as it might sound, as it’s not unusual in the indie feature world to submit rough cuts to festivals or screen them to try to raise more money for completion.
[Jonathan Dortch]
Are you an offline editor as well? If not, how can you vehemently defend the editing capabilities/lack thereof in FCPX for high-end or even similar legacy workflow?”I don’t. I admit FCP X is lacking essential high-end workflow features at this time. If a client asked me if they should cut, say, a Red music video on FCP X to bring in for grading in a weeks, I’d have to tell them not to, because as of this moment there’s no way to get sequence data out of it and into Resolve.
But, I believe Apple is following a deliberate strategy of shipping the app as soon as it’s useful to mainstream users, knowing full well that more features need to be added before it’s useful in high-end workflows… and is now in the process of adding those features. They’ve essentially told us as much, just not (yet) first-hand. And if this is Apple’s strategy, it’s hard to find much fault with it. High-end users will get what they need about when they were always going to. Meanwhile, mainstream users have a shiny new app already.
[Jonathan Dortch] “Features definitely don’t need custom frame sizes 🙂 We do a lot of interactive work for web delivery, installations, video walls, etc where custom frame sizes are paramount. I find their absence especially odd given FCPX’s strong commitment to web delivery and the general death of tape-based broadcast. “
Personally, I’ve also found custom frame sizes useful on occasion. My point was not to try to claim this feature isn’t useful. It was to note that its lack is not an indication that FCP X is consumer-oriented software. As you noted, features don’t require custom frame sizes and neither does broadcast; there’s no real correlation between “seriousness” of market and need for this ability.
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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] “They’ve essentially told us as much, just not (yet) first-hand. And if this is Apple’s strategy, it’s hard to find much fault with it.”
I just have to majorly disagree here as, both as a business owner and daily FCP editor. Fault is pretty much what this whole discussion is about.
I find great fault in the software not being capable after numerous years of development. I find great fault in Apple *not* telling us anything first hand, releasing a substantially lacking piece of software while yanking our entire platform from the market. I find great fault in the prosumer-first strategy when so many of us have based our businesses around the previous software that clearly catered to the high end user. Apple drove FCP hard to compete with AVID for the last ten years, and we listened.
I place great fault on Apple for the frenzied storm they’ve sent our user base into. I REALLY don’t like clients reading on CNN about our software and calling to ask what’s wrong and if their projects are OK.
Adobe managed to rewrite Premiere into 64-bit without losing a single feature. By adding a lot of awesome features.
Look for Avid to do the same thing with MC6. As a user I expect to gain features, not lose hundreds, even in a 64-bit re-write.
This 1.0 argument holds little weight for those of us who base our livelihood on the powerfulness of platform. This isn’t 1.0. We don’t want 1.0. It’s the 8th full generation of an editing platform and it feels like a slightly more robust iMovie. FCP7 is so outdated horsepower wise it’s getting hard to stay on board, especially if we are expected to use FCP7 for another year or two while X plays catchup to the mock of our industry.
The strategy of re-inventing the wheel, releasing sub-par software and playing major pro catchup doesn’t work when there’s a 10 year vestige, expected features, and 2 million customers who rely on the platform. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s arrogant and dangerous. It’s regressive. The improvements in FCPX aren’t mind blowing, they’re on par with the work Adobe has already done to Premiere in CS5. I just started using Premiere for the first time since about 1999 given this fiasco, and I’m even less impressed with FCPX now. I kind of feel silly for not checking it out sooner. Amazing Photoshop/After Effects integration and render free timelines without background transcoding. This is what we needed in the FCP platform.
If the strategy is to force us to wait in 32-bit FCP for an undetermined amount of time as Apple plays catchup to get back the platform back to functionality, I don’t have the time to wait. It’s not good business. Silence doesn’t work for me when business is at stake.
If you don’t see it, you don’t see it. But if you relied on FCP’s robust feature set for your daily work instead if Resolve, you might see things from a different perspective. If Resolve didn’t exist you’d be pretty much hosed with the death/MIA of Color — alternatives even a few years ago would have set you back 25K+. The industry will always shift and adapt. What would you do if Blackmagic pulled Resolve and replaced it with a far inferior product and met your questions with silence? It’s unnerving to have your platform be in an unknown state of flux.
I still think it’s entirely possible, Apple’s vague comments through Mr. Pogue notwithstanding, that even with some restored features like Multicam and third parties supplying plugins, we’re dealing with an entirely different direction with FCPX. Do you not get that impression from the software? From running FCPX side by side with iMovie? There’s just too much missing from legacy FCP. And no serial, price point too low, no volume license, no educational license. It bucks all trends of professional software.
No one hopes I’m wrong more than myself. Final Cut Pro is like family to me. Just seems like the writing is on the wall, despite a silent Apple.
Maybe I’ll see you around the neighborhood. Thought your site and work were nice.
JONATHAN DORTCH
BLACK WOLF CREATIVE -
My two cents…
I think Apple has run up against a brick wall with Final Cut Pro. I think Apple has hit a saturation point with the software. I don’t think they can grow the professional market anymore… especially a market where the department of labor only sees a moderate growth pattern for the next 10 years.
https://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos091.htm
In other words, I think Apple could not sell to enough professionals to justify development and implementation costs.
Also, to a certain extent, I think the limitations of just being on an Apple platform are starting to show… especially with the competition. Avid and Adobe are on both Windows and Mac. For Adobe, this has meant incredible numbers now since the Premiere Pro rewrite just over a year ago to 64 bit.
Mr. Dortch has indicated that 1.8 million people own FCS3 by his estimates — Adobe announced this month that they have sold two million copies of Premiere Pro CS5 in the last two years. And these are full versions, not upgrades.
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/industry-trends/adobes-vision-for-professional-video/
Also, Premiere Pro is not an easy piece of software to learn, so that means that a good majority of people who are purchasing it have to be former Final Cut and Avid users. There’s a reason why PP 5.5 looks very similar to Final Cut.
In order for Final Cut to be competitive, Apple has to find new customers. For Apple those customers still have to come from the 10% pool of people who own Macs. And in that group, The only ones available are the people who want to take their video editing to a step beyond iMovie and those people who don’t expect to create large market commercials, TV shows or motion pictures.
FCPX in its current version does not surprise me. You have to remember that it has always been Apple’s philosophy to make what looks hard easy. Apple’s philosophy is also very democratic — software and hardware for The People. I think Final Cut Pro occurred during a time when getting into video was still an expensive venture. Nowadays you can get decent-looking video off a cell phone. Everyone has video today and now they need an easy way to edit it that looks good without being too complicated. And despite what some people may think FCP7 was difficult for 90% of Apple’s customers.
It also would not surprise me that within the next five years, you will find some version of Final Cut on the Windows platform. It depends on how many people purchase the next couple versions of the software between now and then.
I think Apple is at a crossroads right now with FCPX. I think you will see them make updates to the software but I believe it will never be as extensive as FCP7. The question is: Does Apple believe the loss of sales from the professional user can be offset by an increase in sales from the primary Mac user?
Something to chew over.
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Sometimes life needs a Cmd-Z!
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If I was a “prosumer” – presumably an amateur who has aspirations to be like a professional, someone who buys a Sony Z5 or EX3 for home movies – I certainly wouldn’t want to be seen buying something that the professionals had rejected.
B
bernie
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[Chris Kenny] “The UI “limitations” are mostly subjective. There is very little that can be done in FCP 7 that fundamentally cannot be done in FCP X as a consequence of UI changes.”
Let’s start with something simple – entering time code values to set the head and tail of a source clip. How do you do this in FCPX?
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[David Lawrence] “Let’s start with something simple – entering time code values to set the head and tail of a source clip. How do you do this in FCPX?”
Ctrl/P then type your inpoint timecode; Ctrl/P again and type in your outpoint.
Done.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Jonathan Dortch] “I find great fault in the software not being capable after numerous years of development. I find great fault in Apple *not* telling us anything first hand, releasing a substantially lacking piece of software while yanking our entire platform from the market.”
Apple should have been able to support MMS in the first version of iOS, right? It’s a pretty simple feature. You can play this game all day. Apple is not incompetent at software development; the software is what it is after years of development because software development is hard. A huge amount of work probably went into foundational features on this first release. Apple had to build AV Foundation into something that could replace QuickTime, for instance.
[Jonathan Dortch] “I find great fault in the prosumer-first strategy when so many of us have based our businesses around the previous software that clearly catered to the high end user.”
Given that this strategy doesn’t necessarily result in pros getting the features they need any later than they otherwise would have, this is fundamentally irrational. You’re saying Apple should have held the app off the market until more pro features were implemented just to signal loyalty to pros, essentially.
[Jonathan Dortch] “Adobe managed to rewrite Premiere into 64-bit without losing a single feature. By adding a lot of awesome features.”
People keep invoking this, but moving to 64-bit by itself does not require rewriting.
[Jonathan Dortch] “The strategy of re-inventing the wheel, releasing sub-par software and playing major pro catchup doesn’t work when there’s a 10 year vestige, expected features, and 2 million customers who rely on the platform.”
The same thing could have been said about Mac OS X, except with bigger numbers. The same thing was said about Mac OS X. A decade later, Apple sells ~5x as many Macs. Apple plays a long game. If you, for whatever business reasons, need to go somewhere else at the moment, then obviously that’s what you need to do. But Apple probably has a very strong future in this market.
[Jonathan Dortch] “Do you not get that impression from the software? From running FCPX side by side with iMovie?”
Again, this is extremely reminiscent of early OS X criticism. OS X also got bashed for having a UI that was supposedly oversimplified. Even, according to some people, designed for children. The truth is, the FCP X interface looks superficially similar to the iMovie interface, but the former has substantially more depth to it.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[David Lawrence] “Let’s start with something simple – entering time code values to set the head and tail of a source clip. How do you do this in FCPX?”
If I understand what you’re asking: click to select the clip in the browser. Click the timecode display. Enter timecode to jump the playhead to that location, and hit ‘I’ or ‘O’ to set the in or out point.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Simon Ubsdell] “Ctrl/P then type your inpoint timecode; Ctrl/P again and type in your outpoint.
Done.”
Thank you!!!
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