What’s Apple’s Strategy with FCPX?

[John Berpskin]

“So why not continue selling FCP Studio for those who still need the “old” workflows, the post houses that haven’t gone bust, the people who edit for film, who need multicam, who need proper audio mixing, work with RED and have invested thousands and thousands of dollars into that platform????”

Because editors are a stubborn lot and rarely embrace change. FCP 7 still exists (in my opinion) on your HD for a reason – they don’t want to fully porting over to FCP X yet. Some of the processes that X will offer will take some time to get used to. So keep using 7 but start getting accustomed with X. As for all the other features mentioned (multicam/film/audio mixing/etc) I have seen NO RELEASE that states will not be implemented or addressed and any talk of it not being implemented at this point id just rumor.

My opinion, again, is that they will be added IN CONJUNCTION with Lion’s release and further Thunderbolt development. With those two factors out there unsubstantiated, I again see this release as nothing more than a stripped down preview of things to come. They’re not saying “this is it” but rather “this is what it’s kinda going to look like.”

As for still selling FCP, why? In their eyes, it’s part of the old way of thinking and a closed chapter. And while i have read countless threads from people about how final cut server/omf/xml/multican/red IS NOT REPRESENTED in this version, I have read NOTHING that states it never will.

Again…my opinion.

[Peter Blumenstock]

None of this helps me or any other post house one single bit if I need antoher licence of the old FCP to get 90 percent of work done that FCP X can’t.

[J Hussar]

[Chris Kenny] “Because that would imply a separate product with high-end features, but assuming my interpretation is correct, the missing high-end workflow features will simply be added to this product over time.”

Chris, seriously, you are all over apologizing for Apple – I get it, you like them – and so do I. I was on Mac even when the PC world said it was dead.

But you are simply guessing, and hoping and speculating. What I see is factual, right in front of me – no pro features.

The big picture is IOS for them, consumer level products – that’s it. They have slowly killed all their pro apps that they acquired. They are all about iPhones, iPads, iMacs, etc. now.

I see absolutely NO reason to believe this wasn’t intentional – and they are calling it ‘PRO’ so the skater kid making a video ‘thinks’ that he’s a ‘pro.’ We are not part of Apple’s IOS finger gesture future.

[John Berpskin]

Hence the reason they left FCP 7 intact after install.

[Chris Kenny]

[J Hussar] “The big picture is IOS for them, consumer level products – that’s it.

This is inconsistent with several of the features of FCP X (e.g. high-precision floating point image processing, 4K support, DPX/OpenEXR export, pretty credible video scopes, organization features to support long-form projects) and inconsistent with what Apple has told Philip Hodgetts about future FCP X features.

Apple has had a lot of success in consumer markets. Some folks in this industry seem to determined to attribute every disappointment to that, somehow, but it really doesn’t make any sense. A year ago, the fact that FCP hadn’t been rewritten as a 64-bit Cocoa app was used as evidence that Apple only cared about consumers. Yet Avid Media composer also wasn’t (and still isn’t) 64-bit. Is that because Avid is also too focused on phones and tablets? Frankly, a lot of people just have very unrealistic expectations with respect to how long software development takes.

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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

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[Gary Huff]

FCP X is being groomed to eventually go to iOS, as will all of Apple’s hardware offerings at some point in the (relatively) near future.

[David Burch]

That would be well and good if there was an easy to way port a project from FCP7 to FCPX and back again. I could work around the no multicam feature, for instance, if I could start a project in FCP7, edit the multiclip portion, and then open the project up in FCPX and finish the rest of the project out. As of now I have no way of doing this.

I agree with the person who said they simply released a product as fast as they could, and plan on implementing features later. At least I hope that’s the case. This next year will be a crucial time for Apple’s market share in the pro industry. They have already released updates that fixes the lack of XCDAM EX support; let’s see if they can be as timely with implementing the missing features.