Why should I pay for your obscure-use scenario?

[Lucas Merino]

[Chris Stevens] “If you want feature X, you will buy a third-party plug-in. “

When your 3rd party plugin doesn’t work, who are you going to call for support, Apple or the 3rd party? And when you call that person and they tell you to call the other company, then what?

And then what happens when Apple updates fcpx and it breaks the 3rd party plugin?

…And what happens if you are in the middle of a project and it’s an auto update from the appstore, just like when Quicktime gets updated when you don’t want it and it kills After Effects export.

If they are going for a modular 3rd party approach, Apple has set up a horrifying precedent with how they released fcpx.

[Bob Bonniol]

GIANT fan of yours Chris. Alice for iPad is awesome…

Having made the shift to an all Adobe based workflow sometime ago, this whole scenario has been interesting to watch at an admitted distance. I tend to agree with your modularity opinion. I relate to the workflow pain being expressed here as well…

Hell, who likes to be a practitioner who finds there main tool a completely different thing when they pull it out of the box ? Bound to be uncomfortable, if not downright infuriating/frustrating.

I’ll say this: We are in a time of incredibly rapid change. Tools, workflows, delivery methods, market places, demographics, EVERYTHING shifting on a second by second basis. In my bread and butter business, large scale concert video, the display technology, processing, and serving changes every 6 months. The stuff I used 18 months ago has departed for the dust bin, or has been appropriated by DIY culture and repurposed into something unexpected. The only thing I can do is consciously set aside my own bandwidth to keep up, and to adjust my pipeline and workflow. I know that’s not an analog for mainstream production. What a giant pain in the ass this is for many of you. Still, if I were a betting man, I think that the view of post production/editorial in 3 or 4 years will have FCP-X probably sitting in a very central position, maybe among all of us, maybe among a new generation of practitioner… Change happens. The universe is naturally entropic. Adapt or don’t. Whatever you decide to do, the world will proceed.

Have a great day everybody…

Bob Bonniol

[J Hussar]

No prob – I’ve just noticed a certain amount of hit and run accounts. There was girl who came on day one of the fiasco, attacked some very valid points that were being made and then whoosh – gone. Most of us have our livelihoods on the line – hence the intensity on some of the threads.

Especially those of us with many older jobs (hundreds +) and tape libraries, who are literally in stunned disbelief at being left high and dry after being the biggest boosters of FCP. I hope you have some appreciation of that.

[Tom Olsen]

It is called Final Cut Pro, not Final Cut Indie. Apple could have made a consumer version for the app store for the indie people who dont need obscure features like being able to output split tracks or XML for use with other programs, or the other features they left out, but instead, they killed FCP, DVD Studio Pro, Color, FCP Server and Soundtrack Pro. To me that says Apple is out of the Pro market and just doesnt have the guts to actually admit it. I doubt they will add those features. I was a beta tester of Avid, coming from a film and tape background, and this is not the same situation; Avid made our jobs easier, it didnt make us pine for the splicing block.

[Chris Stevens]

[Lucas Merino] “When your 3rd party plugin doesn’t work, who are you going to call for support?”

I’d hope the modular system would police itself for ongoing compatibility and inspire third-party tools.

I think it’s a mistake to assume that Apple chose to strip-down the FCPX feature set out of malice for a ‘pro’ user. From my perspective, as an ‘indie’, it looks different: What has happened is that Apple has concentrated on providing a solid foundation for editing, while (relatively) niche functionality has been implicitly outsourced to third-parties.

This is good for several reasons:

1) It will provoke rapid innovation in the plug-in industry
2) These plug-ins will be much more advanced and more regularly updated than Apple can manage alone.
3) These specialist tools can become more focused to address individual ‘pro’ workflows.

The end result is that the core cost of the FCPX ‘backbone’ is low for the majority of users who don’t need these legacy tools.

It’s also cheaper for the ‘pros’ in the long-run too. Now you can decide whether a seat requires a full suite of plug-ins or just the ‘backbone’ of FCPX. You’ll also get much better tools for dealing with your current process, supplied by third-parties.

Apple did the same thing with iOS. Rather than attempt to provide a complete feature set themselves, they implicitly outsourced that to third-parties. Consider that the iPad didn’t even ship with a calculator app. Let’s wait and see how the industry addresses the plug-in possibilities here.

[Chris Stevens]

[Tom Olsen] “I doubt they will add those features.”

The argument I’m putting forward is that Apple don’t need to add these features. A third-party plug-in market will blossom around the edges of this meteorite impact zone (FCPX).

The ‘indies’ get more affordable access, the ‘pros’ get better specialist tools in the long-run. Give it time?

I think we’ll both win in the end.

[Chris Stevens]

[Bob Bonniol] “GIANT fan of yours Chris. Alice for iPad is awesome…
The universe is naturally entropic. Adapt or don’t. Whatever you decide to do, the world will proceed.”

Thanks, Bob. Glad you like Alice!

Agree with your thoughts here. Will be fascinating to see where FCPX stands this time next year and then re-read these posts.

[Tom Wolsky]

I think the real problem is that by the time that happens the pros are going to be gone and not coming back. There are three significant problems here, one, a failure to appreciate the huge importance of forward compatibility, two, what is perceived as an failure in trust by bringing out this product after a very, very lengthy wait rather than a fully featured, robust product the video production and entertainment industry were counting on, and third, a really clunky editing interface that needs badly to be fixed. Nobody asked for a paradigm shift, especially not one that took us all backwards.

Yeah, yeah, I know, you asked for a better horse, and I gave you a car; unfortunately my horse will be there and back in the barn by the time your car gets started, and even then it’s never going to finish the race because it doesn’t have any finishing tools or any way to get to them (to mix metaphors and facts).

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP7,” “Basic Training for FCS” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Walter Soyka]

[Chris Stevens] “I think it’s a mistake to assume that Apple chose to strip-down the FCPX feature set out of malice for a ‘pro’ user. From my perspective, as an ‘indie’, it looks different: What has happened is that Apple has concentrated on providing a solid foundation for editing, while (relatively) niche functionality has been implicitly outsourced to third-parties… Apple did the same thing with iOS. Rather than attempt to provide a complete feature set themselves, they implicitly outsourced that to third-parties. Consider that the iPad didn’t even ship with a calculator app. Let’s wait and see how the industry addresses the plug-in possibilities here.”

I would feel better about this if Apple had explicitly involved third-party developers (as they have done with iOS).

Apple has been just as secretive and closed with important third-party FCP developers as they have been with customers and users. Only a select few were privy to pre-release development. If Apple were seriously focused on professionals, I think they would have done a much better job involving major developers in the process.

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

[Lucas Merino]

[Walter Soyka] “I would feel better about this if Apple had explicitly involved third-party developers (as they have done with iOS).”

I totally agree with you here, except remember there was no appstore when the iPhone launched.

But as I said about the precedent they set with the launch of fcpx, there was no mention at all about “modular design” and base systems where indies could get by with minimum addons and pros could buy all sorts of things (which really I feel this is exactly how it works now anyway… some people can afford/need Sapphire and Automatic Duck and some people cannot/don’t).

Had they presented the product this way, and also launched with 20-30 3rd party companies with plenty of “addons” ready to go, I think it would be a totally different forum right now. Kinda like when they roll out app developers on stage during a presentation.