[Bill Davis]

But Andrew, what would you suggest as a better way?

Once Apple decided to EOL legacy and move on, what possible better path could they have taken to make people “feel better” with a decision that was going to cause such disruption?

Would it have been better if they’d sent us each an iTunes gift card or written us all personal letters?

It was GOING to be a PR disaster in the pro community, not because of the handling – but because of the reality of the decision to go in a new direction.

At some point, it’s kinda like a girl or boyfriend deciding to move on to someone new. No matter what words you say or how you try to soften the blow, in the end, someone’s going to feel bad. The key reality is that Apple isn’t anybody’s boy or girlfriend, they’re a business. They are supposed to do what’s best for the business. They have to weigh any negative press against a vision of a future where they feel they can improve their business through developing products and solutions that will enable their clients to move forward.

I’m a “just grit your teeth and pull the damn thing off” guy when it comes to band-aids.

I respect other approaches. But this fits for me.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

One clear lesson.

In the days of global interconnectedness – it’s valuable to remember that what say and write and post in public – even in kinda closely targeted forums like the one that Richard Harrington was originally addressing – it’s all to easy to light a word fire that can spread far and wide.

I don’t think he did a thing wrong or even anything that I haven’t been equally guilty of – so I feel bad for him, because I’ve been in similar circumstances speaking or writing my opinions in a group setting, only to find someone interpreting my words in ways I had not expected – and suddenly, it’s spreading everywhere and there’s no good way to “unring” the bell.

It’s kinda like ALL of us who blog or write opinion based posts in open forums such as this are being schooled by the big bad world to give more weight to the journalistic traditions of solid sourcing, and keeping that fence between opinions and facts in good repair.

That’s probably a good thing in the long run.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Andrew Richards] “I don’t think there is any disagreement anywhere that they really botched that aspect.”

Not so sure about this.

I heard more than one source I know on the west coast say things like “pulling the band-aid off fast” when describing the idea that once the strategic decision was made, there was no real benefit to Apple spending much time trying to smooth the feathers of those who weren’t going to like it.

I’m not actually sure there was EVER a way to soften the blow to so many at the rarified pro end of the spectrum who so gleefully bought into the value proposition of FCP-Legacy – most often later, rather than earlier – and were knocked then off stride when it was EOL’ed.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Herb Sevush] “This technological breakthrough happened in video post about 10 years ago. 64 bit is an upgrade, but hardly revolutionary. FCPX is different in it’s approach, but not enormously cheaper, faster or better (if at all better.) I don’t see any fundamental shift, unless you too think shooting movies with an Iphone is the way to go.

It’s been many years since the barrier to making movies has been the cost of cameras or NLE’s. “

Herb,

You keep saying this over and over again, but it’s missing the point. It didn’t matter if there were technological changes 10 years ago or 50 years ago. What matters is the one happening right now.

If, 10 years ago, desktop tools had supplanted professional video editing processes in such a way that the work migrated en masse away from traditionally skilled editors and to a new class of young digital professional – then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

The truth is that 10 years ago the new digital production tools replaced the traditional tools in the hands of the traditional editors.

Today, that transition has happened down at the casual user level.

You didn’t have a generation of kids with BetaCams, or even DSR series cameras running around. You DO have a generation of kids today with 5dMkIIs or the like. And a laptop. And editing software.

That’s why, respectfully, today is NOT 10 years ago no matter how many times you’d like to re-cycle that particular argument.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Where to begin.

Aindreas…

I hear your concern and your pain. But there’s nothing either of us can do about it.
Believe it or not, I’m trying to cope with precisely the same change and pain. I’ve just decided that instead of fighting it and railing against it, I will embrace it and try to find the things about the change that are empowering rather than just yell about it.

Change is disruptive. Period. And we all have to deal with this disruption.

Your argument sounds to me like someone in the Court of some 14th century king arguing that the peasants thatdon’t have the economic clout to afford a personal craftsmen to build them a custom Clavenet – don’t deserve to learn how to play the piano.

That was precisely how the old world worked. The power of (anything) was reserved for the people who could AFFORD that thing.

Today it’s a different world. People with little money can afford astonishing personal technology.

No where is that more true than in the visual arts.

To build on your example in typesetting – it was once only those who could afford a lead type foundry – then it was people who could afford a Linotronic L-100 – then it was people who could afford a $6000 laserwriter (I was one of those myself!) – then after a while, anyone with a 500 laptop and a $150 Epson inkjet could practice “do it yourself” typesetting at a level unimaginable to that guy who used to sweat at the type slug foundry for his whole life.

I got schooled because I was able to afford that Laserwriter I. You probably did the same. There was a week BEFORE I knew what a kerning pair was – and a week AFTER I learned that. And like it or not, there’s a kid out there with a DSLR and MacBook who is getting schooled in exactly the same way as I write this. The unescapable difference is that the pool of those learning was small back in my day (and surely in yours as well) since a $6000 laserwriter/computer combo was pretty rare back when I was getting started.

A laptop, a library of fonts available via download on-line, and an Epson ink-jet printer is in damn near every home today.

And next to them you’ll find a camcorder. A TV set. And a laptop computer that shipped with free editing software.

If you can’t see the change represented by that – you might explore whether you possibly have some “Industry-insider” blinders on.

Everyone here knows that the real challenge is assembling the skills and wisdom to USE the tools properly. And that means buckling down and paying ones dues and learning the language and techniques – learning what works and what doesn’t, to make a buck (just like ALL of us did.)

But the huge change is the human expectation of ***access***

And Apple isn’t the cause of that. They’re just the company that understood it in a particularly useful fashion before anyone else.

My 2 cents.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Christian Schumacher] “Take “Color” and “Final Cut Server” as examples, both were terminated at an early 1.5 age in Apple’s hands.
Could you name another successful set of products (that are or not on your shelves) that met this same brief destiny?”

Christian,

I’ve actually seen LOTS of software that was killed quicker. Heck, one of my great historical examples was an early “killer database” app called Wingz – that was essentially stilborn – in that the company promoting it put HUGE assets into promoting it for years – with giant display booths at MacWorld – before killing it outright prior to launch.

The point is that all software has a huge hill to climb to reach viability. And what they sponsoring company considers to be “viability” is often different from their customers. Do a search on “discontinued candy” or “discontinued motorcycles” or “discontinued cologne” and you’ll find plenty of examples of products that were developed, had success (even very significant success) but didn’t last because the manufacturing company pulled the plug in the face of changing tastes, chaining company focus, or merely to spend their resources on something more profitable.

It’s business as usual – whether we like it or not.

Peace.

So

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Christian Schumacher] “A strip of audio? Consider yourself to be a lucky person.
I know a bunch who are stuck with many “deleted products” from Apple.
🙂
“

Just curious as to why this is such an Apple sin, when I, like most video professionals, have gobs of similarly “deleted” products from Sony, nVidia, Western Digital, Epson, Canon, Sennheiser, et al on my “retired gear” shelf.

I honestly think your brain is “stuck” in an “apple hate” loop, and you need to take a walk with your absolutely adorable son and seek some perspective.

Companies move on. They retire the old – in favor of the new.

And call me crazy, but for a company not to continue to do what they’ve been so richly rewarded for having done in the past – is what seems kinds nuts to me.

But what do I know.

My 2 cents anyway.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

[Ellie Krnich] “Has anyone experienced a problem with audio syncing in FCPx when dealing with tape-based footage? I am having some bizarre problems. Sometimes it happens, but othertimes it doesn’t. On the out of sync footage, you can hear several audio pops in the very beginning of the clip, where the sync has occurred. Are they any fixed for this? I do not have this problem in Legacy FCP…..

Thank you!”

I suspect that one reason you didn’t have any “problems” in Legacy is that this was a giant mess for many years before the engineers built enough code into FCP to handle all the squirely audio that resulted from various manufactures approaches to the digital audio “standards.”

Typically the largest problem area has been sample rate conversions. (various “flavors” of DV had sample rates all over the map, from weird “4-track 32khz samples”, to implementations of the 44khz and even 48khz “standards” that weren’t actually quite so locked to those rates. (Back in the day, it was typical to have to export video clips to Quicktime PRO as a separate step in ingest, just to conform audio sample rates!)

I suspect that in building FCP-X for the new “all digital” era, they didn’t feel it quite as necessary to maintain legacy code to support for all the various audio rate issues.

If you’re going to be working with legacy files – I’d highly recommend you put a “conform audio” step in your workflow where you transcode all audio to a single standard so that all the audio tracks that hit your timeline are the same.

I doubt the engineers working on X will make compatibility with historical audio messes a major priority in the early stages and they may NEVER address the needs of those working with formats that aren’t selling significantly any longer.

FWIW.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

There are bunches.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but did you try starting with a simple Google search for “5d intervalometer”?

I did and got a dozen hits – follow the links and you can learn all you need.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Bill Davis]

Olly,

Just a dose of reality.

Advertising is one of the MOST difficult things to break into. This is because it’s an absolutely ruthless financially driven industry. ALL creative must serve the business purposes of the project. Period. Nobody smart does advertising to be cool, to be edgy or to be anything other than completely efficient.

This is a requirement because the RISK is enormous.

For every dollar spent on production (the making of any advertisement) the amount spent to EXPOSE that ad to the audience is typically orders of magnitude larger.

If YOU were risking thousands, hundreds, tens or even just one of your own, personal thousand dollar bills to run some advertising – knowing that after the campaign is done, that money will be completely and totally GONE – would you mess around hiring people who hadn’t studied, been examined, and built reputations for successful performance over time?

You wouldn’t. Because it’s simply much, MUCH too big a financial risk.

Advertising is a start VERY small and work your way up by proving yourself time, and time, and time again business.

You can’t just “watch it” and think you can do it. Because nobody will EVER trust you that way. They can’t afford to.

Just a small dose of reality.

Sorry it’s so harsh, but that’s the truth of it.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor