[Chris Kenny]

[Herb Sevush] ”
I don’t doubt it. The Indie Film market is who FCPX was aimed at – because, generally speaking, their films will end up with a youtube release.”

I’m talking about mostly Red/Alexa shoots in the $100K to $1M range here, not DSLR projects destined for YouTube. (Not that spending a quarter million bucks exactly guaranties distribution these days.)

[Herb Sevush] “But let me put it another way – if you add up the salaries paid to all the editors working on Avids in feature films and broadcasting in New York, I think it would dwarf the income of the FCP crowd working in that market. How’s that for a condescending unprovable supposition.”

That’s very possibly true. But New York is not the world.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[David Roth Weiss] “Out of the purported 2-million FCP users (pre FCP X), who’ve experienced a lengthy wait and the pent-up demand that was fueled by Apple, it’s hardly the broadcast crowd that are the only ones disappointed. You just like to harp on that sub-culture because it supports your argument and because you think it bolsters your credibility.”

You continuously make these sorts of meta-arguments to try to discredit me. It’s really kind of silly.

In any event, my position on this market definition issue is best articulated here.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Herb Sevush] “Look Chris, as I said I’m not that fond of Avid, but you’d have to be blind deaf and stupid, and I don’t think your the latter, not to notice that once you take the L train into the city, the overwhelming number of editing facilities catering to the broadcast market in NY are Avid based. If I were still a freelancer I would have to know how to cut on an Avid or else I’d starve. FCP was catching up, but if you don’t think this re-tooling isn’t going to grind that to a halt, there’s a big stone bridge I’d like to sell you.”

The big NYC post houses mostly support FCP and Avid — they have to, because it’s not uncommon for them to get online edit work for projects that have been independently offlined in either environment. As a consequence of this dynamic I’m guessing it won’t be as long as people expect before major post houses start adding FCP X seats.

Indie features seem to overwhelmingly be on Final Cut these days.

I have little direct contact with what broadcasters do in-house. I don’t have trouble believing NY-based broadcasters are still mostly on Avid, but they’re the tip of the tip of the market.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[David Roth Weiss] “Personally, I’m still waiting for substantive information on record from Apple. Hearsay, even if verified by the multiple non-official, non-Apple people you like to quote, remains nothing but hearsay until Apple goes on record to verify it.”

Most of the substantive content from Pogue’s articles on FCP X a) was independently verifiable by anyone with a copy of FCP X (he was giving Apple’s responses to various misapprehensions about the software) or b) has been confirmed by the FAQ Apple released.

As far as I can tell, nobody is relying on Pogue’s credibility with respect to any arguments presently being made in this forum.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Tim Wilson] “I know nothing about Wall St….or much of anything else…but no Apple products have off quarters. :-)”

Heh. Well, yes, in general. iPad did miss estimates last quarter, but that was because of supply constraints, probably (at least partially) related to the Japan quake.

But Wall Street doesn’t quite understand or trust Apple (lot of that going around lately, apparently), which is why the stock is trading with a forward P/E ex cash that might be lower than your local gas company’s, despite growing revenue 60 to 90% a year. There’s some interesting discussion here.

“On a forward basis, there is widespread agreement that Apple has the reward (yield) profile of a bond without the risk of inflation.”

It’s hard to come up with any remotely plausible set of assumptions that could make such a conservative valuation reasonable, but it’s what the markets have somehow decided.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Herb Sevush] “Well Apple has just reversed that trend.”

We’ll see. Personally, I think Apple will take some short-term losses over this, but they won’t be nearly as apocalyptic as some are predicting, and they’ll mostly be to Premiere, which is much more friendly than Media Composer for an FCP 7 editor.

As I posted over on RedUser, Avid, somewhat bizarrely, could end up being the big loser in all of this in the long run. Premiere still mostly isn’t taken seriously in high-end circles. If some high-end shops switch to it from FCP 7, that could change, leaving Avid up against two very serious competitors with more modern apps and deeper pockets, once FCP X’s feature set is a little more fleshed out.

[Herb Sevush] “This is where we fundamentally disagree – the phrase “(frankly more important) technical features.” “

I was referring to GPU acceleration being more important than 64-bit, not being the most important thing in the universe.

(Media Composer does have some GPU acceleration, by the way, but nothing as comprehensive as what Adobe and now Apple have.)

[Herb Sevush] “Which is why they still rule the roost in this area, declining market share, stodgy interface and all.”

By what metric do they “rule”?

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Dave LaRonde] “I only know for sure about where I live, so let me do some counting…

We run seven seats, the CBS affiliate in town has about four, the NBC affiliate has a couple-three, two area production companies have about five, the cable company has three, I think, and my buddy from my church choir runs FCP, too.

That’s about 23 FCP seats that I know of, all used for broadcast production, all with tape decks, all in a town with a population of 130,000: lil’ ol’ market 80-something Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“

Um… I’m pretty sure I don’t actually need to explain to you that, as someone in a specific market segment, it’s not especially surprising or revealing that you know other people in that same market segment.

[Dave LaRonde] “Earlier I told you to take the rose-colored glasses. Now I’m telling you to take off the blinders.”

The vast, vast majority of current FCP users are doing event/corporate/web work. This is not sensibly disputable. I’ve been pointing it out for a couple of weeks now in contexts in which people have substantial move to disagree with it, in fact, and you’re the first person to do so.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Christian Kinnard] “You don’t see basic need to have the canvas and the viewer up at the same time when picking points?”

Not especially, no.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Herb Sevush] “People don’t say this, Adobe calls it a re-write. And while it may not be a re-write from a programmers point of view, it was a re-write from a user’s point of view. “

I thought the whole point you were making was that it wasn’t a rewrite from a user’s point of view….

[Herb Sevush] “And while this is purely speculation on my part, my guess is Avid will keep their user base in mind when they do whatever-it-is-you-want-to-call-it in the future.”

Yes, they will. And look at what this approach to the market has gotten them. They’ve got an NLE that has lost market share continuously over the last decade, largely because it’s interface — which they can never change very much because their existing users would flip out — is unappealing to new editors. They’re also the last to go 64-bit, and even once they do, they’ll still be lagging Adobe and Apple with respect to other (frankly more important) technical features, such as GPU utilization. Oh, and because Media Composer appeals to a smaller market, Avid has to charge substantially more for it.

I’m extremely confused as to why so many people seem to be holding up Avid as a model for Apple to follow.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.

[Chris Kenny]

[Dave LaRonde] “Really? I just had to open a project from two years ago. I’m currently cutting a spot together and it needs a little color correction. This same spot is going to run on a local cable system, and I have to put it on Beta SP tape for them.

Do you believe a majority of current FCP users deliver work for broadcast?

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.