Chris Kenny
Forum Replies Created
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FCP X provides an extremely strong technical foundation for Apple to build on. The number of features that need to be added to make it suitable for high-end workflows is relatively small, and we already have what appear to be reliable indications that several of them are in the works. Jumping to Avid now is almost precisely equivalent to having choosing to jump to Windows back in 2001, one day after Mac OS X 10.0 shipped. Except that FCP X will probably get up to speed faster than OS X did.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Dylan Evans] “What you are describing is kinda my point, your friend would not be described as a “pro”, “semi-pro” perhaps. But in aspiring to be a professional in the industry myself I am beginning to wonder if I will receive the same love from Apple as your friend. I don’t doubt Apples business sense for one second.”
Well, my point here was simply to answer they “Why didn’t they implement XML, video I/O, etc. before shipping?” question. The answer is, because they might as well sell a bunch of copies to people who don’t need those things while waiting for them to be finished.
This doesn’t, as some people seem to be arguing, actually imply in any way that Apple has no intention of implementing more advanced features.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Huh? I see 554 ratings right now, not with an especially positive distribution. These accusations of supposed ratings manipulation on Apple’s part seem pretty unfounded.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Andrew Corneles] “This is NOT an expensive rewrite of Final Cut. it is iMovie Pro. “
That oft-repeated criticism is fundamentally meaningless. Does FCP X share some UI similarities with iMovie? Sure. Because Apple rolled out new editing UI first in iMovie, where the stakes were lower. Does FCP X lack some workflow features at the moment? Yes. But this has nothing to do with its relationship to iMovie. What, specifically, is this “It’s iMovie Pro” line intended to actually say?
[Andrew Corneles] “they have had 4+ years to overhaul FCP and they didn’t do it. “
What do you mean by “overhaul FCP” here? Do… something to the old Carbon/QuickTime codebase? What, exactly? The features everyone wanted — 64-bit, strong multicore and GPU support, a fix for longstanding QuickTime-related issues, etc. — were effectively impossible to implement on the old codebase. It was obvious they had to do a rewrite if they wanted to stay in the game. This time last year, it was the skeptics insisting they wouldn’t do one, and the “fans” saying they would. Now the skeptics seem to be arguing they shouldn’t have?
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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 Conlee] “I’d argue that Avid doesn’t NEED to make the kind of changes that Apple also didn’t NEED to make but just did. “
But that’s precisely my point — Apple just did it. The holy grail is a fully-modern foundation and workflow features supporting a robust ecosystem. Having done the former, and being virtually assured of selling enough copies to make the latter happen as soon as they add the required features, Apple is probably 85% of the way there with the work they’ve done at this point.
Apple prefers fast transitions to slow incremental ones. We saw this with e.g. Microsoft’s approach to transitioning to a modern OS (took basically six years) vs. Apple’s (took about two). It’s more intensely painful in the short run, but it leads to a less compromised product. (I know the Avid fans will reject this out of hand, but to folks who haven’t been using it for years, Media Composer, while it sure does have a lot of features, has kind of turned into a confusing tangle of a program these days.)
About the only way it’s possible for Apple to not have a significant advantage in the coming years is if they really do decide to exit the high-end market, and e.g. never implement video I/O or features for interfacing with external apps. But I’d consider that extremely unlikely. First, because it doesn’t make sense to come this far and then stop, and secondly, because we already have some specific indications that it’s not the case.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Will Griffith] “He could change my mind if he could provide a past example that demonstrates Apple’s desire to be in post production and professional products for the long haul.”
They bragged about broadcast and post facility NLE market share at the event where FCP X was announced. Had Apple not been interested in the pro market in the long run, they wouldn’t have bothered with a long and no doubt expensive rewrite of Final Cut in the first place.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Bill Kerner] “Maybe, FCP is no longer the right hammer?”
People need to understand the scope of what Apple has already done with FCP X vs. the scope of the handful of (admittedly quite important) missing workflow features. Apple has not only written a new video editing application from the ground up, but they’ve written an entirely new media framework to drive it as well. FCP X is, hands down, on far more modern technical footing than Media Composer. Apple will likely add key workflow features back over time, and all the investment they’ve made in modernizing core technology will likely pay significant dividends over the comping decade.
FCP X is, in this respect, much like the first release of OS X, which was also widely panned. It’s not the end of something. It’s the beginning.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Will Griffith] “Moving the shop to Avid & daVinci.
Why would you switch platforms? I assume FCP 7 meets your current needs, or you’d have switched long ago. That means you’re presumably switching based on future expectations, yes?
In that context, it’s worth pointing out that Final Cut Pro X is a next-generation video editing application, newly rewritten from the ground up. Yes, it’s missing a few key features in its first release. But Apple will have a far easier time adding those features back in than Avid will have modernizing Media Composer to the same extent. If you’re looking for a platform for the next decade, it’s probably not a brilliant idea to bet against Apple right now.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Hector berrebi] “the file offline screen has a strong U.S.S.R feeling to it :)”
Heh. Sort of an unintentional consequence of combining the star icon used for events with the red color everyone expects for offline media.
Incidentally, FCP X tells you about offline media in the project properties display and in the timeline clip list view. It also warns you if you attempt to export a movie from a sequence with offline media. I sort of feel obligated to point out that FCP 7 was extremely dumb about these things, and that if the behavior of FCP X and FCP 7 were reversed in this respect, this would undoubtably be used as ammunition to claim that FCP X was “not a pro app”. But somehow FCP 7 gets a pass and FCP X gets no credit here.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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[Tom Brooks] “Lot of Avid people saying I told you so. Never should have gone with Apple to begin with. I disagree. We went with FC because it was new in many ways. This is more new. We were due for a change.”
Yeah, all the Avid folks crowing over this should probably cut it out. First off, it’s pretty obnoxious behavior. More more to the point, though, FCP X is about five key features away from being right in the mix with complex multi-application workflows, and there are promising indications about three of them already. Meanwhile, in terms of core technology and user interface, it’s miles ahead of Media Composer, and it’s 1/8 of the price. I hope Avid itself isn’t as silly as some of its fans; they need to be taking this very seriously.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.