Apple scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers - Page 2

Gotta disagree with you there. I never found the older versions of iMovie to be intuitive enough to keep my interest. When Apple redesigned the app, the new UI immediately made sense to me and I've edited numerous video clips with it. I can see that there's probably lots of room for more powerful features, but from a usability standpoint the new UI is what finally got me into casual video editing.

It took you 3 hours to figure out how to add a soundtrack? Really? Wow, I didn't think it was difficult to find a song in the media browser and drag & drop it directly into the timeline... Am I missing something here?

Perhaps iMovie's detractors are used to unintuitive procedures from other video editing software that lead them to overlook the most obvious ways to do things.

I love iMovie '08 and hated the old one. Sorry if it offends anybody but that is how I am.

We use iMovie to edit animations made by the kids in my anim club. The animations are very simple and no more than slideshows but even there the kids want more features.

Also, I resent the notion of dumbing down. As if it were a bad thing. I use and have used Lightwave 3d for over a decade commercially. I would not use it in its' entirety to allow my kids to make 3d anims but there are features and procedures that I would isolate to create a simpler app.

In the same way I would love to see iMovie gain a subset of FCS without "dumbing" them down.

Isn't FCE the same convoluted user interface as FCS but with half the features?

I suppose you will no longer be able to edit porn clips in FCP

I understand dude. Money is tight especially now a days. But consider $1000 a worthwhile investment if you're really serious about video editing considering that the other pro editing alternative available for you is even more expensive. The cost of the Avid system we have at work will make the price of FCS seem like chunk change. That's why FCP is popular among indie filmmakers.

This is normally my rule of thumb now. What would be the easiest, most direct way. If that doesn't work then what is the next easiest, etc.

In fact this is how I taught the kids to use iMovie when they get stuck.

Hmmm.. I didn't realize Porno flicks are edited together. I thought they just shoot it, burn it to DVDs then sell it or upload it directly online.

If you lived in LA and ventured over to Samy's you'd see 99% of the clientele is in the excitable content business and they definitely use the pro tools.

I need an iWeb Pro! And why not some substitutes for Photoshop and Illustrator?

<sigh>

Aperture 3 already got that treatment, where it mostly pulled a bunch of consumer features up from iPhoto.

i know..
i live here in socal. and i've shamefully edited porn a long time ago when i first started out. first ever paying gig.. its the easiest to edit yet also the "hardest". but hey, a job is a job..

"Pro" or not, it's a very powerful program. I make my living drawing a comic strip (in Illustrator), and I've never used Freehand, so I'm curious:

What features did Freehand have that Illustrator lacks? (Besides stability and speed. Adobe really needs to get its shit together in that department.)

I don't think it's been stagnant, either. The Blob brush is wonderful (debuted in CS4); totally changed the way I use Illustrator. And while I can't upgrade to CS5 until I upgrade my desktop, I think the new features there look promising.

Sorry if this seems off-topic.

I was just discussing with one of my editors today how nice it would be if FCP had better integrated menus for setups, layoffs, interaction with the Kona card etc. There are far too many gotchas in FCP particularly in a facility like ours where we deal with almost every flavor of SD and HD video, every frame rate, every resolution, every file type etc. The world of video is a mess thanks to HD and FCP doesn't really help the over worked and sometimes confused editor. System setting, Easy Setups. Audio/Video settings, User preferences - BLERG!

This article made me think that Apple realizes this and is making an effort to clean things up. make them more "Apple like". I can only hope this is real and not just Internet drivel.

If they water down the Pro Apps and dumb them down, I will walk from the platform.

One thing I would like to see is for Apple to go back to selling the apps individually as well as having the bundle at a nice deal.

For our work, we only needed DVD Studio Pro but had to buy the whole of FCS. Soundtrack Pro turned out to be very helpful for our recording needs (though we had a copy of Logic Express), but we have not used FCP or Motion, two likely very expensive elements in the suite.

If they want an easy to use Prosumer App why wouldn't they just add more functionality to Final Cut Express, redesign it and make it slightly more expensive. Final Cut Pro does need to redesigned to an extent but not dumbed down. As it is the new versions of Avid Media Composer and Premiere Pro are giving it a run for it's money.

I seriously doubt this all.

Final Cut Pro is used daily by high end production houses and directors. Overhauling the apps would scare them away to use Avid, Premiere Pro, etc. Pro Apps are status projects for Apple. "Look how are products are used by pros, daily!" the website screams, together with movies from pros using FCP.

What I think is that they are building FCP fron scratch, because it's full with old Carbon code, and the interface looks straight from the 90s. Based on Quicktime X. Realtime h264 editing, more powerful essential plugins like stabalizer, denoise, slow motion, removing elements fron video, etc.

Yes they will probably shuffle the menus around, removing elements with options which aren't used much. But they won't remove it, just move it. Apple won't let Adobe and Avid be the only pro option.

The same built-from-scratch will probably happen with Motion (make it just as powerful as After Effects) and Color (decent interface, realtime GPU results, perhaps merged in FCP as product).

I think Final Cut Express will be something like described in the Article, FCP for prosumers.

Well, this isn't the time or place for my full list of issues. Try http://www.freefreehand.org/ for more info. Or search youtube for some comparisons. But let's just say I do more 'technical' printed work, with finished products around 35"x25". We use nearly 250 layers, 52,000 objects and some 4.4 million points. AI can copy and paste with aplomb, but bogs down with simple stuff like editing text-on-path objects. And that's with 12GB RAM! (AI CS5 is NOT 64bit) I have a friend on the beta test team for AI. He can't ever tell me the NDA stuff, but he has said that there are known bugs or workflow issues that the marketing dept of Adobe will not let the engineers fix. It's always "add a feature", instead of fix the crap that holds back those of us using it many hours a day.

But here's a 'short' list:
-being able to select objects below with a control click (like FH and sorta like InD does). CS5 is in the right direction but there's a bug that won't let you select the fill area on an object below, just the paths.
- FH: select an object, then move it by grabbing said object anywhere on the object's area and it STAYS selected. With AI, you won't get the object you had selected, you get whatever is on top. Again, with 200+ layers, this is a huge deal. AI users use the "lock object" as a poor workaround.
- AI can't collapse all layers and sublayers all at one time (think Windows Explorer's tree format) AND it still doesn't save the collapsed/open state when you save the document
- big one here: Freehand has a FAR FAR SUPERIOR Find and Replace function. AI is still poopin' in diapers compared to FH.
- two words: Paste Inside.
- three words: text on paths (FH: select both text and path/one command to put text onto path, vs. AI: cut text object/change to text on path tool buried under text tool without a default KB shortcut/place cursor on path/click/adjust both ends of text margin thingies.
- lack of consistency in coloring layers and sublayers (can't set default color, nor select then color multiple layers or sublayers across multiple layers)
- AI doesn't show you at what rotation or size an object like a placed .tiff is, compared to what it started out as, FH does so I know if a Tiff has been adjusted from original size.
- Superguides suck donkey butt. They sometimes just don't snap right when at different zooms.

FH has had a kind of 'blob' brush since around 2000, the Freeform tool. Same goes for the 'new' 3D functions. And the auto-union tool? Really? If AI had real selection abilities (like FH) you could select what you want and then click the Union button. Why add ANOTHER bloody button to DUPLICATE a function?....to get your $600 upgrade for a frakin' button?

So, what all these pro apps, FCP and Adobe 'X', need is consistency in the UI. Applying the base level concepts of UI design that makes the iPhone so effective to use.

So why is this relevant to the FCP discussion? Well, I think because there's a certain logic in the iApps that lets the user just DO, instead of look up, experiment, then sorta do. If I want to insert a transition, I don't want to worry about the little extra bits of video needed to make it happen. If I want to do something, the software should be designed to make the right tool clearly found/recognizable and then the results be what I want. Not sometimes double click here, and over here option click. (ie AI click on layer's lock and all sublayers lock, but make a layer's top lever visible and the sublayers don't automatically become fully visible if they were completely hidden....inconsistent!!! GRR)

Sorry for the OT/Parallel comparison folks...just trying to be informative about how UI can make a big difference in usability and workflow, whether you're a consumer/prosumer/pro.

I know how much Avid is and I think the cost of Final Cut Studio is awesome but lowering the price to something more attainable will actually serve to booster FCP's uptake rather than just relegate it to professional studios with a tonne of money.

Imagine all indie filmmakers using FCP rather than FCE because of budget constraints. Imagine FCP having an iMovie 09 style interface for editing (sorry but I just love the interface I'm far more productive in iMovie '09 than FCE but FCE has more power for effects and the like). I would love iMovie simplicity with Final Cut power for doing animations and the like which are far easier to do in FCE than iMovie ironically.

There is absolutely 100% NO rule to say pro apps can't be dead easy to use and anyone who thinks there is has their heads up their bungholes. Ease of use does NOT mean lack of features. If anyone can do it Apple can and they're starting to prove it with Aperture so it makes sense Final Cut would be in their targets next.

I'm with you bud. I've become infinitely more productive in iMovie '09 than any other version of iMovie and I only use FCE when I need to add some effect.

My workflow generally involves cutting everything in iMovie '09, getting the clips in the right place, then exporting into Final Cut Express to add touchups and effects then I export back into iMovie so as to share or cut to disc.

Beef up iMovie to FCE level or add iMovie style editing to Final Cut and I'd be more than happy.

And it's awesome because of it. I bought Aperture 2 and used it for a while but it felt so wrong and difficult to use. I went back to iPhoto but with Aperture 3 I get great power and a superb interface and it works really really well.

This higher than thou attitude professionals seem to have seems ignorant to me. Maybe they're afraid that consumers won't need them anymore. Maybe that's not entirely a bad thing.

I THINK THIS ARTICLE MAKES MORE SENSE THAN APPLEINSIDER's ON FCS's FUTURE.This actually came from someone with insight in the post production industry. I and most of us here are maybe jumping to conclusions or simply freaking out!

http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/0...be-more-wrong/

You obviously don't need to do precise editing. Sure, you can drop a song into the movie, but can you fade it out exactly where you want? Can you cross-fade it with another song at the exact frame you want? Can you mix dialogue and music, fading one in exactly where you want? Can you adjust the volume frame-by-frame?

No, iMovie's detractors are used to being able to do PRECISE work, and get a finished product exactly the way they want it.

A lot of people don't need that or want that, but a lot of us do. iMovie's fine for YouTube videos, but it's not fine for detail work. I personally find the UI unusable for my purposes.

Yes, it has the same interface. The features missing in Final Cut Express are mostly related to support for professional-grade formats and hardware that no one outside of broadcast professionals need. Regarding that "convoluted" interface, it is long in the tooth and in major need of a refresh (it still looks like it did from the Mac OS 9 days for pete sake), but it needs to be less "convoluted" about as much as Photoshop needs to look like iPhoto. Which is to say, it doesn't. All of those buttons are there for a purpose.

I might have jumped to conclusion. I think we all did. You can say we're freaked out and paranoid. That tends to happen when rumors that your source of living and laundry money might be taken away from you. Maybe FCS is being rebuilt from the ground to be more inline with the current tech and hardware. I always forget that I'm on a rumor site. So I'll save my judgement when the actual FCS update comes out.

Final Cut Pro needs a lot of work. Happy to see they're working with it.
Motion however, needs to be tossed into the bin, and redesigned from ground up. It's messy and heavy. I hate that they bought Shake and killed it for Motion. The node based post production software out there offer unrivalled user control. "Drag and drop" Motion like software simply can't match it.

Edit:
I know they're trying to make things magical and simple.. but for me, and I assume most other pros, it simply doesn't cut it.

Except they did just that with Logic 9.

Oh, and making easier is not the same as "dumbing down" or "scaling down" (as the article puts it).

There are myriad kludges, bad UI choices and streamling enhancements to fix on FCP (and most complex pro aps, from 3d stuff, to Photoshop, to Xcode).

Most pro apps were build by accumulating features, and a rethinking of UI and workflow can make them approachable even to the general public.

The key is to make "easy tasks easy and hard tasks possible"

Hey Meridian... have you by any chance read my "CS5 Line Bug" posts over at the Adobe (Illustrator) Forums? I post there under DocPixel-BMW (since the days when I was driving one instead of an Audi).

Anyway... take a look at some of the responses from the "Illustrator Pros". To summarize shortly, we FH users have sabotaged Adobe's Forums with our wishes and comparisons to FH, and are also responsible for Illustrator's last few upgrade "Bug-fests" and stability problems.

An interesting post exchange if ya get the time...

not cool. bad moves

It seems MacPro is in a struggle to survive. Why produce MacPro if there no pro apps? Hope i would not be switching back to Windows.

P.S. iPhone and shit. Has SJ ever heard of Concentrating on the core business coz if you lose it you r dead meat 99.9%

Ben Ellis
to sjobs
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show details 12:01 AM (1 hour ago)
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Dear Mr. Jobs,

There's an article on Apple Insider that insinuates that Final Cut Studio is being retooled by veteran Randy Ubillos to better fit the needs of prosumers:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...prosumers.html

Please tell me that this is not true. It's taken a decade for FCP to gain the respect, appeal, and widespread adoption to unseat AVID as the premiere tool that most commercials and independent films are cut on. If Final Cut is "dumbed down" it is my fear that a great many FCS users would simply migrate back to AVID, or worse, Adobe CS5 (READ: "FLASH").

It's taken awhile to get some respect. Please, please don't marginalise what has been a truly revolutionary product for creative expression.

Sincerely,

Ben Ellis.

As someone who uses FCS everyday and is also a certified FCP trainer, I'm not particularly concerned. There is room for improvement in the interfaces of all FCS apps, especially Color. I work in a university environment where firewire hard drives are swapped around all over the place, so from my point of view the set-up process in FCP (Scratch Disks, Easy Setup) could be streamlined.

Why would they remove anything from FCP? At its heart it's a fantastic NLE tool that happens to include effects, very basic animation tools, titling and multicam functions. Compared to Premiere Pro and Avid (which we also have on PCs) it's extremely reliable and our students find it much easier to learn and use.

It does seem to be the case that many people who purchase FCS only use FCP and are afraid of venturing into the other apps. Maybe Apple are thinking of rolling the features of Motion and Soundtrack Pro into FCP, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I really don't think Apple will turn their back on pro apps. FCS is now the industry standard for video editing a recent survey (sorry I can't be more specific) showed that it beat Avid and Production Suite in terms of sales. There is also plenty of demand for certified training in FCS apps. FCS is perfectly placed to be part of what should be a huge explosion of interest in digital film-making when RED release the Epic and Scarlet cameras. Multimedia journalism (convergence of TV, web and print) is a growing area and not only attracts an interest in FCS, but Final Cut Server too. FCP is slowly making inroads into Hollywood, with some directors specifically requesting it. I'm one of the few people who actually expects to see more pro apps from Apple, a visual effects suite will do wonders for sales of the MacPro and MacBook Pro.

I too hope that the next version of FCP Studio isn't stripped of any of it's professional features and power. References to Aperture 3 gives me some hope: Apple did add some "cute" features including Faces, but users can choose to ignore them. At the same time, Aperture's pro features in 3.0 did improve considerably from previous versions. Of course, it took much pain and several revisions to make the application perform appropriately.

It's interesting to see Premiere Pro muscle up in CS5. I really don't want to switch.

Those who work on larger more complex video editing projects find that the MacPros need more memory. Although 32Gigs of RAM may seem like a lot, a 64Bit computer should be able to handle well over 128GB RAM. Some PCs already go well over 64Gigs, Apple seems to be undeceive about their support for high end products.

Shake, XServe, XRAID, FCP Server, and the lack of variety in the high end Apple desktop product line. Even OS X Server, is a risky buy for any large setup.

Well actually an Avid system is about $2500. When FCP first came out it used to be massively expensive in comparison but not any more. I run both applications on the same Mac and depending on the project and customer I can use which ever is suitable. The Avid box also comes with a motion graphics and compositing application, audio editing app., DVD authoring, Sorensson Squeeze and a bunch of Boris plug-ins.

I definitely agree with you. Apple's products excel in that department really well. The iPhone and iPad are huge examples of this.

I know more people are thinking of the mods to FCS as dumbing down of the suite, but Steve Jobs' principle often reigns true that the way a user is able to interact with something often will determine the sales, not features. Adobe, by comparison, has feature-rich apps in CS5. However, the apps themselves are so bloated and buggy that even pros have switched away from Adobe Creative Suite altogether.

I know that FCS needs not to loose any of its features, but all this article is saying to me is that Apple just wants to make it more usable to a wider variety of people. I, for one, found the user interface a little daunting when using it compared to Adobe Premiere and After Effects (not saying that these are necessarily better than FCS). I could use Final Cut Pro well, but I often found round-tripping sound from Soundtrack Pro to FCP, for example, very difficult. To me, this is article is a godsend because I do think the interface needs an overhaul. I heavily doubt that this will become like iMovie '08 though.

I hope that's the case, because IMO, Apple would be making a huge mistake walking away from the true pro market, even if it's not a huge revenue generator. Its use with pros is what drives sales of the downscale products to semi-pros and consumers. In addition, its use with pros is what drives sales of Macs. Since they have a three-tier product line: iMovie, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro, there is no logical reason to dumb down the Pro version, IMO. That's not to say that it couldn't use some workflow and UI improvements.

If Apple dumbs down the Pro products so that pros don't want to use them, that leaves an opening for a competitor such as Avid or Adobe to reclaim the high-end market. And if they do that, they can reclaim the lower-priced product categories as well. The problem with Avid or Adobe taking over the market is that users of their software don't necessarily have to work on a Mac -- they can use a PC.

I haven't taken a look at the current version of iMovie, but the previous version completely sucks. I found it completely non-intuitive. It almost works like a Microsoft product: by trying to help you, it makes your job harder.

I would drag a sound clip onto the movie at the spot I wanted it to begin. Nothing would happen visually as the sound clip would be entered in the background NOT at the point I thought it would be entered - i.e. at the time line marker where I dropped it. Since nothing visual happened, I tried again. It seems you need to drop the clip at some tiny point in the timeline in order to get it to go there. When I finally went to tutorial videos to find out how to do this (you need to go to documentation to learn how to put a sound clip in???) I discovered the method. Still, however, it is difficult to insert a clip precisely where you want it.

In the old iMovie I never had to read much aside from technical details of formats, etc. The timeline was spread out on the bottom, was larger, and if you took a sound clip and dragged it to point 1:23:04 then it was placed there, not as a background sound from the beginning of the project with very little visual feedback - i.e. I never realized that the clip WAS being dropped into the background sound.

By now I am sure you are very familiar with the program and I am sure that with practice it would become second nature to me. But I have been on Macs since the original 128K machines, and I am not used to needing tutorials to do very simple things, especially from Apple software.

But thanks for your reply - I appreciate that it is working for you. Playing with video is really great fun. I had a Quadra 660AV for many years, starting about 1994. The demo version of Premier that came with Photoshop had no limitations So I used it to make a few clay animations with my daughter. Great fun!! Way back in 1994 0r '95!! This is why I love the Macs!

This is at the very core of Apple's success in almost all of its products: Deliver functional products with intuitive, low-learning-curve interfaces and functionality.

Honestly, my biggest fear and concern from this article is that they're just recently hiring people to rework the Pro App interfaces. That would mean that the results of these new hires would still be years away. What the hell has Apple's Final Cut Studio team been doing for the last three years? Last year's Final Cut Upgrade was extremely trivial, and it was two years in the making.

I don't know if Apple would be doing their professional customers the ones who make money with their computers any favors if they were to make their tools so simple to use a caveman could do it.