Rumor: Apple axed 'evolutionary' 64-bit Final Cut Pro 8 for 'revolutionary' FCPX - Page 2

Originally Posted by blur35mm

Below is the Mac Pro Refresh Schedule from MacRumors. If this isn't enough to convince you they are abandoning the Pro's...

Originally Posted by macinthe408

From a business perspective, I respect Apple's direction on FCP X: Court hundreds of thousands of amateur/enthusiasts with something more powerful than iMovie that serves 98% of their workflow needs, or satisfy 72 industry professionals with such granular workflows that anything short of Final Cut Pro God Edition would not be enough?

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Not to forget, you can legally run a single copy of FCP X, Motion 5, Compressor concurrently on 5 Macs.

That's $400 for 5 seats -- Other NLE suites above are per 1 seat, e.g.

FCP 7 costs $1,000 per == $5,000 for 5 seats!

Originally Posted by yuusharo

I hate that word.

You know, I helped cut an independent film a few years ago on Final Cut Pro 6 at the time, and lately I have been saying to myself recently, "Wow, if we had this back then, things would have been so much easier." We spent literally hours color correcting some scenes, and I know that many (not all) could have been fixed in a few minutes with FCPX's automatic color correction. Also, having features like compound clips would have helped prevent the occasional loss of sync from certain video and audio elements as we made changes earlier in the timeline.

So here's my question - are we less professional if we would have preferred using FCPX over the older systems at the time? Are we not "professionals" if we're not backed by a multi-million dollar studio? I hate this idea that FCPX is only used by "prosumers" simply because it's missing some features. I'd say a lot of us video editors consider ourselves professionals. If FCPX's current feature set works well within your workflow, why not use it? The tool doesn't make the man. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, there's alternatives.

But seriously, FCPX is not just for "prosumers."

Originally Posted by digitalclips

So Apple please go back and finish it! There is room for FCPro 8 and Final Cut X. Just drop iMovie for X and you're all set.

Originally Posted by Filmantopia

Everyone keeps saying that Apple has made a shift from prosumer to consumer with this software... but I'm not convinced. I think that Apple has simply made an intelligent wager on this paradigm shift with FCPX which has, for the time being, reduced its feature set. However, over time when they regain these features they'll be 5 legs up on other pro editor apps, already prepared to interface with future hardware changes in the industry (such as touch screens).

And guess who controls the future of hardware in the industry.

Originally Posted by bloggerblog

^ True, but Ikea doesn't make good sofas

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Others have mentioned that bringing a 10 + year old architecture into the 64-bit world is a major rewrite -- an excellent time to do a repurposing of the app for the next 10 years and beyond... You just can't take advantage of the future, by relying on the past.

Also, I understand that there were quite a few, costly, licensing issues in the existing FCP product.

Apple, and you, the Apple user have to decide:

-- stay in the present
-- focus on the past
-- focus on the future.

I believe that Apple made the right decision with FCP X...

However, they really screwed up by EOLing FCP 7 the way they did...

Originally Posted by Filmantopia

Everyone keeps saying that Apple has made a shift from prosumer to consumer with this software...

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Others have mentioned that bringing a 10 + year old architecture into the 64-bit world is a major rewrite -- an excellent time to do a repurposing of the app for the next 10 years and beyond... You just can't take advantage of the future, by relying on the past.

Also, I understand that there were quite a few, costly, licensing issues in the existing FCP product.

Apple, and you, the Apple user have to decide:

-- stay in the present
-- focus on the past
-- focus on the future.

I believe that Apple made the right decision with FCP X...

However, they really screwed up by EOLing FCP 7 the way they did...

Originally Posted by digitalclips

Excuse me but Apple is embracing the prosumer market! It may or may not be letting down the folks in the professional market (I will have to wait another year or so to answer that one) but certainly not the prosumers. FinalCut X, as an example, is totally a prosumer product.

Originally Posted by Conrail

What's courageous about taking the easy path?

Originally Posted by jragosta

Nonsense. The MBP update schedule is largely limited by the availability of faster Xeon processors at a reasonable (!) price point and in sufficient quantity for Apple to use. There ARE faster Xeon processors out there, but not much faster, and very hard to get and expensive.

When Intel has a significant improvement in CPU availability, Apple will undoubtedly update the Pro.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

How did the early versions of FCP, say, FCP 1.0 through FCP 3.0 compare in usability to FCP X?

AFAICT, there are some pros who are using FCP X for a large portion of their work.

What will today's "pro" do when he finds that the 21st century editor, using FCP X, can deliver as good an editing product, faster and at 1/2 the price.

...Isn't that what the $25,000 Avid "pros" were faced with when FCP started to gain acceptance?

Originally Posted by stope

SPEECH...not Speach

Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton

Watch out. ConradJoe will add you to his Enemies List
Don't take yourself so seriously. You declare your intention to go back to Windows like the world should take notice? Should I announce my intention to switch brands of motor oil? You know, because its really important for the Internet to know my personal choices! (Yeah right). Apple perhaps made the wrong call, but I thought serious (read: Pro) editors cut on Avid anyway. Oh sure, there were Hollywood editors using FCP, and they've denounced FCPX. But you're not one of them, are you? You're not complaining about Apple borking your editing toolchain. You're complaining about OS X "premiums" and how it cramps your lifestyle choice. If that's the case, then I would say you never valued OS X to begin with. I pay whatever extra it costs to have a Microsoft-free computing experience

Originally Posted by rain

Ok Zoolander, but how do you expect people to use the software if they can't even see what's on the screen?

Originally Posted by digitalclips

I wrote that hoping they were reasonably far along with 8 at the time they dropped it for X. Perhaps X could be split into two versions; a more production environment oriented version and the current style. That might solve all the issues.

Originally Posted by blur35mm

I only announce it for the benefit of Apple product managers. When they are querying Google for "switching back to Windows" they'll see +1 comments about that and understand why. :-) BTW you obviously have an axe to grind with MSFT, I on the other hand pick the tools that work best for me. Some people hate Apple because of Chinese labor conditions. Some people hate MSFT because they are considered an evil capitalist corporation that buys up competitors in monopolistic fashion. Pick the lesser of two evils if you wish, but for me, it's what works best for what I do.

Originally Posted by yuusharo

It's never going to happen. FCP8 will *never* exist, not as developed by Apple anyway. FCPX is the future of this product, love it or hate it, and it will be built upon with new features and capabilities going forward.

A 64-bit version of Final Cut would require it to be rewritten in Cocoa, as Carbon will never be ported to 64-bit and may have support dropped in OS X all together at some point. No matter how you look at it, Final Cut would need a fresh start, which meant that features from the old program would still not carry over into the new one at launch. Apple decided to take this opportunity to not only rewrite the application, but rethink the entire approach to video editing and solve some of the problems that exist in other NLE systems that are simply inherent to its design and not really something that can be "fixed."

I'll bet anything that both Adobe and Avid will eventually integrate some of FCPX's concepts into their own suites - things like metadata tags, smart collections, background rendering and skimming to name a few. They won't present a radical shift in paradigm like Apple did, but then again, they really can't either. Apple will be fine if it lost 100% of its professional market, but Adobe and Avid would be killed if they screwed them over. Honestly, Apple's the only company that could have possibly made a huge gamble like this and hope it pays off in the future for both themselves and their users.

Originally Posted by digitalclips

Good luck with the hope you add to a sea of switchers away from Macs in Google searches

Originally Posted by blur35mm

209,000 Google results for the exact quoted phrase "switching back to windows". I am sure there are other phrases with various results.

If I was an Apple product manager, I'd be scouring these like a hawk for product requirements - oh but that's right, by your logic they should instead be catering to the millions of others who want a free engraving on their iDevice.

Originally Posted by digitalclips

It is a discussion that's been had over and over in AI.

Many multi-seat production houses were created to work around FCPro as it was and had input much into the development to suit there needs. Half of all US production was on FCPro (I have no idea what the current numbers are). As you said the EOL was dropped on these companies like a brick and they simply could not change even if X was better, it didn't fit in the work flow as was.

As I just said above maybe the parts lacking in X for these production houses could be added and a 'Studio Pro X' could be created out of X. Believe me, I am not a luddite, I have bled all the way on Macs from 1984 with arrows in my back and front keeping up with digital technology.

Originally Posted by vandil

When Apple was "Apple Computer, Inc." they were more concerned with making powerful Macintosh computers that were used by the publishing, graphic arts, film making, and other creative industries. The higher-end models even echoed some of the high-end workstation-class systems from NEXT. To have an G5 Tower used to be the mark of an accomplished power user. The Apple website would have a front page link to the Pro Story of the week, talking about some business or government or University that deployed a huge IT solution using Apple Pro software and Pro-level Macintosh systems.

Then Apple went consumer, got into making iPods and selling music, and iPhones, and had a whole ton of non-pros using their products, many of whom thought Macs were too difficult to switch to. So Apple worked on making Macs easier to switch to and even easier to work with those consumer products the non-Pros were buying.

Then, Apple became "Apple, Inc." They are getting way more money from non-Pros and pro-sumers than the actual Pros... and they've shifted.

Apple's target market went from University/IT/Creative Pros to middle-to-upper class households that drink Keurig Coffee while they use iPads to read books on their IKEA couch, pondering which wine to have with their Chicken & Gnocchi soup for dinner tonight, as their MacBook Pro is downloading the latest iTunes Movie Rental over 50MB broadband in the living room of a $150K house or $2000/mo apartment in the city, while their Ugg boots dry nicely in the corner beside their North Face winter coat.

Originally Posted by mstone

I have started getting myself prepared to lose the Mac Pro.

I have already studied up on the best hardware to make a Hackintosh. And I will also stay on Snow Leopard as long as possible. And when that becomes too difficult I will have to go to Windows I guess. Damn shame, but the writing is on the wall.

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

I think the way it will shake (maybe a bad choice of words for this topic)

Originally Posted by Andysol

1st- Why would someone still be on snow leopard?

Originally Posted by Andysol

1st- Why would someone still be on snow leopard? Lion has more features, allows for icloud, and has much better security features. Unless your job requires some PPC program or you don't use an alternative to a PPC program you absolutely must have- I don't get it.

2nd- What program are you planning on running on Windows that won't run under OSX?

My office has a Mac- one. Because there is no alternative program for sharpdesk- adobe acrobat on a Mac won't allow what the pc version does. I've looked high and low for a product I can "print" or merge multiple files into (some word, some excel, some PDF) and make them all one combined PDF. But if it weren't for that, we'd be all OSX only tomorrow (~12 computers). Unfortunately...

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

These guys demonstrate how easy and fast it is to sync and edit multi cam and pure sound tracks (even though multi cam is not supported in FCP X)

1. Select: Audio, Camera A, Camera B...
2. Click Sync -- (based on audio) creates compound clip with a track for each camera and sound (synced ala PluralEyes)
3. Disable sound in video tracks
4. Edit/Disable portions of video tracks as desired to expose different camera shots

It is amazingly fast and simple -- compared to anything I've seen!

Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum

Two of the biggest issues, IMO, are:

1) The inability to open legacy FCP 7 projects in FCP X

I think Apple just dropped the ball and assumed that once a project is finished -- there's no need to access it again... Once editors finished their active FCP 7 projects, there would be no need to access them again -- therefore no requirement to Open or Migrate FCP 7 to FCP X.


2) The inability to pass content between FCP X and other apps, including FCP 7 (in both directions).

I think Apple did/does not have all the pieces in place to make FCP X as self-contained as it eventually will be. Obviously, an XML import/export was/is not complete -- so there was no way to exchange data among apps.


However, less than 3 months after FCP X release, they added fcpxml... not great, but a good start. This illustrates that Apple was working on XML import/export -- and was able to add it to the product in an amazingly short period of time (compared the FCP 1-7 updates). And, there is another FCP X XML flavor named axel. AFAICT, it is very robust and can handle all the things in FCP X -- orders of magnitude more robust than FCP 7 xml.

Apple has said there are some things that they do not want to implement, or want third parties to provide.


I suspect, that within the next 6-12 months we will see acceptable solutions to both the above issues -- likely fro mthird parties.


I think the way it will shake (maybe a bad choice of words for this topic) out is that the "pros" will begin to use FCP X more and more for what it does well: quick editing turn-around. And round trip to other apps for specialty processing.

In the video link I posted earlier...

MacBreak Studio talks about audio editing and plugin problems in FCPX

These guys demonstrate how easy and fast it is to sync and edit multi cam and pure sound tracks (even though multi cam is not supported in FCP X)

1. Select: Audio, Camera A, Camera B...
2. Click Sync -- (based on audio) creates compound clip with a track for each camera and sound (synced ala PluralEyes)
3. Disable sound in video tracks
4. Edit/Disable portions of video tracks as desired to expose different camera shots

It is amazingly fast and simple -- compared to anything I've seen!

Originally Posted by digitalclips

You think those results are a mathematical sound measure? Try Googling for 'cars run on water using home made hydrolysis'! The results don't change the laws of thermo dynamics do they? They just illustrate there is a ton of rubbish you can google.

Originally Posted by blur35mm

209,000 Google results for the exact quoted phrase "switching back to windows". I am sure there are other phrases with various results.

If I was an Apple product manager, I'd be scouring these like a hawk for product requirements - oh but that's right, by your logic they should instead be catering to the millions of others who want a free engraving on their iDevice.

Originally Posted by blur35mm

Here's one reason, because Final Cut Pro 7 runs very well on Snow Leopard.

Originally Posted by mstone

Many times the sound is synced to camera #1 at the sound booth in the back of the concert hall. The other cameras are not recording audio and even if they were there would be a delay since they are some other distance from the source. That is why they use timecode. It doesn't take more than about 20 meters to make a huge difference. Speed of light verses speed of sound.

Originally Posted by Patranus

Print to PDF and Preview.app can take care of the rest.

Originally Posted by Andysol

1st- Why would someone still be on snow leopard? Lion has more features, allows for icloud, and has much better security features. Unless your job requires some PPC program or you don't use an alternative to a PPC program you absolutely must have- I don't get it.

2nd- What program are you planning on running on Windows that won't run under OSX?

My office has a Mac- one. Because there is no alternative program for sharpdesk- adobe acrobat on a Mac won't allow what the pc version does. I've looked high and low for a product I can "print" or merge multiple files into (some word, some excel, some PDF) and make them all one combined PDF. But if it weren't for that, we'd be all OSX only tomorrow (~12 computers). Unfortunately...