Reality TV heavyweight drops Final Cut Pro for rival Avid - Page 2

They would have done this if they were interested in competing directly against Avid. Which clearly they are not.

What value is that?

If Apple looses the Pro market. Exactly who is picking it up and benefiting from its value?

When the pro apps go the pros go. When the pros go the talent goes. Sooner or later the only people left are the sales guys & the grunts. Innovation gone.

Apple is a hardware company at the core but since OS X is locked to Mac hardware then integration requires either Apple open up their platform to other hardware or provide all the hardware solutions themselves. They've chosen to do neither, in the end something will have to give or it will start coming back to bite them.

What makes you think Apple's innovation stems around its pro apps?


Do you know how long this song has been sung. And people seem to keep singing it.

Dinosaur production companies like these are the least likely to be able to adapt their workflow to changing times. They'll all be gone eventually in favor of more streamlined approaches. Apple is playing the long game here.

No, I'm pretty sure Avid was and still is the industry standard used by the professional (i.e., television and film production) NLE editing community. Even Pixar films are cut on Avid.
You guys are trying to spin this as "pro community abandons FCP sinking ship". But FCP was never the reigning big dog to begin with.

Umh... no...

They ran a clinic on how not to release revolutionary software with FCPX. If they treated this like the transition from OSX classic to OSX and ease everything in while supporting a slightly updated version of Final Cut studio, they wouldn't have had the backlash. If they would have gave the studio houses a chance to have input for a version 2.0, they wouldn't be loosing customers.

FCPX was ready for the consumers, but not for professionals, but they initially chose to offer it as the only solution. The Mac App Store was not ready for consumers, but multiple-license users, yet they chose to release it anyway. Apple could have had FAQs and press releases explaining what FCPX 10.0 could and could not do in relationship to Final Cut Pro legacy, but they let users find out stuff was missing the hard way. They only did that after people were pissed.

FCPX has the potential to far eclipse its predecessor when its feature complete, but Apple botched its introduction in every way possible. And when feature complete it might not get the traction it deserves because Apple foolishly burned a lot of bridges that with month or two of patience and actual communication it didn't have to.

"Reality TV heavyweight" - ROFLOL - producer of totally mindless crap!!! And this is a bad trend? Hardly.

Amazing how many clueless "professionals" there are out there. Apple HAS NOT abandoned the pro market by any stretch of the imagination. FCP X was a V1 release that was sorely needed. As was a complete rewrite. For the fools crying wolf, and the sky is falling, there are many great things to come. It is also amazing that these so called professionals can't see, or aknowledge that there are many great features to even the first version that will greatly improve their work.

First they shunned the geeks,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a geek.

Then they shunned the network admins,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a network admin.

Then they shunned the editors,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an editor.

Then they shunned me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Good. Don't want the name Apple associated with garbage that is reality TVs. Shut it already.




Exactly.

Forget about FCP7 or FCE. Try see this as Apple's first foray into broadcast/post-production suite. Version 1. Period.

This is rich (pun intended) Apple is only for the professionals.

The problem with a lot of professionals is if it is not complicated it is not 'pro'.

Face it Apple is trying to make life easy for the rest of us and not more complicated.

Btw it is the tech pundits who are trying to kill Apple - remember ryan tate the one who has not yet done anything to make life better except bad mouth
apple.

Apple's ethos is more about "power to the people" than try to service corporate clients. They probably think giving FCP X to prosumers will allow them to compete with the pros, and cause disruption/power decentralisation from the corps.

Here's a game for you. It's called "A Look Into Big League Media Production".

Major media outlets give FCPX a shot and say "Crap! We can't do our jobs with this!" Then they call their vendors and say "If you work for us, you cannot use FCPX". The vendors reply with "Don't worry! We couldn't use FCPX anyway!"

FCP shops everywhere start rolling-out Avid and Premiere test stations.

Game over.


This is simply ridiculous. You're trying to tell people who earn a living with Final Cut that they just can't see the value in the new version of FC.

You simply don't know what you're talking about, and are spouting fanboy nonsense.

The reality is, Apple had two choices. Build another FCP in the FCP 7 vein, and have to replace it again down the line when it becomes clear a more efficient, cost-effective solution is needed to cater to the increasingly small teams producing for the web etc. or just build that FCP now and take a hit on the film & TV business.

Avid was number 1 anyway, so Apple clearly just figured "what the hell"

This whole fiasco reminds me of when Adobe bought Aldus, then proceeded to abandon PageMaker for a totally new product. Eventually, InDesign became reasonably good. I used a few releases, and the early ones were pretty bad. Remember Freehand?

The only real difference is that Apple has done this with their own product rather than one they bought in.

As for Avid, go read their latest annual report (2010). They've been losing money since 2006, and revenues have dropped 30% over that time. They may be listening to some of their customers more than Apple but it's not working for their bottom line. In fact their product line reminds me of when Apple was losing money: they are trying to sell too many things without enough value-add.

If you want software with a development path that always suits your needs, go for something with a free licence and hire hot programmers when the mainstream trajectory goes off into la-la land. Otherwise nothing is guaranteed.

I only want what I view as the best. I'm not buying Apple products simply so I can support the company. FCPX is not the best. We can argue all day whether or not it's the best value, best for the average joe, best for whatever - but it simply is not the best editor out there. It has a stated desire to NOT be the best by focusing on the non-pro market. Its like Nike saying that thier new top-of-the-line shoe is not really intended for pros but should be more than enough for the average joe. Followed by Nike worshipers arguing to the world that the new aeverage joe shoe IS the best and kudos for not catering to the pros because what do they really know about basketball anyway. It's ridiculous. If Apple wants me to re-think the way I edit, then they need to do a better job explaining the value. It's like Android fans that argue so adamantly that if I just invested enough time, I would love Android. I thought Apple was supposed to be obvious!

<off topic rant ON>

People, please. I see this *every* day now on various forums! First Final Cut Pro goes to hell, next is our ability to spell. Does anyone see a connection here?

LOSE = Be deprived of or cease to have or retain something. Cause someone to fail to gain or retain.
LOOSE = Not firmly or tightly fixed in place. Set free; release. -- "The ropes are loose."

LOSED = Misspelling. Perhaps you meant LOST. -- "I lost my appetite."
LOOSED = Past tense of LOOSE. Similar to the more commonly-used LOOSENED. -- "The ropes were loosed."

LOSING = Present participle of LOSE. -- "I'm losing my appetite."
LOOSING = Present participle of LOOSE. Rarely used nowadays. Commonly, and wrongly confused with LOSING.

<off topic rant OFF>

Sorry, but Apple MUST adapt to industry workflows, not expect industry standards to change because their coders don't understand how motion pictures are made.

As a professional film editor in 'Hollywood' for the last twenty years, I've seen technology change drastically in a relatively short period of time, but the techniques and workflows have remained (and shall remain) a constant.

FCPX is simply a phenomenal joke.

Ok, some people here seem to be missing one big point. This matters to us "Pros" in a financial way.

First of all: for me, the definitiion of a "Pro" is, that said person is making a living out of it.
So, by this definition, i´m a Pro since 2004. Since the beginning i made every € i ever earned on the Mac plattform. I´m not a big studio, i´m a single freelancer. And i have to rake in several thousand € a month to make it work.

And i think many of the "pros" out there, that are so pissed of because of apples move towards the "prosumer", are like me. So please try to understand us.

Second of all: Nobody says that Apple is doomed, FCPX is a "beleagured system" or any of this nonsense. No real professional will say that. Apple is making money like hell and nothing is going to change that for the forseeable future.

What we are trying to say is this:

We spent the last decade building our business on our skill, Macs and severall software packages.
For most of us this was a Mac Pro running Finalcut Pro and the Adobe CS Suite. I do a lot of motion graphics, so i use Cinema 4D too.

If one of these pillars of my daily work is crumbling in, then that is threatening my whole business.

Please don´t try to out-argument my point. I know that it is possible to do that. I know that there are alternatives to my workflow. I know that apple "had to do this" and "had to do that" and that they walked away from other popular things in the past.

But i personaly (and from the comments i can tell many of you too) just can´t sit back and wait till FCPX is good enough to work with it. The costs of living would eat me.

So PLEASE stop it with all these wiseass comments about how "FCPX will be perfect in the future" or how discontinuing the Mac Pro line doesn´t affect anybody. If that is true for you, i´m happy for you. But for the rest of "us professionals" this stuff matters. A lot.

Hey, Tobias...

Agreed, but I would also like to add that I have cut two features and a pilot this last year with FCP7 on my MacBook Air, eschewing not only FCPX, but the Mac Pro, and it was a wonderful experience, but one that would have been impossible with the latest software revision due to the professional workflow involved.

While I would (will?) miss the beefier Mac Pro and a 64bit editing software, it's not impossible to do the work with new technology and older software, which speaks to the strength of FCP7 and highlights the SEVERE limitations of the enthusiast junk known as FCPX.

I know. I have edited / worked on my 3 year old MacBook Pro for months last year and it worked fine. Most of the time.

When it comes to rendering complex scenes in Cinema 4D, any laptop is useless. Any Apple laptop at least. It can be done - but i can´t sell it to my clients that i have to charge them 4 more days because "it took my laptop so long to render this"

But that is not the point here, i know.

The point is that we were very comfortable with the Mac Pro and it´s ecosystem.
Apple is clearly bound to leave that ecosystem. They did in the last 2 years and they will continue doing so.

"Post PC" remember?

So, each and every news that comes out on the topic of FCPX or the Mac Pro just tickles that "I´m afraid for my professional future" nerve in us.
We all have to find an alternative to this and that, we have to spend more money, we have to learn new software (and i mean totaly new software, not a new version of one we already know)

And while doing all that, we have to come up with thousands of or $ a month to pay for all of it.

And though we all know that there will be some way to make it work in the furure, it still is troubling us.

When FCPX came out i was in such a shock that i didn´t go to the office that day, because i knew that "it had begun"

The future is mobile... plain and simple. This is FACT, plain and simple. Anyone disagreeing is living in a fantasy world.

The future fight between companies (like the 1980's with the desktop) will be fought in mobile. Apple learned in the 1980's that software, not hardware, sells devices. Thats why we have the iphone (a platform built to run iOS). Apple builds hardware so they can deliver their great software to the masses. With the future battle of mobile coming and where Apple currently stands, the reason I see for the huge change to FCPX is simple the iPad 3 and/or 4. The future as Apple sees it is FCPX running on mobile devices. I see them not seeing a future in the current form of pro workflow. (video and photo and anything else creative) I see them changing the game in photo/video (as well as other things) with the iPad 3/4 and software NEEDS to be written for their future vision.

There was a rumor that they changed directly of the next FCP back a few years ago. This simple was because the company decided to focus on their vision in the mobile space. And if a company wants to own the next 20 years in mobile, the software better be there or no one is buying. FCPX I believe was built with mobile in mind and will be easily ported to the ipad in the coming 12 months. Aperture is probably being ported already. Perhaps introduced alongside the iPad retina? (Like iMovie was last year) FCPX as with Aperture will be on the iPad sooner than later. And a complete codebase redesign for FCPX needed to happen.

You are right.

But it will take some time to get comfortable with the new situation.
And there simply are some problems attached to this whole "evrything mobile" thing. At least for now they are.

All i was tring to say was that we all see where this is going and nobody tries to deny that. But we kinda don´t want everything to change just because mainsream computing goes that way.

That´s why this discussion gets so serious everytime.

That is idiotic. Apple doesn't need to cater to true professionals....look at sales. They are a consumer electronics company now, just Apple Computer, Inc. Get used to it.

+1!

I saw a similar kind of outcry when apple changed from the loved OS 9 to OS X.

And now we all have to agree, if apple hadn't had the guts to cut that tree .....

I beliefe the same thing is going to happen with FPCX. They just started this from scratch.

So lets wait and see where we will be in a couple of years

Anyway, concerning major product renewals, apple has rearly been wrong in the past 15 years.

I'm certain it was not done "with a complete disregard to the people who actually make a living using their product". I recall quite a few stories talking about how they invited top professionals in to critique and test the software to determine its readiness and functionality. I even recall them having a special event just for video professionals where they showed off FCP X to wide acclaim. Indeed if not for the few features missing at the very beginning (which have been spoken of earlier and which some have already been remedied), I believe there would be almost none of the [very few] leavings that we're seeing now. They merely decided to release the core project earlier as opposed to waiting two more years.

Well, if you want to be proud that you're outselling Pinnacle Studio and Vegas Movie Studio, you've got a lot to be proud of.

I don't completely agree with the statement.
Very intensive production work will always be bound to big displays of a kind and those won't be mobile in the near future. I can't say what's it going to be like in 5-10 years from now, but for the time being .. no.

It would be great however, if there are tools for mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone, that integrate seamlessly into the projects that you are working on on the big machines. Something that has actually started already. So a slimmed down FCPX for the iPad would be a buy ASAP for me.

How does this look?

I remember back in the day when us Mac fans would point out each and every mac sighting in movies/TV/Ads. As the pros behind the video/movie were apple users or fans they would prop with apple. Sometimes even the good guy used apple and the bad guy didn't, what happens when apple casts those pros away? Apple is doing the same thing with the Mac pro, letting it wither in favor of the iMac/Macbook which also affects the design industry... as in most ads both online and in print.

Say what you will about the reality shows, garbage yes, but the fact remains many people watch them. If this is a trend for apple to abandon the pro, how will it impact apple in the long run. I work in advertising/design and when we need to show a computer we grab one from the office, we don't go out and buy one for a photo or shot clip, I have to think TV and even movies may be the same.

If the pros switch to other non Mac specific solutions and as more computers are replaced/added over time and the computer on hand is a PC, will we see more PCs show up in TV/Movies/Videos/Ads?

There is strong rumor that Apple had a 64bit version of FCP ready and canned it in favor of FCX, they could have released both, they could have given away the 64bit version and said we are working on your future software give us time (that might have been cheaper than the backlash). They handled the situation with arrogance and disregard for those that use the software.

That sort of trend is the demise of many companies,

I think you may go to your office again now! It has not begun yet and it hopefully never will.
As for the MacPro, I am sure they are working on it right now. I hope towards this summer/autum it is going to be released. I am due for an upgrade!

Unless they come out with an outstanding speed bump and 24 core processing in their iMac line
I will definitely need a new MacPro.

Yeah, I noticed this. Motion does this too and it makes sense now that they share the same render engine. FCPX shouldn't really need to render so much though as it's not an effects package. I can see a convergence of the two apps down the line and if that happened, it would explain a lot.


Nope. If you replaced a filmmaker's Arri Alexa with a Canon 5D, you could ask if their reason for moaning is just because they don't like change and they will reply 'nope'. An experienced filmmaker can probably get good shots on both but they require different workflows and different experience and that time investment is only justified if the change allows them to do a better job. Final Cut Pro X hasn't really demonstrated that it allows experienced editors to do a better job but it did make some things worse, so for the time being, I'd say people are entirely justified to migrate to a platform that works better for them.

There's a period of time that a piece of software goes through before it is production ready. That very rarely comes with a version 1 product, which is how the FCPX designers refer to it. They should have been aware that the film industry wouldn't adopt a product that isn't production tested because the costs of failure are high.

There's a simple test to do, we just take away Apple's professional milling tools for their hardware design and replace them with a more modern machine designed for low-volume use. Then we'll see who complains when they can only make 5 iPhones a day. Do as you would have others do unto you.


This is probably related to metadata in some way. Attributes stored by Aperture are probably accessible from other parts of the OS.


Yeah, he apparently switched from Avid originally years ago simply because their products didn't cut it:

http://www.avid2fcp.com/switcher-stories/mark-raudonis

I guess you just have to switch the companies round now and it's the same story:

"Looking back now to my switch, Im reminded of Robert Frosts poem, The Road Not Taken.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

The biggest investment would have been hardware originally, which at least isn't the case this time round.


I'd say most of Apple's recognised software started life at the top and worked down, not the other way:

Logic -> Garageband
FCP -> iMovie
Shake -> Motion

It's better to have more capability than you need. If you have less, you have no choice but to go somewhere else. Consumers also tend not to push boundaries. Look at the Think Different ad. Are any of those people average Joes sitting in their underwear until early afternoon? No, they are people who had a passion for what they do and they push the limits to do something exceptional. That's what professionals do. That's why Shake had a scanline/tile renderer because older hardware couldn't cope, same deal with Renderman. They adapt software to do the best job.


That is a very important point but there is still a high-end community on FCP that this story demonstrates that will drift back to Avid.


It's not the content that's important really but the workflow. If you work on a Hollywood film, they will generally have massive budgets and the best people working on it and they work to a screenplay. If you think that Reality TV is bad, just think that's the stuff that made it through the edit. They could easily have 10 hours per day x 5 days per week x 3 cameras = 150 hours of footage to work through for a half hour show.


I disagree. Professionals like control and with control comes complexity. You could walk into a aircraft cabin, look at all the switches and dials and proclaim that the complexity is superficial and can be replaced with a single joystick for up/down/left/right but when you hit a problem, you have no means to fix it yourself i.e you are not in control. Professional software almost has to be an API to be production ready and Apple didn't even provide that initially in the form of the XML toolkit.

Simplicity and control aren't mutually exclusive of course as Mac OS X itself very readily demonstrates.


That does seem plausible and Apple had to overhaul FCP. It did a good job but it was an ugly piece of software.


The phrase 'professional workflow' doesn't highlight the problems specifically but I expect would include:

Changing the asset management from using any amount of scratch folders for media and rendering to an Events system that has great difficulty relinking media.
Changing the native editing engine to one that transparently transcodes everything to ProRes regardless of the change made to the media.
Limited import/export options for frame sizes and rates and requiring Compressor for flexible export.
Limited import/export for external processing like audio reworking and effects, partly fixed in recent versions.

I expect that Apple is right now hearing what all the problems are and they have worked to fix some of them. They have said openly they are trying to cater to the industry so only a few scenarios can happen:

- they ignore the requests and they are dropped
- they fix the problems and they manage to maintain some foothold in the industry with a tarnished reputation

I don't see there being a mass migration to an alternative package because they all suck in one way or another and they are all expensive so I expect the latter will be the outcome. If the Python API comes to fruition, that will open up some interesting possibilities.

Those chosen by Apple to represent professional editors were and are laughable as representatives of the actual professional community, and basically little more than biased, ignorant enthusiasts, and that is a fact.

Well gee. Apple continues the dummification of their products and so professionals look for other solutions. Who would have foreseen this happening?

That's what you'd call the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas where it was first publicly shown off? As well as what's reported here for the initial closed preview:http://www.larryjordan.biz/app_bin/w.../archives/1365?

Now, I'm no video professional myself and am only working off of what I've read, but that doesn't seem to match up with your description at all.

\ I don´t see any alternative to OSX at the moment. I could use Windows if i´d be forced to. But meh.

All these reviews that are based on "before release presentation XY" where Jaw droppers because everybody was thinking that they ADDED these features to the features from FCP7

FCPX has some sweet things on board. But only the new features on their own don´t cut it.

I agree completely. I was merely refuting the assertion that Apple never intended this for the professional market.