Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
What we have here are people hoping Apple doesn't make FCP more iMovie-like as opposed to criticizing it as you say. If anything, it can be viewed as a criticism of iMovie.
Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
What we have here are people hoping Apple doesn't make FCP more iMovie-like as opposed to criticizing it as you say. If anything, it can be viewed as a criticism of iMovie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by backtomac
I don't think any of their criticisms or recommendations for the next FCP version were unfair or partisan in nature.
Sure FCP in its current state is a useful and commonly used tool for video editors. That doesn't mean it can't be made better.
For cripes sake. Just how stupid do you think Apple is that it needs such advice from the likes of the above.
It is obvious that the folks I quoted above have never used FCP and certainly not with the capabilities of such outstanding professionals that are using it now. And there are lots out there.
Amazing that such productions could have been accomplished by such an amateur application as some here seem to describe it.
As a user if FCPro from its first ever release I will be interested to see the interface changes. I just hope the learning curve isn't too dramatic I am getting too old to start over !
When Premiere came out it didn't get much uptake from the pro users, so when R. Ubillos went to Macromedia he designed FC to look more like Avid. As another poster mentioned, pro video editing user interface has remained pretty much stagnant since the 90's. Anyway, the FC tiny button gray non-intuitive Avid-like interface ended up attracting some pro adoption when released however, it seems to have fallen off recently due to various factors such as no 64 bit, Motion/Shake and iMovie faux pas plus some really innovative pro applications released from independent companies. Apple has never really been able to unseat Avid in Hollywood either. I hope they can regain some of the pro loyalty with the new release.
I don't think Final Cut Studio has been put on the back burner, I think the development team has been working continuously on the new version from the release of FCS '3'. it was always going to take a couple of years to rewrite the entire app (if Premiere's re write is anything to go by)- although some bits had been completely re within for FCP7. the release has also been fundamentally linked to maturing of QTX (64bit) up to the functionality of QT7 (32 bit).
Cant be easy to re develop an application as scalable as FCP and that appeals and supports businesses and markets in Film, Television, Industry, Corporate, Education and Hobbyist / Prosumer. The main issue must have been getting the 64bit version as robust and as feature rich the current FCP, so any new features will be a bonus.
If there is an announcement soon I wouldn't be surprised if the release wasn't be until later in the year. (but who knows?) and that the feature set might be very similar to to what we have now.
Here's what i would love in the new version and think might be coming, of course every Editor / Producer will have a different list.
64 bit and increased available Ram use go without saying.
1. multi processor use when rendering
2. Background Rendering with user controlled number of core use-( as in QMaster)
3. Background Exporting
4. Quicktime X to mature and featured enough to replace QT7 (i'm guessing this is essential / fundamental to the new version.
5. Better and customised metadata handling
6. full integration with Final Cut Server metadata
7. The Interface gets the Logic / Aperture treatment but with customisable arrangement and dynamic windows.
8. QT gets built in Open EXR and other digital cinema codecs built in as standard.
9. Scratch Disk settings that are Project by project aware/based (and that this had a disable button
10. Better Timeline Search functions and media use indicators
-what would be fun but maybe not in this version,
1. Face recognition for video - (like Aperture)
2. Scene framing recognition.
3. Scrubbable clips in the clip bin
-Native editing of long GOP codecs does not worry me- but it's a often requested feature, and equally required by commercial and Prosumer / Consumer markets -this is more of a processing power.
When Premiere came out it didn't get much uptake from the pro users, so when R. Ubillos went to Macromedia he designed FC to look more like Avid. As another poster mentioned, pro video editing user interface has remained pretty much stagnant since the 90's. Anyway, the FC tiny button gray non-intuitive Avid-like interface ended up attracting some pro adoption when released however, it seems to have fallen off recently due to various factors such as no 64 bit, Motion/Shake and iMovie faux pas plus some really innovative pro applications released from independent companies. Apple has never really been able to unseat Avid in Hollywood either. I hope they can regain some of the pro loyalty with the new release.
Yea, I agree. I consider myself a "high level amateur" who did the occasional video for school, friends, etc. but the Final Cut user interface is stuck in 2002. There are symbols that don't have explanations. If you move a file, Final Cut can't keep track of it. Figuring out which exporting settings are best is a pain.
The "best" news I'm learning from this (by reading between the lines), is the debate between Motion and Shake engineers. To me, that means Apple may be trying to compete with Flame at the higher end -- AND, tackle the ease of use of Motion.
Shake used to be THE application for compositing for professional movie production -- and a lot of those users are going to Flame. The advantage of Motion, is that you can use real-time experimentation and throw on an expression and "see" what happens. I could imagine, that MOTION, is the top level layer, and that shake is an engine to composite the encapsulated layers -- but how to do that in "real time" -- likely, there is a per-layer rendering technology that Apple is going to use...
The next FCP will likely have "per layer" rendering. So you can turn off a layer after it has rendered, and not have to re-render, though, there would have to be a separate saved cache file for "difference" such as, when the upper layer has an effect on the lower layer. Also, I'm sure that the 64-bit architecture will FINALLY allow for mix-and match codecs as well as bit depths -- so that you don't have to convert the 12bit per channel YUV HDAC down to the 8-bit per channel DV tape you are using or vise vera.
Apple's strategy so far, has been to build the CORE, light-weight engine for the "lower end" and not re-invent the wheel for the upper end. The iOS became the core of the iPad and lots of networking for the Leopard OS. Leopard also got rid of some very large graphics files, to accommodate a more compressed and space savvy mobile OS. I'm pretty sure the confusion and fear of "tackling the hobbyist end", is about a single core for the software and interface so that Apple doesn't have to re-invent the wheel and waste development time making an iMove, Garage Band, Soundtrack, Final Cut, Motion, Shake, and a half dozen other, totally different pieces of software -- I expect that they are going to settle on some core for video that includes real-time OpenCL (throughout), and some way to manage sounds and effects like both Garage Band and Logic -- and ways to non-destructively "pre-render" so that tiny changes don't require a re-render each time.
That takes a LOT OF REAL THOUGHT, about how to encapsulate this AV data -- and it makes sense that it has taken about as long to really update these apps as it did to build the iOS. Steve Jobs doesn't seem out to make the next "lame piece of software" -- and I think that he is really going after making Apple the de facto standard for Video and Audio again. Think of the different Effects as you do adding a Font to your computer -- and that would be like the difference between amateur and Pro -- every app in the Mac and use every font without worrying about how it was designed or rendered.
We've been frustrated by earlier "tweaks" and I think this is because there has not been a lot of time and effort given to updating the different software, because most of the effort has gone to how to engineer a way to design something for video and sound once, and then re-purpose it. The weird and clumsy change to Quicktime X, was a baby step, because Quicktime X really passes most functions to Quicktime 7 -- that makes me think of it as a "management layer" to pass processes off and merely act as a manager of computer resources and codecs.
So, I think that Apple is going to compete with Adobe, not by beating Final Cut Pro, but by going after Flame, and having support for more real-time and hardware acceleration with CPU, GPU or whatever resource is available. Slower machines will pre-render but not have to re-render -- but I'm expecting, either now or after Lion, that Apple is due to re-write expectations again.
For cripes sake. Just how stupid do you think Apple is that it needs such advice from the likes of the above.
It is obvious that the folks I quoted above have never used FCP and certainly not with the capabilities of such outstanding professionals that are using it now. And there are lots out there.
Amazing that such productions could have been accomplished by such an amateur application as some here seem to describe it.
If you read my original quote, I commented that I would hope that Apple would know the difference between a Pro app and iMovie which is to say that I think they do. Additionally, I have FCS 1 and upgraded to FCS 3 when it came out, so yes, I have and continue to use FCP. Don't presume to know as much as you think you know about me based on a few comments.
As long as we are dreaming of what we would like (e.g., Per Project Scratch disks as was mentioned above). I'd really like the following.
Facetime recognition in Video (pretty sure this will make it),
Audio Speech to Text, to at least give us a searchable time-line for what someone says -- 90% accurate would at least be useful. The text, of course, would have time-code tags that link back to the original audio track.
An FX builder that utilized something like Quartz Composer -- but without needing a third party company to do it.
All FX available and scriptable with a QuickTime encapsulator -- for instance, QuickTime would now include Quartz Composer in the Pro version, and this QT file could be dropped into Keynote, and Keynote could see variables -- so you could animate a list of names and graphics without building separate slides. A QT file then becomes any video or audio file, or a "project" in Motion/Shake, or Logic/Garageband. I'd expect that the organization of these QT projects would start looking like a Keynote file -- which is really a zipped project folder, of image and AV assets, and an XML file to describe how they are used and when. Even the previews (like per-project render locations) are low-rez renders of the original files -- and even aliases to other renders or originals in cases where an image or sound is used more than once.
>> So ONE STANDARD file description technique for ALL APPLE SOFTWARE. Apple doesn't compete on file formats like Microsoft. So one standard, much like a Keynote file, and XML descriptor. It also means, third-party developers can easily use any Apple project file or help do things like "compare" different projects and remove duplicates with an alias.
You can change a MODERN keynote file extension to be ".zip" and the uncompress it to a folder if you want to see what I mean (this will of course, ruin the keynote file unless you rezip it and rename it .keynote).
I expect that one day, the Final Rendered file, like we see in most Movies, will become an "option" for slower machines in the future. For instance; A folder of 3D objects defined into characters, textures and a script, can give you an entire 3D move. That was KIND OF the idea at one time with some attempts at a 3D Quicktime object in the past -- but the per-channel rendering technology, is going to need a separation between content and rendering, and I think more and more "renderings" will be a CPU-saving temp file, rather than anything that is necessary except when making something that you post for others to enjoy.
The Keynote file (as an ideal example of the new document file) could be dropped into FCP and you could then render out an entire award show, so Keynote suddenly becomes something like a storyboard application -- and FCP, since it doesn't care about whatever is INSIDE a QT file, is merely a rendering and compositing engine with timeline.
Soundtrack has been a clumsy add-on to FCP, it should merely be a MODE of looking at a file in FCP, rather than outputting to a separate file -- and as a standalone product, it would be better just to have a Logic+Garageband hybrid. Either you are composing something, or you are cleaning up audio for a video -- it seems a logical way to break up sound editing tasks.
Then Motion/Shake, is for composing 3D and video files.
I use FCS for editing and experimentation -- mostly for, home movies and some experimentation for friends and my own amusement -- I definitely am not a professional, but sometimes need to go beyond iMovie.
I enjoy using Motion to add 3D effects to 2D images -- and find it to be quite powerful.
I especially like that, unlike FCP, it does real-time rendering.
What is it abut Motion that you dislike -- am I missing something?
TIA,
Dick
Hi,
I'm working with animation, visuals and post production. I like to stay in detailed control, and to have a great overview of my setup, and work fast.
Every time I work with Motion I have the feeling I'm using something very big and clumsy. I agree that the rendering engine itself seems pretty powerful, but I just think the user interface is too square. Also the constant hick-ups and unexplainable sudden wait-freezes that has been there from version 1.
The UI in Shake, (a software that Apple bought and discontinued, and assigned those developers to Motion and Final Cut I think) has another take on UI, it's "node based" and you can connect things the way you like... like a "mind map", as with the professional alternative Nuke etc. They might have a steeper learning curve, but developing for professionals I think you should go for the UI that can take you the furthest. Not necessarily the UI that is the easiest to grasp. We can learn complex tools. No problem. If they thought the node based UI was too hard to grasp, instead of going backwards to a good old list with a timeline - they should have gone "This Node based view has real advantages. How do we make THAT even more accessible?
It's not always the best solution to lay pieces of images in a stack. Sometimes you need to spread them out on a big light box and connect different results in a smarter way than just from top to bottom. If someone, then Apple should understand this... think different, the crazy ones and all.
But this is really not a Node View vs List View issue.
No, my biggest remark is the following:
If they made this software as a part of a pro package, and it turns out the users who appreciate it the most are users like yourself, home enthusiasts and hobbyists that like to go beyond iMovie - and then people who liked Shake, (that they bought and discontinued), moved on to professional products like Nuke... then I think they missed the mark with Motion.
The UI in Shake, (a software that Apple bought and discontinued, and assigned those developers to Motion and Final Cut I think) has another take on UI, it's "node based" and you can connect things the way you like... like a "mind map", as with the professional alternative Nuke etc.
When Apple abandoned Shake, didn't the key team members leave to various companies like The Foundry (who make Nuke)? While I have not used Nuke beyond watching a demo, it seems that Nuke does what it does so well that it would take Apple a lot to come up with something comparable and even more to come up with something that will convince major production companies that have moved their pipelines from Shake to say Nuke to go back to Apple (I am not saying they can't or that the next version of Motion won't be great but they are really going to have to put a lot of effort into the product to catch up and then surpass what is out there now).
According to the report, differences of opinion between the teams working on Shake and Motion regarding an ideal unified interface for the suite "hamstrung" part of the project, causing several features to be deferred to a 2013 version of the software.
Didn't they discontinue Shake? Why would there be teams working on it?
Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
When Apple abandoned Shake, didn't the key team members leave to various companies like The Foundry (who make Nuke)? While I have not used Nuke beyond watching a demo, it seems that Nuke does what it does so well that it would take Apple a lot to come up with something comparable and even more to come up with something that will convince major production companies that have moved their pipelines from Shake to say Nuke to go back to Apple (I am not saying they can't or that the next version of Motion won't be great but they are really going to have to put a lot of effort into the product to catch up and then surpass what is out there now).
You're probably right... though, perhaps the only thing I question is... I seriously doubt that Apple could do it, even if they wanted to. Their Mac software doesn't really shine anymore.
But then again, perhaps all the iPad work will now inspire how they develop and optimize for the Mac.
Comments
Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
Love to see all your Curriculum Vitae.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/
What we have here are people hoping Apple doesn't make FCP more iMovie-like as opposed to criticizing it as you say. If anything, it can be viewed as a criticism of iMovie.
Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
Love to see all your Curriculum Vitae.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/
I don't think any of their criticisms or recommendations for the next FCP version were unfair or partisan in nature.
Sure FCP in its current state is a useful and commonly used tool for video editors. That doesn't mean it can't be made better.
What we have here are people hoping Apple doesn't make FCP more iMovie-like as opposed to criticizing it as you say. If anything, it can be viewed as a criticism of iMovie.
I don't think any of their criticisms or recommendations for the next FCP version were unfair or partisan in nature.
Sure FCP in its current state is a useful and commonly used tool for video editors. That doesn't mean it can't be made better.
For cripes sake. Just how stupid do you think Apple is that it needs such advice from the likes of the above.
It is obvious that the folks I quoted above have never used FCP and certainly not with the capabilities of such outstanding professionals that are using it now. And there are lots out there.
Amazing that such productions could have been accomplished by such an amateur application as some here seem to describe it.
As a user if FCPro from its first ever release I will be interested to see the interface changes. I just hope the learning curve isn't too dramatic I am getting too old to start over !
When Premiere came out it didn't get much uptake from the pro users, so when R. Ubillos went to Macromedia he designed FC to look more like Avid. As another poster mentioned, pro video editing user interface has remained pretty much stagnant since the 90's. Anyway, the FC tiny button gray non-intuitive Avid-like interface ended up attracting some pro adoption when released however, it seems to have fallen off recently due to various factors such as no 64 bit, Motion/Shake and iMovie faux pas plus some really innovative pro applications released from independent companies. Apple has never really been able to unseat Avid in Hollywood either. I hope they can regain some of the pro loyalty with the new release.
Cant be easy to re develop an application as scalable as FCP and that appeals and supports businesses and markets in Film, Television, Industry, Corporate, Education and Hobbyist / Prosumer. The main issue must have been getting the 64bit version as robust and as feature rich the current FCP, so any new features will be a bonus.
If there is an announcement soon I wouldn't be surprised if the release wasn't be until later in the year. (but who knows?) and that the feature set might be very similar to to what we have now.
Here's what i would love in the new version and think might be coming, of course every Editor / Producer will have a different list.
64 bit and increased available Ram use go without saying.
1. multi processor use when rendering
2. Background Rendering with user controlled number of core use-( as in QMaster)
3. Background Exporting
4. Quicktime X to mature and featured enough to replace QT7 (i'm guessing this is essential / fundamental to the new version.
5. Better and customised metadata handling
6. full integration with Final Cut Server metadata
7. The Interface gets the Logic / Aperture treatment but with customisable arrangement and dynamic windows.
8. QT gets built in Open EXR and other digital cinema codecs built in as standard.
9. Scratch Disk settings that are Project by project aware/based (and that this had a disable button
10. Better Timeline Search functions and media use indicators
-what would be fun but maybe not in this version,
1. Face recognition for video - (like Aperture)
2. Scene framing recognition.
3. Scrubbable clips in the clip bin
-Native editing of long GOP codecs does not worry me- but it's a often requested feature, and equally required by commercial and Prosumer / Consumer markets -this is more of a processing power.
When Premiere came out it didn't get much uptake from the pro users, so when R. Ubillos went to Macromedia he designed FC to look more like Avid. As another poster mentioned, pro video editing user interface has remained pretty much stagnant since the 90's. Anyway, the FC tiny button gray non-intuitive Avid-like interface ended up attracting some pro adoption when released however, it seems to have fallen off recently due to various factors such as no 64 bit, Motion/Shake and iMovie faux pas plus some really innovative pro applications released from independent companies. Apple has never really been able to unseat Avid in Hollywood either. I hope they can regain some of the pro loyalty with the new release.
Yea, I agree. I consider myself a "high level amateur" who did the occasional video for school, friends, etc. but the Final Cut user interface is stuck in 2002. There are symbols that don't have explanations. If you move a file, Final Cut can't keep track of it. Figuring out which exporting settings are best is a pain.
Shake used to be THE application for compositing for professional movie production -- and a lot of those users are going to Flame. The advantage of Motion, is that you can use real-time experimentation and throw on an expression and "see" what happens. I could imagine, that MOTION, is the top level layer, and that shake is an engine to composite the encapsulated layers -- but how to do that in "real time" -- likely, there is a per-layer rendering technology that Apple is going to use...
The next FCP will likely have "per layer" rendering. So you can turn off a layer after it has rendered, and not have to re-render, though, there would have to be a separate saved cache file for "difference" such as, when the upper layer has an effect on the lower layer. Also, I'm sure that the 64-bit architecture will FINALLY allow for mix-and match codecs as well as bit depths -- so that you don't have to convert the 12bit per channel YUV HDAC down to the 8-bit per channel DV tape you are using or vise vera.
Apple's strategy so far, has been to build the CORE, light-weight engine for the "lower end" and not re-invent the wheel for the upper end. The iOS became the core of the iPad and lots of networking for the Leopard OS. Leopard also got rid of some very large graphics files, to accommodate a more compressed and space savvy mobile OS. I'm pretty sure the confusion and fear of "tackling the hobbyist end", is about a single core for the software and interface so that Apple doesn't have to re-invent the wheel and waste development time making an iMove, Garage Band, Soundtrack, Final Cut, Motion, Shake, and a half dozen other, totally different pieces of software -- I expect that they are going to settle on some core for video that includes real-time OpenCL (throughout), and some way to manage sounds and effects like both Garage Band and Logic -- and ways to non-destructively "pre-render" so that tiny changes don't require a re-render each time.
That takes a LOT OF REAL THOUGHT, about how to encapsulate this AV data -- and it makes sense that it has taken about as long to really update these apps as it did to build the iOS. Steve Jobs doesn't seem out to make the next "lame piece of software" -- and I think that he is really going after making Apple the de facto standard for Video and Audio again. Think of the different Effects as you do adding a Font to your computer -- and that would be like the difference between amateur and Pro -- every app in the Mac and use every font without worrying about how it was designed or rendered.
We've been frustrated by earlier "tweaks" and I think this is because there has not been a lot of time and effort given to updating the different software, because most of the effort has gone to how to engineer a way to design something for video and sound once, and then re-purpose it. The weird and clumsy change to Quicktime X, was a baby step, because Quicktime X really passes most functions to Quicktime 7 -- that makes me think of it as a "management layer" to pass processes off and merely act as a manager of computer resources and codecs.
So, I think that Apple is going to compete with Adobe, not by beating Final Cut Pro, but by going after Flame, and having support for more real-time and hardware acceleration with CPU, GPU or whatever resource is available. Slower machines will pre-render but not have to re-render -- but I'm expecting, either now or after Lion, that Apple is due to re-write expectations again.
For cripes sake. Just how stupid do you think Apple is that it needs such advice from the likes of the above.
It is obvious that the folks I quoted above have never used FCP and certainly not with the capabilities of such outstanding professionals that are using it now. And there are lots out there.
Amazing that such productions could have been accomplished by such an amateur application as some here seem to describe it.
If you read my original quote, I commented that I would hope that Apple would know the difference between a Pro app and iMovie which is to say that I think they do. Additionally, I have FCS 1 and upgraded to FCS 3 when it came out, so yes, I have and continue to use FCP. Don't presume to know as much as you think you know about me based on a few comments.
Creativity has many forms -- baking a cake, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hwVR...embedded#at=49
Facetime recognition in Video (pretty sure this will make it),
Audio Speech to Text, to at least give us a searchable time-line for what someone says -- 90% accurate would at least be useful. The text, of course, would have time-code tags that link back to the original audio track.
An FX builder that utilized something like Quartz Composer -- but without needing a third party company to do it.
All FX available and scriptable with a QuickTime encapsulator -- for instance, QuickTime would now include Quartz Composer in the Pro version, and this QT file could be dropped into Keynote, and Keynote could see variables -- so you could animate a list of names and graphics without building separate slides. A QT file then becomes any video or audio file, or a "project" in Motion/Shake, or Logic/Garageband. I'd expect that the organization of these QT projects would start looking like a Keynote file -- which is really a zipped project folder, of image and AV assets, and an XML file to describe how they are used and when. Even the previews (like per-project render locations) are low-rez renders of the original files -- and even aliases to other renders or originals in cases where an image or sound is used more than once.
>> So ONE STANDARD file description technique for ALL APPLE SOFTWARE. Apple doesn't compete on file formats like Microsoft. So one standard, much like a Keynote file, and XML descriptor. It also means, third-party developers can easily use any Apple project file or help do things like "compare" different projects and remove duplicates with an alias.
You can change a MODERN keynote file extension to be ".zip" and the uncompress it to a folder if you want to see what I mean (this will of course, ruin the keynote file unless you rezip it and rename it .keynote).
I expect that one day, the Final Rendered file, like we see in most Movies, will become an "option" for slower machines in the future. For instance; A folder of 3D objects defined into characters, textures and a script, can give you an entire 3D move. That was KIND OF the idea at one time with some attempts at a 3D Quicktime object in the past -- but the per-channel rendering technology, is going to need a separation between content and rendering, and I think more and more "renderings" will be a CPU-saving temp file, rather than anything that is necessary except when making something that you post for others to enjoy.
The Keynote file (as an ideal example of the new document file) could be dropped into FCP and you could then render out an entire award show, so Keynote suddenly becomes something like a storyboard application -- and FCP, since it doesn't care about whatever is INSIDE a QT file, is merely a rendering and compositing engine with timeline.
Soundtrack has been a clumsy add-on to FCP, it should merely be a MODE of looking at a file in FCP, rather than outputting to a separate file -- and as a standalone product, it would be better just to have a Logic+Garageband hybrid. Either you are composing something, or you are cleaning up audio for a video -- it seems a logical way to break up sound editing tasks.
Then Motion/Shake, is for composing 3D and video files.
Apple will release a "spectacular" update to its Final Cut Pro professional video editing application this spring, a new report claims.
Any word on if I will have to pay Apple 30% on any revenue I generate using FCP?
I use FCS for editing and experimentation -- mostly for, home movies and some experimentation for friends and my own amusement -- I definitely am not a professional, but sometimes need to go beyond iMovie.
I enjoy using Motion to add 3D effects to 2D images -- and find it to be quite powerful.
I especially like that, unlike FCP, it does real-time rendering.
What is it abut Motion that you dislike -- am I missing something?
TIA,
Dick
Hi,
I'm working with animation, visuals and post production. I like to stay in detailed control, and to have a great overview of my setup, and work fast.
Every time I work with Motion I have the feeling I'm using something very big and clumsy. I agree that the rendering engine itself seems pretty powerful, but I just think the user interface is too square. Also the constant hick-ups and unexplainable sudden wait-freezes that has been there from version 1.
The UI in Shake, (a software that Apple bought and discontinued, and assigned those developers to Motion and Final Cut I think) has another take on UI, it's "node based" and you can connect things the way you like... like a "mind map", as with the professional alternative Nuke etc. They might have a steeper learning curve, but developing for professionals I think you should go for the UI that can take you the furthest. Not necessarily the UI that is the easiest to grasp. We can learn complex tools. No problem. If they thought the node based UI was too hard to grasp, instead of going backwards to a good old list with a timeline - they should have gone "This Node based view has real advantages. How do we make THAT even more accessible?
It's not always the best solution to lay pieces of images in a stack. Sometimes you need to spread them out on a big light box and connect different results in a smarter way than just from top to bottom. If someone, then Apple should understand this... think different, the crazy ones and all.
But this is really not a Node View vs List View issue.
No, my biggest remark is the following:
If they made this software as a part of a pro package, and it turns out the users who appreciate it the most are users like yourself, home enthusiasts and hobbyists that like to go beyond iMovie - and then people who liked Shake, (that they bought and discontinued), moved on to professional products like Nuke... then I think they missed the mark with Motion.
The UI in Shake, (a software that Apple bought and discontinued, and assigned those developers to Motion and Final Cut I think) has another take on UI, it's "node based" and you can connect things the way you like... like a "mind map", as with the professional alternative Nuke etc.
When Apple abandoned Shake, didn't the key team members leave to various companies like The Foundry (who make Nuke)? While I have not used Nuke beyond watching a demo, it seems that Nuke does what it does so well that it would take Apple a lot to come up with something comparable and even more to come up with something that will convince major production companies that have moved their pipelines from Shake to say Nuke to go back to Apple (I am not saying they can't or that the next version of Motion won't be great but they are really going to have to put a lot of effort into the product to catch up and then surpass what is out there now).
According to the report, differences of opinion between the teams working on Shake and Motion regarding an ideal unified interface for the suite "hamstrung" part of the project, causing several features to be deferred to a 2013 version of the software.
Didn't they discontinue Shake? Why would there be teams working on it?
I wonder what the upgrade price will be. I've only had FCS for a year or so, so I'm excited!
Hopefully, it'll be as aggressive as the the upgrade from either FCS 1 or 2 to the latest FCS which is $299. We shall see.
Must be a lot of unsung brilliant creative people here. Amazing how many criticize a product that some of the great directors/studios/etc., are doing so well with it now.
Love to see all your Curriculum Vitae.
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/
What are you talking about? They're criticizing iMovie. Are you saying the great directors are using iMovie? Get a clue.
What are you talking about? They're criticizing iMovie.
That's what I tried to tell him.
TIA!
When Apple abandoned Shake, didn't the key team members leave to various companies like The Foundry (who make Nuke)? While I have not used Nuke beyond watching a demo, it seems that Nuke does what it does so well that it would take Apple a lot to come up with something comparable and even more to come up with something that will convince major production companies that have moved their pipelines from Shake to say Nuke to go back to Apple (I am not saying they can't or that the next version of Motion won't be great but they are really going to have to put a lot of effort into the product to catch up and then surpass what is out there now).
You're probably right... though, perhaps the only thing I question is... I seriously doubt that Apple could do it, even if they wanted to. Their Mac software doesn't really shine anymore.
But then again, perhaps all the iPad work will now inspire how they develop and optimize for the Mac.