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!
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.
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.
Isn't FCE the same convoluted user interface as FCS but with half the features?
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.
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 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.
You can't take complex professional level applications that are use to create professional and complex content and dumb it down and not lose functionality.
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"
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: .....
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...
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:
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.
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.
A lot of editors and filmmakers switched to Final Cut because it's cheaper. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH AN AVID SYSTEM COSTS? You got an editing software (almost up to par with Avid), color grading, motion graphics, audio editing, packaged together for a $1000, that is bargain dude.
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.
Except they are looking to rework tools for the masses of the people. Something that's accessible to more people. Something that works.
For me and my work, AI (as example of a "pro" app) is weak compared to Freehand. And it stands as an example of how Adobe lets a product get stagnant. So I don't consider Illustrator as "pro" as Freehand.
I was merely suggesting they make an vector app that's accessible to more people and will drive the forces of competition. If Apple chose to put their force behind an app that would fit into their existing media creation tools, and their plans for things like iAd and the App Store, I think they could have something pretty good.
They already have still photo, video, and audio creation. And with the current up-swelling of Adobe-angst, why not show off what Apple can do.
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.
Sounded more like they want to smarten up Express than dumb down Pro.
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.
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?.
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!
The only thing keeping me from using Final Cut Studio is the cost and the complexity.
Final Cut Express offers me a good amount of power but I love the way things are done in iMovie '09 and so I find myself working between the two all the time.
However, if the cost of Final Cut Studio was reduced by another thousand and gained editing features of iMovie then I would switch in a heartbeat.
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.
...according to new job postings Apple recently posted. The positions, which include a Senior Visual Interface Designer for Pro Apps and a Senior Human Interface Designer for Pro Apps, support the idea that the company is looking to overhaul its Final Cut Pro offerings rather than sell them off or leave them to rust.
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 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!
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.
Comments
http://www.philiphodgetts.com/2010/0...be-more-wrong/
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.
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.
Isn't FCE the same convoluted user interface as FCS but with half the features?
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.
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 might have jumped to conclusion. I think we all did. You can say we're freaked out and paranoid.
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.
You can't take complex professional level applications that are use to create professional and complex content and dumb it down and not lose functionality.
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"
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: .....
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...
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%
to sjobs
\t
show details 12:01 AM (1 hour ago)
\t
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.
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.
It's interesting to see Premiere Pro muscle up in CS5. I really don't want to switch.
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.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
A lot of editors and filmmakers switched to Final Cut because it's cheaper. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH AN AVID SYSTEM COSTS? You got an editing software (almost up to par with Avid), color grading, motion graphics, audio editing, packaged together for a $1000, that is bargain dude.
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.
Except they are looking to rework tools for the masses of the people. Something that's accessible to more people. Something that works.
For me and my work, AI (as example of a "pro" app) is weak compared to Freehand. And it stands as an example of how Adobe lets a product get stagnant. So I don't consider Illustrator as "pro" as Freehand.
I was merely suggesting they make an vector app that's accessible to more people and will drive the forces of competition. If Apple chose to put their force behind an app that would fit into their existing media creation tools, and their plans for things like iAd and the App Store, I think they could have something pretty good.
They already have still photo, video, and audio creation. And with the current up-swelling of Adobe-angst, why not show off what Apple can do.
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.
Sounded more like they want to smarten up Express than dumb down Pro.
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.
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?.
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
The only thing keeping me from using Final Cut Studio is the cost and the complexity.
Final Cut Express offers me a good amount of power but I love the way things are done in iMovie '09 and so I find myself working between the two all the time.
However, if the cost of Final Cut Studio was reduced by another thousand and gained editing features of iMovie then I would switch in a heartbeat.
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.
...according to new job postings Apple recently posted. The positions, which include a Senior Visual Interface Designer for Pro Apps and a Senior Human Interface Designer for Pro Apps, support the idea that the company is looking to overhaul its Final Cut Pro offerings rather than sell them off or leave them to rust.
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 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
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.
It seems this topic is pure especulation based on jobs announced by Apple...