jersey, you should try it. FCPX seems like a great program built on a great engine and as long as you don't need certain standing features, you'll be fine and enjoy it allot from what I can tell.
I probably will. At $299 it is the same price as Final Cut Express so why not.
FCPX is NOT ready for a professional workflow. Maybe in a year. you have to understand that this is problematic for those of us that often purchase machines for a single job. A new machine outfitted with FCPX will not fit into our workflow the same as FCP7. Therefore we have to rethink our workflow potential. Tha'ts the only problem. If i had to buy 5 offline edit suites tomorrow they probably would be AMC suites and not FCPX suites.
I will say it again FCPX is not ready for prime-time even in a tapeless workflow. I just cut a comedy using RED proxies. I got the EDL from the director, it was cut, approved and then had to be sent to the Ptools engineer (OMF), the colorist XML (who happens to not be working in color) and of course come back as a 4K file to be mastered to multiple formats including, Digital Delivery, film and tape. FCPX would be a nightmare to integrate into the workflow.
Again I have to remind some of you (because you are too young? really?) there is not a feature in existence that is finished in FCP. Not one. FCPX is not ready because it cannot talk to other software yet. Even when it is ready, it'll be like FCP7 today. It'll get used for offline edits and finished elsewhere.That's all FCP was ever for. That and youtube home movies and maybe bad/ cheap cable programing and a few indie movies no one will ever hear of.
Apple should have realized that FCP is an offline tool and it's hugely important that work going in MUST come out in a format other FINISHING programs can understand. It would be like giving your neg cutter in the valley a hard boiled egg and calling it an EDL. It doesn't jive.
I have no addiction to tape personally, (I honestly haven't shot tape in 3 or four years) but allot of people have shot allot of footage on tape. That footage is constantly being recycled, re-edited, re-used etc etc. There was a 30 year investment in tape and you can't just throw it away. It's bad accounting.
Should we all stop using film too because it's old? C'mon!. Allot of people are still shooting and mastering to film as well. Do you shit on the music artists that choose to record their albums to tape as well? Obviously you know nothing about technology, artistic expression and what the various tools allow you to express or you're just a putz.
Sure next year things will be different, everything is always different in a year, but honestly two questions remain...
Does Apple even care to continue with their professional software and features... ( I personally don't see why they would. seems a waste of time a and a vanity effort to me)
If so, How quickly? Apple should speak up to some degree. They haven't in the past, but this is a major overhaul which none of us expected. A timeline of features would be nice or to know if Apple even wants to bother.
Ya know people on AI have said I'm an arrogant prick, but your comments actually surprised and disappointed me. Obviously you have some issues given your attempt at dismissing people because of their age and it only demonstrates that you are in fact the one who feel threatened. I hadn't seen this side of you in your comments. You made the first member of my ignore list. For the record I'm 35 and have no fear about that. I'm just arriving at the age where I am respected and paid for that respect. Therefore, I have no problem rudely inquiring "How old are you asshole?"
Anyone with half a brain would use Avid when it was appropriate. FCP is more or less an offline solution with no hardware support. You are simply mistaken if you think FCP (in whatever form) on a $5k mac can hold it's ground against a full blown Avid suite. In my own self interest I'll only encourage you to stick to your guns
If you say that all FCP was ever for was "offline edits" then what is your complaint exactly?
Not one feature is finished? That's a overreaching statement. I'm sure File > Save works just fine.
You didn't describe why FCPX (or FCP7) would be a nightmare in your workflow. You just said some technobabble about file sizes.
Yes that is a very nice list of films Edited on FCP says nothing about FINISHING. I said nothing about file size BTW.
Yeah I read wrong I dunno where I got my file size comment from.
But those are major films where Final Cut was used and was useful. Whatever, it's not used for finishing, hell I don't even know what that means, but obviously real professionals are using it for SOMETHING! I fail to see where Final Cut claims to be useful for "finishing"
As others have mentioned, FCPX is the same price as Express was, and I think Apple is reflecting the un-finished nature of it in the price.
I have used FCP7 and it needed an Apple scrap-the-interface-and-start-over treatment.
Should we stop using film? No. But to an independent film student making a film, FCP and the kind of digital technology have dramatically increased the accessibility of making professional or near professional quality films. It's content that matters, not how you make it. Can a film student afford a Panavision film camera??
So X is missing key features that make it useless to me and I won't bother to enter the long list. I've read a lot of snarky comments like "you all have your old FCP 7 just use it", etc. Well WILL we have it once Lion is released?
When I look at the rapid and abrupt way FCP 7 was pulled (and even demanded that retailers return unsold products - has that ever happened before?) I'm wondering if FCP 7 with Lion is going to be another epic fail. They certainly rushed X to market half-baked as far as functionality and compatibility are concerned. I don't think they would do that and take the PR hit for an immature product if they weren't trying to beat Lion.
I was all onboard for a new interface, even a new paradigm but X ain't it. It's more of a lobotomized, Stepford Wife version - pretty facade but robotic and brainless. I get the feeling that the designers of X value form over function when form should follow and enhance function. I used to develop software and I know that it's orders of magnitude simpler to create an elegant, pretty interface when when you throw out functionality wholesale.
AppleInsider warned this was going to consumer, maybe prosumer a year ago. A few months earlier, just before NAB 2010, Apple laid off 40 FCP employees. Hmmm.
What I really wanted from FCP was for it to utilize my graphics card, RAM, cores, etc. I didn't want to have to choose between speed and features. It's been 2 years since the last OS X upgrade and all signals were pointing to Apple bailing on the pro market. I was hopeful after this year's demo at NAB but I'm not waiting and hoping any longer for Apple to get it together. I don't want to move to Premiere but it has features AND speed and it has it now. I can even use Color and Soundtrack Pro with Premiere (but not with FCP X). And if Snow Leopard was any indication, Adobe will support Premiere on Lion better than Apple will support FCP (7 or X) on Lion.
Yeah I read wrong I dunno where I got my file size comment from.
But those are major films where Final Cut was used and was useful. Whatever, it's not used for finishing, hell I don't even know what that means, but obviously real professionals are using it for SOMETHING!
As others have mentioned, FCPX is the same price as Express was, and I think Apple is reflecting the un-finished nature of it in the price.
I have used FCP7 and it needed an Apple scrap-the-interface-and-start-over treatment.
At least I know where you are coming from. Yes FCP was used as a first step in the chain, but the problem is that FCPX prevents you from moving along that chain in critical ways.
I don't think FCP needed an interface (UI) overhaul as much as it needed and engine overhaul. Obviously FCPX's engine is much more efficient.
Dick Applebaum noted that the price tag is probably more about extensibility. Buy X for $300 and additional features for more money. It makes sense actually, it mirrors Avid's efforts and will probably garner a larger revenue for Apple in the long run.
Out of all the complaints, the most ridiculous and unsupportable is that the new version is "not for professionals."
A few old geezers that are afraid of doing anything new or stopping their addiction to magnetic tape (of all things), are making a lot of sounds that it isn't for "professionals" because it removes their ancient workflows from the equation. The majority of professionals using the old Final Cut will move to the new one with no problems at all. The majority of professionals don't even use tape.
Final Cut Pro X is so totally *not* a "consumer" product in any way. Your just being ridiculous.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Do you run a video post facility like I do? No? Then just keep putting that egg on your face.
FCPX is NOT ready for a professional workflow. Maybe in a year. you have to understand that this is problematic for those of us that often purchase machines for a single job. A new machine outfitted with FCPX will not fit into our workflow the same as FCP7. Therefore we have to rethink our workflow potential. Tha'ts the only problem. If i had to buy 5 offline edit suites tomorrow they probably would be AMC suites and not FCPX suites.
Yes that is abundantly clear. Hopefully Apple will address these issues soon.
Quote:
Anyone with half a brain would use Avid when it was appropriate. FCP is more or less an offline solution with no hardware support. You are simply mistaken if you think FCP (in whatever form) on a $5k mac can hold it's ground against a full blown Avid suite. In my own self interest I'll only encourage you to stick to your guns
While I agree that FCP does not compete with a fully kitted out Avid system. While I agree that Avid has real advantages over FCP.
Those who heavily use and have invested in Avid. Use the expense of an Avid as cache for how serious one is about their work. They tend to look down on others who have not so heavily invested in such a system as not being so serious about their work. I find that is a mentality tends in more of the older editors.
Thank you. I don't understand why folks can't display this basic common sense?
The alternative would have been for Apple to wait till they had multi-camera editing ready, and then release.
Why should they hold it for a feature that not everyone needs.
Quote:
Its a complete rewrite. Why is anyone shocked there are missing features?
indeed. Many of the naysayers are looking at this as an update when it is more kind a brand new software, that just happens to do some of the same things as an existing one
Should we stop using film? No. But to an independent film student making a film, FCP and the kind of digital technology have dramatically increased the accessibility of making professional or near professional quality films. It's content that matters, not how you make it. Can a film student afford a Panavision film camera??
What film school are you going to that convinced you that content is all that matters? Not to make light of it, but a film student will never craft a movie like a seasoned professional. Or at least they won't craft it like they will after 15 years in the business and believe me full metal jaket would not be the same film had it been shot on a hand held HVX.
You're confusing the issue. Either technology matters and makes better films or technology doesn't matter and content reigns supreme. This brings to mind something...
When I was in school we were constantly told that Anyone who can afford to spend more money on a project will almost certainly have a better product at the end. They did not recommend cutting corners. Many students hated it, but it was a reality the teachers were preparing us for. I'd still day the same thing. I spent 30k on my first student short. It won a few awards, but it was still a piece of crap even though yes it was shot on a panavision.
The school was bought shortly after I left and sold to a corporation that understood one thing... more students, more money and technology makes it cheaper for students and more appealing to parents.
With complete disregard for the fact that Hollywood is all of five major studios and only employs a relative few thousand people, they quadrupled the student body. They did away with allot of the film science and tech and turned the entire program into a digital workflow.
The net result was appalling...
Within 3 years the stats for the graduating classes were abdominal. 80% of the students didn't make it past year one, 90% of the graduating students weren't working in the field at all. Of the 10% graduated and working fewer than 4% were earning more than $50k.
They flooded the market with potential employees that knew little about what they were really expected to do and the employment records showed it.
Eventually the state BOE sued the school because almost none of these students we able to pay back their loans. The school almost lost it's accreditation. The state lost face with the feds and Sallie Mae. (?) In the end the students still owed a hundred or so thousand dollars, but were only awarded a few thousand dollars for their trouble. The state buried the embarrassment in trusting the corporation and the lawyers in the class action suit were the only ones who accomplished anything buy making all of money.
Technology has indeed made it marketable and accessible to the masses, but I don't think the industry has benefited from it. If you are a student I would recommend you find a way of entering a very specialized niche, get really good at it and start marketing the fuck out of yourself because the competition is 10000 fold of what it was when the glamourous image of "working in hollywood" was formed. There simply are not enough jobs to comfortably support every joe who has an Apple computer and a copy of FCP.
So X is missing key features that make it useless to me and I won't bother to enter the long list. I've read a lot of snarky comments like "you all have your old FCP 7 just use it", etc. Well WILL we have it once Lion is released?
When I look at the rapid and abrupt way FCP 7 was pulled (and even demanded that retailers return unsold products - has that ever happened before?) I'm wondering if FCP 7 with Lion is going to be another epic fail. They certainly rushed X to market half-baked as far as functionality and compatibility are concerned. I don't think they would do that and take the PR hit for an immature product if they weren't trying to beat Lion.
I was all onboard for a new interface, even a new paradigm but X ain't it. It's more of a lobotomized, Stepford Wife version - pretty facade but robotic and brainless. I get the feeling that the designers of X value form over function when form should follow and enhance function. I used to develop software and I know that it's orders of magnitude simpler to create an elegant, pretty interface when when you throw out functionality wholesale.
AppleInsider warned this was going to consumer, maybe prosumer a year ago. A few months earlier, just before NAB 2010, Apple laid off 40 FCP employees. Hmmm.
What I really wanted from FCP was for it to utilize my graphics card, RAM, cores, etc. I didn't want to have to choose between speed and features. It's been 2 years since the last OS X upgrade and all signals were pointing to Apple bailing on the pro market. I was hopeful after this year's demo at NAB but I'm not waiting and hoping any longer for Apple to get it together. I don't want to move to Premiere but it has features AND speed and it has it now. I can even use Color and Soundtrack Pro with Premiere (but not with FCP X). And if Snow Leopard was any indication, Adobe will support Premiere on Lion better than Apple will support FCP (7 or X) on Lion.
I would say more money = a better movie up to a point. From the perspective of low budget filmmaking.
From $500,000 to $1 million. You definitely can make a better movie.
From $1 million to $2million if you know what you are doing, you can make a better movie.
It gets to a point where you start to run into diminishing returns. A movie that could be made for $5 million and gets a $20 million dollar budget. You're not necessarily going to make a better movie and its possible to make a worse movie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by spliff monkey
When I was in school we were constantly told that Anyone who can afford to spend more money on a project will almost certainly have a better product at the end. They did not recommend cutting corners. Many students hated it, but it was a reality the teachers were preparing us for. I'd still day the same thing. I spent 30k on my first student short. It won a few awards, but it was still a piece of crap even though yes it was shot on a panavision.
I was a product manager at Adobe (not for video products though). Still, I think you can draw many comparisons to what we're seeing with FCP X.
I've seen comments comparing the release of FCP X to Mac OS X -- but that isn't really a comparison. Mac OS X didn't have a "Competitor". But the release of Mac OS X did have a huge impact on some other competing products - QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign.
At the time, Quark was clearly the market leader. Adobe created InDesign, but its launch was initially a failure. Shortly thereafter, Apple released Mac OS X, and the next version of InDesign (v2, not CS2) was Mac OS X native. Quark didn't have a Mac OS X native version and wouldn't for a few years afterwards. Sure, InDesign 2 had some great features, but its real success and adoption was driven by all those companies that wanted Mac OS X native software on their machines (these companies were at the same time making the upgrade to Mac OS X and wanted to upgrade hardware and software in one fell swoop).
At that point, Quark was playing catch-up to InDesign and it was a losing battle. A combination of a shift in hardware and software helped Adobe upset the market leader.
Go a few years back and look at Adobe Premiere -- Adobe saw a shift in hardware and advancing tapeless workflows and realized that their video editing software wasn't going to cut it. So they completely rewrote Adobe Premiere from the ground up to fully support 64 bit, to embrace metadata and to support tapeless workflows. This was a huge amount of work for Adobe (I guess now that we see FCP X, we can understand just how big of a project something like this is). In fact, Adobe didn't even release Mac versions of Premiere at first -- it was too much to handle in one release. But when it did finally arrive, a completely rewritten and modern Adobe Premiere Pro alongside its sibling apps that were already industry-standards become compelling.
I've seen support for Adobe's video products gaining momentum over the last year or so (the CS5.5 release is impressive) but I also believe that many folks refused to look in that direction knowing that FCP X was imminent.
But now it's here. And it's lacking. And the question will be, how many folks will now take a serious look in Adobe's direction? Will they wait for Apple to continue to chip away and improve upon FCP over the next few versions? Or will they jump ship now to Adobe's offering?
Overall, this isn't about whether Apple will "fix" all of these issues. I'm sure they will. The question is, will their clientele hang around long enough to wait for it?
Of course, I could be reading this totally wrong. Maybe Apple saw a shift in the pro market and decided it was no longer worth their while to compete in that area? Maybe they "let" Adobe or others have that while they focused on what they might consider a more powerful market of consumers who want more than iMovie? That's certainly possible as well...
Guys, I'm an Apple guy through and through, but I think a lot of you are still really missing the point.
Apple is about to see a massive decline in pro edit suite market share. It has nothing to do with dinosaurs wedded to tape or old guys unwilling to learn a new paradigm. As has been described at length, this version of FCP lacks basic tools that are required for pro work flows, and there isn't much in these statements from FCP product managers that suggests that's going to get much better. Better, yes, but not good enough to qualify. It's just a stone fact; if you doubt it talk to someone who makes their living using FCP.
Now, it may be that Apple will sell a great many more copies of FCPX than they ever did FCP. There may be an explosion of prosumer and one man shops doing, well, kind of similar work, since FCP X is so adamant about herding you in certain directions, with automated process and limited presets. For a single person on a single machine, who intends to publish online, FCP X is a powerful tool. Wedding videographers and small market media guys are probably going to love it.
But for pro production houses a lot of the damage is already done. Apple has signaled that they don't understand pro work flows, that they don't care about this market, and that frankly they can't be trusted to provide a stable path going forward. I'm talking about people with 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in FCP processes who have simply been cut off at the knees, with no warning whatsoever. You don't have to be some kind of Apple basher to see how destructive to loyalty that is. Look around online; large post houses are already on record as planning on switching away, either to Avid or Adobe.
So Apple is going a different way with FCP X, one that has no place in professional edit suites. That's entirely their right. But it's kind of stunning, in that FCP had managed to carve out such a nice chunk of that market, and gave Apple a marquee software presence that helped legitimize the brand among pros.
Now obviously they don't need that kind of "legitimacy" any more, they're thriving in lots markets. Losing the pro post market at this point isn't going to hurt them a bit. But don't imagine that the controversy can be chalked up reactionary old timers. You're just wrong about that. Unless you imagine that the cool new "future" of video editing that Apple is bravely pointing us towards means that every project is done on the fly by individuals with laptops who send the results off to Vimeo or You Tube. That's cool as far as it goes, and it's cool that Apple can provide powerful tools to do those things.
But they're not going to start making feature films, television shows and major ad campaigns that way, and that's a market Apple has just ceded to the competition.
Professional video editing requires a lot of collaboration. That is why shops standardize on one platform and stick to it. Occasionally there is a migration effect between versions of the same software since there are enough similarities and backwards compatibly to still share the work load across several editors without conflict. The fact that FCPX does not share anything in common with its predecessor makes it no different than introducing an Avid workstation into a Final Cut work flow. It just doesn't work. If a professional shop wanted to upgrade to FCPX they would have to do all the workstations at the same time and all editors would have to cope with the learning curve at the same time. This would essentially shut down the company and make everything done previously incompatible. That is just not something that many professional shops would consider.
This product is designed exclusively for a solo freelancer who does not need to use any post house services or be compatible with any other software, doesn't need any plug ins, high end camera support or features such as multicam. Essentially the amateur web video editor is who this product is designed for. Which brings to mind, why did they remove FCP 7? Because Apple has this fixation with everything being part of the ecosystem and FCP did not fit. It doesn't work with iCloud or the App Store and probably has some issues with Lion for all we know. iMovie on the other hand is a perfect fit. So iMovie Pro it is. I'm glad I ordered another FCP Studio box set yesterday to hold me over.
Comments
jersey, you should try it. FCPX seems like a great program built on a great engine and as long as you don't need certain standing features, you'll be fine and enjoy it allot from what I can tell.
I probably will. At $299 it is the same price as Final Cut Express so why not.
FCPX is NOT ready for a professional workflow. Maybe in a year. you have to understand that this is problematic for those of us that often purchase machines for a single job. A new machine outfitted with FCPX will not fit into our workflow the same as FCP7. Therefore we have to rethink our workflow potential. Tha'ts the only problem. If i had to buy 5 offline edit suites tomorrow they probably would be AMC suites and not FCPX suites.
I will say it again FCPX is not ready for prime-time even in a tapeless workflow. I just cut a comedy using RED proxies. I got the EDL from the director, it was cut, approved and then had to be sent to the Ptools engineer (OMF), the colorist XML (who happens to not be working in color) and of course come back as a 4K file to be mastered to multiple formats including, Digital Delivery, film and tape. FCPX would be a nightmare to integrate into the workflow.
Again I have to remind some of you (because you are too young? really?) there is not a feature in existence that is finished in FCP. Not one. FCPX is not ready because it cannot talk to other software yet. Even when it is ready, it'll be like FCP7 today. It'll get used for offline edits and finished elsewhere.That's all FCP was ever for. That and youtube home movies and maybe bad/ cheap cable programing and a few indie movies no one will ever hear of.
Apple should have realized that FCP is an offline tool and it's hugely important that work going in MUST come out in a format other FINISHING programs can understand. It would be like giving your neg cutter in the valley a hard boiled egg and calling it an EDL. It doesn't jive.
I have no addiction to tape personally, (I honestly haven't shot tape in 3 or four years) but allot of people have shot allot of footage on tape. That footage is constantly being recycled, re-edited, re-used etc etc. There was a 30 year investment in tape and you can't just throw it away. It's bad accounting.
Should we all stop using film too because it's old? C'mon!. Allot of people are still shooting and mastering to film as well. Do you shit on the music artists that choose to record their albums to tape as well? Obviously you know nothing about technology, artistic expression and what the various tools allow you to express or you're just a putz.
Sure next year things will be different, everything is always different in a year, but honestly two questions remain...
Does Apple even care to continue with their professional software and features... ( I personally don't see why they would. seems a waste of time a and a vanity effort to me)
If so, How quickly? Apple should speak up to some degree. They haven't in the past, but this is a major overhaul which none of us expected. A timeline of features would be nice or to know if Apple even wants to bother.
Ya know people on AI have said I'm an arrogant prick, but your comments actually surprised and disappointed me. Obviously you have some issues given your attempt at dismissing people because of their age and it only demonstrates that you are in fact the one who feel threatened. I hadn't seen this side of you in your comments. You made the first member of my ignore list. For the record I'm 35 and have no fear about that. I'm just arriving at the age where I am respected and paid for that respect. Therefore, I have no problem rudely inquiring "How old are you asshole?"
Anyone with half a brain would use Avid when it was appropriate. FCP is more or less an offline solution with no hardware support. You are simply mistaken if you think FCP (in whatever form) on a $5k mac can hold it's ground against a full blown Avid suite. In my own self interest I'll only encourage you to stick to your guns
If you say that all FCP was ever for was "offline edits" then what is your complaint exactly?
Not one feature is finished? That's a overreaching statement. I'm sure File > Save works just fine.
You didn't describe why FCPX (or FCP7) would be a nightmare in your workflow. You just said some technobabble about file sizes.
LOOK HERE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_C..._Final_Cut_Pro
That's true. It would require a third party component from AJA or Black Magic to convert RED files to QT.
There's been plenty of rumor though that Apple is working with RED, Arri, Sony, Panasonic in building a new support structure for native video files.
If they are that would be a good sign, Avid already supports native video footage without transcode.
If you say that all FCP was ever for was "offline edits" then what is your complaint exactly?
Not one feature is finished? That's a overreaching statement. I'm sure File > Save works just fine.
You didn't describe why FCPX (or FCP7) would be a nightmare in your workflow. You just said some technobabble about file sizes.
LOOK HERE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_C..._Final_Cut_Pro
Yes that is a very nice list of films Edited on FCP says nothing about FINISHING. I said nothing about file size BTW.
If history tells us anything, it's 'Avoid Apple Products That Receive Complete UI Makeovers Or An 'X' In Their Name'.
iMovie '08, QuickTime X (though Lion's is bringing features back. QuickTime 7 is still essential, but it's better), and Final Cut Studio X.
You missed a huge one: Mac OS X. The first version that was really usable was 10.2 ("Jaguar").
Yes that is a very nice list of films Edited on FCP says nothing about FINISHING. I said nothing about file size BTW.
Yeah I read wrong I dunno where I got my file size comment from.
But those are major films where Final Cut was used and was useful. Whatever, it's not used for finishing, hell I don't even know what that means, but obviously real professionals are using it for SOMETHING! I fail to see where Final Cut claims to be useful for "finishing"
As others have mentioned, FCPX is the same price as Express was, and I think Apple is reflecting the un-finished nature of it in the price.
I have used FCP7 and it needed an Apple scrap-the-interface-and-start-over treatment.
Should we stop using film? No. But to an independent film student making a film, FCP and the kind of digital technology have dramatically increased the accessibility of making professional or near professional quality films. It's content that matters, not how you make it. Can a film student afford a Panavision film camera??
When I look at the rapid and abrupt way FCP 7 was pulled (and even demanded that retailers return unsold products - has that ever happened before?) I'm wondering if FCP 7 with Lion is going to be another epic fail. They certainly rushed X to market half-baked as far as functionality and compatibility are concerned. I don't think they would do that and take the PR hit for an immature product if they weren't trying to beat Lion.
I was all onboard for a new interface, even a new paradigm but X ain't it. It's more of a lobotomized, Stepford Wife version - pretty facade but robotic and brainless. I get the feeling that the designers of X value form over function when form should follow and enhance function. I used to develop software and I know that it's orders of magnitude simpler to create an elegant, pretty interface when when you throw out functionality wholesale.
AppleInsider warned this was going to consumer, maybe prosumer a year ago. A few months earlier, just before NAB 2010, Apple laid off 40 FCP employees. Hmmm.
What I really wanted from FCP was for it to utilize my graphics card, RAM, cores, etc. I didn't want to have to choose between speed and features. It's been 2 years since the last OS X upgrade and all signals were pointing to Apple bailing on the pro market. I was hopeful after this year's demo at NAB but I'm not waiting and hoping any longer for Apple to get it together. I don't want to move to Premiere but it has features AND speed and it has it now. I can even use Color and Soundtrack Pro with Premiere (but not with FCP X). And if Snow Leopard was any indication, Adobe will support Premiere on Lion better than Apple will support FCP (7 or X) on Lion.
Yeah I read wrong I dunno where I got my file size comment from.
But those are major films where Final Cut was used and was useful. Whatever, it's not used for finishing, hell I don't even know what that means, but obviously real professionals are using it for SOMETHING!
As others have mentioned, FCPX is the same price as Express was, and I think Apple is reflecting the un-finished nature of it in the price.
I have used FCP7 and it needed an Apple scrap-the-interface-and-start-over treatment.
At least I know where you are coming from. Yes FCP was used as a first step in the chain, but the problem is that FCPX prevents you from moving along that chain in critical ways.
I don't think FCP needed an interface (UI) overhaul as much as it needed and engine overhaul. Obviously FCPX's engine is much more efficient.
Dick Applebaum noted that the price tag is probably more about extensibility. Buy X for $300 and additional features for more money. It makes sense actually, it mirrors Avid's efforts and will probably garner a larger revenue for Apple in the long run.
http://9to5mac.com/2011/06/24/conan-...nal-cut-pro-x/
Out of all the complaints, the most ridiculous and unsupportable is that the new version is "not for professionals."
A few old geezers that are afraid of doing anything new or stopping their addiction to magnetic tape (of all things), are making a lot of sounds that it isn't for "professionals" because it removes their ancient workflows from the equation. The majority of professionals using the old Final Cut will move to the new one with no problems at all. The majority of professionals don't even use tape.
Final Cut Pro X is so totally *not* a "consumer" product in any way. Your just being ridiculous.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Do you run a video post facility like I do? No? Then just keep putting that egg on your face.
Maybe we can fight about Blu Ray?
Nothing to fight about. It is a bag of hurt and Apple is wise to reject it.
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FCPX is NOT ready for a professional workflow. Maybe in a year. you have to understand that this is problematic for those of us that often purchase machines for a single job. A new machine outfitted with FCPX will not fit into our workflow the same as FCP7. Therefore we have to rethink our workflow potential. Tha'ts the only problem. If i had to buy 5 offline edit suites tomorrow they probably would be AMC suites and not FCPX suites.
Yes that is abundantly clear. Hopefully Apple will address these issues soon.
Anyone with half a brain would use Avid when it was appropriate. FCP is more or less an offline solution with no hardware support. You are simply mistaken if you think FCP (in whatever form) on a $5k mac can hold it's ground against a full blown Avid suite. In my own self interest I'll only encourage you to stick to your guns
While I agree that FCP does not compete with a fully kitted out Avid system. While I agree that Avid has real advantages over FCP.
Those who heavily use and have invested in Avid. Use the expense of an Avid as cache for how serious one is about their work. They tend to look down on others who have not so heavily invested in such a system as not being so serious about their work. I find that is a mentality tends in more of the older editors.
He's right much of the time that is done on an Avid.
Not one feature is finished? That's a overreaching statement. I'm sure File > Save works just fine.
Thank you. I don't understand why folks can't display this basic common sense?
The alternative would have been for Apple to wait till they had multi-camera editing ready, and then release.
Why should they hold it for a feature that not everyone needs.
Its a complete rewrite. Why is anyone shocked there are missing features?
indeed. Many of the naysayers are looking at this as an update when it is more kind a brand new software, that just happens to do some of the same things as an existing one
Should we stop using film? No. But to an independent film student making a film, FCP and the kind of digital technology have dramatically increased the accessibility of making professional or near professional quality films. It's content that matters, not how you make it. Can a film student afford a Panavision film camera??
What film school are you going to that convinced you that content is all that matters? Not to make light of it, but a film student will never craft a movie like a seasoned professional. Or at least they won't craft it like they will after 15 years in the business and believe me full metal jaket would not be the same film had it been shot on a hand held HVX.
You're confusing the issue. Either technology matters and makes better films or technology doesn't matter and content reigns supreme. This brings to mind something...
When I was in school we were constantly told that Anyone who can afford to spend more money on a project will almost certainly have a better product at the end. They did not recommend cutting corners. Many students hated it, but it was a reality the teachers were preparing us for. I'd still day the same thing. I spent 30k on my first student short. It won a few awards, but it was still a piece of crap
The school was bought shortly after I left and sold to a corporation that understood one thing... more students, more money and technology makes it cheaper for students and more appealing to parents.
With complete disregard for the fact that Hollywood is all of five major studios and only employs a relative few thousand people, they quadrupled the student body. They did away with allot of the film science and tech and turned the entire program into a digital workflow.
The net result was appalling...
Within 3 years the stats for the graduating classes were abdominal. 80% of the students didn't make it past year one, 90% of the graduating students weren't working in the field at all. Of the 10% graduated and working fewer than 4% were earning more than $50k.
They flooded the market with potential employees that knew little about what they were really expected to do and the employment records showed it.
Eventually the state BOE sued the school because almost none of these students we able to pay back their loans. The school almost lost it's accreditation. The state lost face with the feds and Sallie Mae. (?) In the end the students still owed a hundred or so thousand dollars, but were only awarded a few thousand dollars for their trouble. The state buried the embarrassment in trusting the corporation and the lawyers in the class action suit were the only ones who accomplished anything buy making all of money.
Technology has indeed made it marketable and accessible to the masses, but I don't think the industry has benefited from it. If you are a student I would recommend you find a way of entering a very specialized niche, get really good at it and start marketing the fuck out of yourself because the competition is 10000 fold of what it was when the glamourous image of "working in hollywood" was formed. There simply are not enough jobs to comfortably support every joe who has an Apple computer and a copy of FCP.
So X is missing key features that make it useless to me and I won't bother to enter the long list. I've read a lot of snarky comments like "you all have your old FCP 7 just use it", etc. Well WILL we have it once Lion is released?
When I look at the rapid and abrupt way FCP 7 was pulled (and even demanded that retailers return unsold products - has that ever happened before?) I'm wondering if FCP 7 with Lion is going to be another epic fail. They certainly rushed X to market half-baked as far as functionality and compatibility are concerned. I don't think they would do that and take the PR hit for an immature product if they weren't trying to beat Lion.
I was all onboard for a new interface, even a new paradigm but X ain't it. It's more of a lobotomized, Stepford Wife version - pretty facade but robotic and brainless. I get the feeling that the designers of X value form over function when form should follow and enhance function. I used to develop software and I know that it's orders of magnitude simpler to create an elegant, pretty interface when when you throw out functionality wholesale.
AppleInsider warned this was going to consumer, maybe prosumer a year ago. A few months earlier, just before NAB 2010, Apple laid off 40 FCP employees. Hmmm.
What I really wanted from FCP was for it to utilize my graphics card, RAM, cores, etc. I didn't want to have to choose between speed and features. It's been 2 years since the last OS X upgrade and all signals were pointing to Apple bailing on the pro market. I was hopeful after this year's demo at NAB but I'm not waiting and hoping any longer for Apple to get it together. I don't want to move to Premiere but it has features AND speed and it has it now. I can even use Color and Soundtrack Pro with Premiere (but not with FCP X). And if Snow Leopard was any indication, Adobe will support Premiere on Lion better than Apple will support FCP (7 or X) on Lion.
From $500,000 to $1 million. You definitely can make a better movie.
From $1 million to $2million if you know what you are doing, you can make a better movie.
It gets to a point where you start to run into diminishing returns. A movie that could be made for $5 million and gets a $20 million dollar budget. You're not necessarily going to make a better movie and its possible to make a worse movie.
When I was in school we were constantly told that Anyone who can afford to spend more money on a project will almost certainly have a better product at the end. They did not recommend cutting corners. Many students hated it, but it was a reality the teachers were preparing us for. I'd still day the same thing. I spent 30k on my first student short. It won a few awards, but it was still a piece of crap
I've seen comments comparing the release of FCP X to Mac OS X -- but that isn't really a comparison. Mac OS X didn't have a "Competitor". But the release of Mac OS X did have a huge impact on some other competing products - QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign.
At the time, Quark was clearly the market leader. Adobe created InDesign, but its launch was initially a failure. Shortly thereafter, Apple released Mac OS X, and the next version of InDesign (v2, not CS2) was Mac OS X native. Quark didn't have a Mac OS X native version and wouldn't for a few years afterwards. Sure, InDesign 2 had some great features, but its real success and adoption was driven by all those companies that wanted Mac OS X native software on their machines (these companies were at the same time making the upgrade to Mac OS X and wanted to upgrade hardware and software in one fell swoop).
At that point, Quark was playing catch-up to InDesign and it was a losing battle. A combination of a shift in hardware and software helped Adobe upset the market leader.
Go a few years back and look at Adobe Premiere -- Adobe saw a shift in hardware and advancing tapeless workflows and realized that their video editing software wasn't going to cut it. So they completely rewrote Adobe Premiere from the ground up to fully support 64 bit, to embrace metadata and to support tapeless workflows. This was a huge amount of work for Adobe (I guess now that we see FCP X, we can understand just how big of a project something like this is). In fact, Adobe didn't even release Mac versions of Premiere at first -- it was too much to handle in one release. But when it did finally arrive, a completely rewritten and modern Adobe Premiere Pro alongside its sibling apps that were already industry-standards become compelling.
I've seen support for Adobe's video products gaining momentum over the last year or so (the CS5.5 release is impressive) but I also believe that many folks refused to look in that direction knowing that FCP X was imminent.
But now it's here. And it's lacking. And the question will be, how many folks will now take a serious look in Adobe's direction? Will they wait for Apple to continue to chip away and improve upon FCP over the next few versions? Or will they jump ship now to Adobe's offering?
Overall, this isn't about whether Apple will "fix" all of these issues. I'm sure they will. The question is, will their clientele hang around long enough to wait for it?
Of course, I could be reading this totally wrong. Maybe Apple saw a shift in the pro market and decided it was no longer worth their while to compete in that area? Maybe they "let" Adobe or others have that while they focused on what they might consider a more powerful market of consumers who want more than iMovie? That's certainly possible as well...
Apple is about to see a massive decline in pro edit suite market share. It has nothing to do with dinosaurs wedded to tape or old guys unwilling to learn a new paradigm. As has been described at length, this version of FCP lacks basic tools that are required for pro work flows, and there isn't much in these statements from FCP product managers that suggests that's going to get much better. Better, yes, but not good enough to qualify. It's just a stone fact; if you doubt it talk to someone who makes their living using FCP.
Now, it may be that Apple will sell a great many more copies of FCPX than they ever did FCP. There may be an explosion of prosumer and one man shops doing, well, kind of similar work, since FCP X is so adamant about herding you in certain directions, with automated process and limited presets. For a single person on a single machine, who intends to publish online, FCP X is a powerful tool. Wedding videographers and small market media guys are probably going to love it.
But for pro production houses a lot of the damage is already done. Apple has signaled that they don't understand pro work flows, that they don't care about this market, and that frankly they can't be trusted to provide a stable path going forward. I'm talking about people with 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in FCP processes who have simply been cut off at the knees, with no warning whatsoever. You don't have to be some kind of Apple basher to see how destructive to loyalty that is. Look around online; large post houses are already on record as planning on switching away, either to Avid or Adobe.
So Apple is going a different way with FCP X, one that has no place in professional edit suites. That's entirely their right. But it's kind of stunning, in that FCP had managed to carve out such a nice chunk of that market, and gave Apple a marquee software presence that helped legitimize the brand among pros.
Now obviously they don't need that kind of "legitimacy" any more, they're thriving in lots markets. Losing the pro post market at this point isn't going to hurt them a bit. But don't imagine that the controversy can be chalked up reactionary old timers. You're just wrong about that. Unless you imagine that the cool new "future" of video editing that Apple is bravely pointing us towards means that every project is done on the fly by individuals with laptops who send the results off to Vimeo or You Tube. That's cool as far as it goes, and it's cool that Apple can provide powerful tools to do those things.
But they're not going to start making feature films, television shows and major ad campaigns that way, and that's a market Apple has just ceded to the competition.
This product is designed exclusively for a solo freelancer who does not need to use any post house services or be compatible with any other software, doesn't need any plug ins, high end camera support or features such as multicam. Essentially the amateur web video editor is who this product is designed for. Which brings to mind, why did they remove FCP 7? Because Apple has this fixation with everything being part of the ecosystem and FCP did not fit. It doesn't work with iCloud or the App Store and probably has some issues with Lion for all we know. iMovie on the other hand is a perfect fit. So iMovie Pro it is. I'm glad I ordered another FCP Studio box set yesterday to hold me over.