Apple Needs to Step up to the Plate

[Steve Sherrick]

I love Apple. I love the design, I love the cool factor (ipods, iphones, user friendly OS, cool laptops, etc.). I've bought into it for years, and overall I have enjoyed the progress.

But I can't understand the holes that still exist in the quicktime infrastructure. Gamma issues, timecode issues, etc. I know this is not a new subject, and many have vented in the past, but I really have been frustrated lately by the inconsistencies I see when working between apps that seem to be linked to quicktime problems. I have been told by software developers writing video apps that quicktime tends to be problematic and it has been going on for years.

Has Apple moved too far into consumer level products? Why does quicktime still suffer from bugs that appear to be a decade old? Why can't Quicktime Pro be entirely separate from the consumer level app? Of course because of Final Cut Pro's reliance on Quicktime, some of these issues carry over to that app and weaken it in my opinion. I'm starting to wonder about the Apple revolution when it comes to professional level products. Is a program like Shake better off with another company? Maybe it's being turned into another product, but is it better to avoid the Apple user friendly interface if the trade is less stability?

I know this is falling on deaf ears and that it will need to be presented to Apple directly, but I'm venting.

Apple, love ya, but let's make a decision. Professional or Prosumer?

 

[Bruce Allen]

Is a program like Shake better off with another company? Maybe it's being turned into another product, but is it better to avoid the Apple user friendly interface if the trade is less stability?

One of the co-founders behind Shake (Ron Brinkmann, author of the seminal "The Art and Science of Digital Compositing") seemed to think so. He quit and joined The Foundry and the team working on Nuke.

Apple is totally a high-end professional tool. Only problem is that they don't really care about their high-end professional customers.

For every one of us who is irritated by their lack of top-class features, there are a hundred customers who love the Apple brand and haven't noticed.

Personally I am sick of the Apple user friendly interface because it is usually uncustomizable, too bright (distracts from my focus on the image), too unresponsive, and involves too much fiddling with icons to achieve a given action - "carpal tunnel inducing" is IMHO not friendly.

Their system is perfect for impressing people in the Apple store, impressing producers, directors, first time users, potential buyers of their software, etc. But not as good as Discreet, Avid, Quantel, Assimilate, Adobe, etc when you use it on a daily basis, IMHO.

On the other hand, if it weren't for Apple, the boutiques would still be charging horribly high prices. So I thank Apple from the bottom of my heart. Wish I could buy their computers without feeling like I've stuck a sticker on my forehead that says "I value glitz and a friendly face over deep usability and performance and I'm too lazy to read manuals" though!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Paul Hazlett]

I think you hit the nail on the head. Apple was treading water before they got ahold of FCP and when that took off, they got lots of new business, but
small potatos compared to the iphone and the ipod as far as sales go.

As Avid sales went FCP so shall they pass to Adobe, if Adobe catches on and Apple continues to ignore us.

 

[chocblu]

Ok I agree with you about quicktime. It is out of date, and there are issues with gamma etc.

However, it is pretty old. I dont know how long its been since a really big revamp, but it has been a while. And thats the problem. However my hope is that when snow leopard comes out with quicktime X or whatever it is, they will fix all of that.

And what is the alternative. Windows/Premier? or windows/Avid. The main reason behind me moving to OS X was simple. Unix....the toolset that the underlying unix layer provides is fantastic, and blows Windows out of the water. Mind you im also a computer geek, sooo i'm a bit of an anomally in the editing world i guess.

So my 2c is to wait for quicktime X. It takes a while for a big ship like apple to turn...

PS, I suppose there is always Premier or avid on OS X, but i dont really like Premier that much, and havent really been able to have a go at avid. Do they both have thier own media engine?

 

[laguun]

I have to agree... its sad seeing that apple doesnt care about enhancing their "pro" apps for "pros".

FCP and color are suffering from many *quality* issues
- Several gamma issues in Quicktime (well know since many years).
- Only 8bit RGB color resolution in FCP (Adobe CS has full RGB and YUV color precision)
- No 4K resolution in FCP (*sigh*, Adobe has)

and also its so sad to see that they simply drop their excellent products as shake, which was clearly their most professional tool for moving images.

I surely hope they will be aswering Adobe recent mayor advances.

And yes, discreet/quantel/avid still have many ergonomic features Adobe and Apple are missing.

 

[Sam Roberts]

Steve.....I'm just about to buy my first Apple Mac Pro after years of editing on PC's. A couple of questions:

What are the Quicktime time code issues you spoke about?

Am I able to see camera timecode while scrubbing/playing back the RED proxies using Quicktime?

 

[Craig Schober]

So my 2c is to wait for quicktime X. It takes a while for a big ship like apple to turn...

don't wait on quicktime x. from what i hear, quicktime x is focused on mobile platforms like iphone, ipod, tablets etc. but i'm sure there there will be some improvements and fixes included in snow leopard.

 

[RivaiC]

Laguun is right. I just hope to see Premiere catch up and if possible beyond FCP. It's just frustrating to complain things that they don't listen at all as seem like they're deaf. Jim did say that Apple never listened to him which prove how poor they are, apple has committed to support RED ! and what did they do ? Barely anything. red node support & upcoming color integration. And how long does it take them to implement this ? It just ridiculous

 

[albert rudnicki]

Apple is just too cute to be perfect)

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I think the foundation is there. Apple was always known for a fairly stable environment. I just wonder why some of these issues have gone unresolved. It reminds me of when I used to talk to Digidesign in the early days of Pro Tools when it only had one level of undo. That used to frustrate me to no end, and their answer was "In order to change this we need to go back in and rewrite a lot of code". Eventually they did and now they are up to I believe 32 layers of undo. But it took some serious prodding to get them to do it. I'm sure Apple has gone in and revamped Quicktime for the new version in Snow leopard, but the question is, what has been the primary goal with this new version? To offer more professional support or to make for a better viewing experience on iphones, iTunes, etc?

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, because as I said earlier, I really do like their products, but I would like to see some clear focus come back to their Professional Divisions. I would like to see a new version of Quicktime Professional that is coded practically from scratch with the goal of providing an extremely stable, flexible environment for media professionals who demand nothing but the best. If this comes at a price, so be it. But if you are going to charge, make sure you deliver the goods. I think Apple could take everything that we love about its product design and combine that with rock solid programming and professional attitude to solidify its position in both the consumer and professional markets. As Bruce said earlier, don't treat your professional products as though they will be used by people who need their hands held. Design and code them with skilled professionals in mind. Don't make compromises just to make the program easier to use. I'd rather have to take a three week course on how to use a product and know that once I learn it, it will do everything I need it to and do it really well, then to have compromises in there just so I can learn it faster.

Anyway, I'm way off on a tangent with this whole thing. I'm certainly not mad at Apple, just felt the need today to get this stuff off my chest. They have done some great things, most importantly to bring professional software in at a very competitive price which has made others follow suit. I guess I just want to see them take it further. Maybe that's happening behind the scenes.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Steve.....I'm just about to buy my first Apple Mac Pro after years of editing on PC's. A couple of questions:

What are the Quicktime time code issues you spoke about?

Am I able to see camera timecode while scrubbing/playing back the RED proxies using Quicktime?

Well, for example until Quicktime 7.1.6 you were not able to see timecode displayed while in Quicktime Player. It was just a running counter.

Don't let me scare you away from Macs. There are issues on both platforms. I'm just pointing out some frustrations I have with Quicktime.

 

[RivaiC]

No one is perfect. But when same problems went unresolved no matter how tough and loud you tell them for YEARS, it can become irritating. I never upgrade my apple software unless it's necessary. Once it works just stick with it, no funny upgrade.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Steve, if it helps, I think Apple *is* in the process of rewriting FCP right now.

IMHO, FCP is currently only a 32bit app and is built on Carbon.

Last June Apple that they were canceling the 64-bit version of Carbon. The only way to get 64-bit became to rewrite using Cocoa. BTW, they didn't bother to warn Adobe in advance - as a result, the next version of Photoshop (and probably Premiere and After Effects) will be 32-bit for Mac and 64-bit for Windows (http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/04/photoshop_lr_64.html).

But getting back to the main point, Apple has probably been furiously porting Final Cut to Cocoa since the release of FCS 2 (I'm betting they gave their own developers more advance warning than they gave Adobe). That's why they didn't release anything at NAB last year.

Hopefully if they're doing a code re-write, they'll have the time to clean some of the mess up?

Personally, I predict this:
GOOD: next version of FCS will work a lot better with RED files. Probably you'll get some filters (written secretly by Graeme?) which allow you to dip into the RAW data and regrade on the timeline, etc.

BAD: Quicktime will still suck. There will still be lots of bugs in Final Cut. Apple might clean up some old bugs with the port, but they'll be sure to add some new ones.

UGLY: Mainstream reviewers, fanboys and bloggers will be all "ahh cool, wow Apple rewrote to use OpenCL, GPU accelerated blah blah blah it actually uses all 8 processors now, they rock". They will totally forget to mention that Avid quietly rewrote Media Composer very nicely to use GPU, mulitple cores, etc too (it just happened for v3, nobody seems to care).

CONSOLATION: Because of much faster CPUs, GPUs, use of flash drives, etc. Even if Apple screws up majorly on the software side, FCS 3 will still seem wicked fast. I might even buy a Mac. It could be like the old SGI days but cheaper... and for the record I remember that we *never* ran the latest version of IRIX because Silicon Graphics seemed to always be mucking up stuff in much the same way as Apple did. Yet it was still a great system because of GPU-aware software, etc.

Sorry Steve for writing such a long post on your very cordial and nice thread.

I just finished a draft of my feature script and am kinda dreading editing it, so I ended up writing way too much here as a distraction - apologies!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[chocblu]

I Agree with what Bruce has said, Although i question the need to accelerate an editor with a GPU. but thats a different discussion.

I also think that people underestimate the time it takes to take on board a lot of these issues and actually do something about it.

I work for a very large Software company. I wont say who it is, because it doesnt matter, Its one of the top ten. I would put apple in that top ten, and i doubt their practices are much different. At the moment we are trying to find a name for our product and few other things like the name. Its been going on about 3 months now. Thats just the process getting up to changeing something like a name, that really doesnt have any impact on the running of the program at all.

I understand that these things have been in quicktime for a long time, But quicktime is a pretty integral part of OS X, and to make drastic changes to something like that takes a lot of work. Especially if you look at the market your going into and 5% of it actually cares about that kind of stuff..

Sucks for us but its business...

 

[chocblu]

I also think that for the people that program quicktime, it probably does matter to them. But somebody has put those issues on the back burner, for business reasons i would guess.

FCP and Colour however probably need somework

 

[M.Halsell]

Why is such a bash on Apple/Quicktime? Why not have a bigger player (i.e. Microsoft) step up? Why not a complete affordable solution from the more experienced players (ie. Quantel, Discreet, Avid)? Or at least an alternative delivery framework other than Quicktime? Avid invented the NLE industry, one would think that since 1987, they could have come up with some proprietary delivery delivery standard.

I do agree with the group that Quicktime (circa 1989) could use a dusting off and polishing. But in the scheme of of life, it is far from a usable solution. It is still a solution that one could easily 'finish' on. A tricked out Mac with suite of software is still not the cost a single seat of the other guys' solution. Given the hardware, software and Quicktime delivery system (bar it's nuances) still represents the most complete and affordable turnkey solution on the planet.

Adobe has been a software player for quite awhile. I personally don't feel that Adobe will have a 'Super Robust Video' solution. The acquistion of Macromedia pretty indicates the positioning that they are going (all things web seem to be the current focus). Take a look at their 'Master Collection Bundle'-It pretty much web centric. When is the last time that you heard about a key video technology acquisition from Adobe? Premiere is great 'modest' product, but not the leader of the pack.

Apple has covered alot of ground in a short time with the FinalCut bundle. I think there is still some magic left at 'Cupertino' at least as far as Quicktime is concerned.

 

[RivaiC]

I Agree with what Bruce has said, Although i question the need to accelerate an editor with a GPU. but thats a different discussion.

I also think that people underestimate the time it takes to take on board a lot of these issues and actually do something about it.

I work for a very large Software company. I wont say who it is, because it doesnt matter, Its one of the top ten. I would put apple in that top ten, and i doubt their practices are much different. At the moment we are trying to find a name for our product and few other things like the name. Its been going on about 3 months now. Thats just the process getting up to changeing something like a name, that really doesnt have any impact on the running of the program at all.

I understand that these things have been in quicktime for a long time, But quicktime is a pretty integral part of OS X, and to make drastic changes to something like that takes a lot of work. Especially if you look at the market your going into and 5% of it actually cares about that kind of stuff..

Sucks for us but its business...

5% ? I don't know about "BIG" companies. Eg. Gamma shift issue in QT exists for at least 5 years or more. I don't know if that you will call as under estimate the time to fix it.

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Why is such a bash on Apple/Quicktime? Why not have a bigger player (i.e. Microsoft) step up? Why not a complete affordable solution from the more experienced players (ie. Quantel, Discreet, Avid)? Or at least an alternative delivery framework other than Quicktime? Avid invented the NLE industry, one would think that since 1987, they could have come up with some proprietary delivery delivery standard.

They have - MXF. MXF is a subset of AAF, which was ratified awhile ago as a SMPTE standard and is pretty much the defacto standard for broadcast distribution.

Given the hardware, software and Quicktime delivery system (bar it's nuances) still represents the most complete and affordable turnkey solution on the planet.

What turnkey solution? FCP? Quicktime? And turnkey for what? An NLE? Broadcast deliverables? Feature deliverables?

Lucas

 

[M.Halsell]

They have - MXF. MXF is a subset of AAF, which was ratified awhile ago as a SMPTE standard and is pretty much the defacto standard for broadcast distribution.



What turnkey solution? FCP? Quicktime? And turnkey for what? An NLE? Broadcast deliverables? Feature deliverables?

Lucas

'While ago' as in 2003 the MXF standard was making it's way thru the white paper stage. Yes turnkey is defined as 'Supplied, installed, or purchased in a condition ready for immediate use, occupation, or operation'.

That means I can actually create something with the software without dongling God aweful amounts of hardware on the end.

 

[Mike Harrington]

Adobe has been a software player for quite awhile. I personally don't feel that Adobe will have a 'Super Robust Video' solution. The acquistion of Macromedia pretty indicates the positioning that they are going (all things web seem to be the current focus). Take a look at their 'Master Collection Bundle'-It pretty much web centric. When is the last time that you heard about a key video technology acquisition from Adobe? Premiere is great 'modest' product, but not the leader of the pack.

look at production premium, which I use
PPro,AE, Adobe Onlocation(Dv rack), adobe ultra(keyer),photoshop and flash.
not really web centric there?

and if final cut is the best turn key solution....why can't it do 4k....and why does Red's own workflow guru's recommend not finishing on it(because of gamma issues)

Right now the only real 4k workflow in an editor is.....Premiere Pro...(iguess they figure we need 4k web videos)
for Final cut you need Scratch in the mix.

So like it or not Final cut is like the cool sexy car whose 5th gear dosn't work.