FCPX is DA-BOMB...

[Justin Kirchhoff]

I'm not buying this app. Won't even think about it. After reading reviews upon reviews, Apple has taken 20 steps backwards for professional editors.

I don't need to get into the fine details, I'm sure most of you have read the hate mail.

Adobe has just taken a huge leap in terms of RED support. This is great for me and my company. We do most of our CC and grading in After Effects anyways. I'd be more than happy to spend 5 times the money on Premiere Pro than on a measly $299 editing application.

I feel bad for Apple. They're losing their professional customers and have really found that consumerism is where the money is at it seems...

 

[Solomon Nero]

Yeah, I dont feel bad for them. I think they are getting what they wanted to get...Prosumer market. fcpx is a huge step up from imovie, why do you think the price dropped? There is alot more numbers of prosumers to professionals, they plan to sell in quantities. Maybe they will refine it for pros again, I am not holding my breath.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

Thread title is a little misleading... haha.

 

[Imran Farouk]

[sorry it's bit long...tried best to paragraph]

after seeing the Planet 5D video (yeah...a DSLR blog video) about FCPX I can kind of grasp where Apple is headed and its not the Prosumer...
Again I made assumptions like most, that Apple really doesn't give a damn, that they omitted tons of stuff and so on,

They did...with a reason, its not ready yet, give the prosumers something to play with, in 18months, this will more then likely be eating Adobe for breakfast,lunch AND Dinner...
Given motion will never come close to AE and I think they know that...Adobe has always been amazing on that front and especially Premier is awesome because it all works together...

HOWEVER, having said that, they are literally seeming to be re-writing EVERYTHING from ground up...
Supposedly according to the 5D thing, they went to BBC and asked them (its around the 1hr mark I think but thats 2nd hand info and thats obviously a major problem is not knowing what's going on with FCPX from the company that's made it...) what they wanted out of FCP and so on, supposedly they planned on iMovie for bits and bobs because it was quicker (you see where I'm a bit skeptical on the wording the guy uses)

But take into account that Steve does own Pixar or a majority of it to say the least...and they supposedly use Avid, I don't know about most but if I owned a company that uses post production tools, I think I'd like them to use the tools that I've made more then anything...
Be the buyer of your own product basically...

Colour looks like its been brought into FCPX and that they would look to push those that want a dedicated full on Colour correcting suite to go and look at companies that have a product specialized for that, Resolve anyone? So really FCPX will be aimed at editors and I'd probably agree with the guys in the video now, since its been re-written what Apple should've said out loud, we are starting from scratch and everything won't be ready on Day One.

Take FCPX as FCP 1 or 2 and the blog post of a supposed beta tester, it seems we are looking at a faster turn around of updates then it was for FCS, especially since DVD SP and the like are no longer baggage on this train...

But obviously we won't know if anything that's been said about the rewriting and so on is true till probably 6 months to 12...I suspect the first major update will happen after Lion drops, praying before Christmas since I'd personally like XML out

Again, I'm no pro, I'm certainly no insider so what do I know...just talking out loud...

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Thread title is a little misleading... haha.

It has double meaning....it bombed.

 

[Curran Giddens]

Thread title is a little misleading... haha.

Yeah. Should be FCPX is a BOMB.... Like it bombed at the box office...

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Thread title is a little misleading... haha.

It's an ambiguous title but I sure was hoping for a positive review! It just seems like I haven't seen another perspective.

 

[Mel Matsuoka]

I feel bad for Apple. They're losing their professional customers and have really found that consumerism is where the money is at it seems...

Why would you feel bad for Apple if FCP-X is (if your assumption is correct) "where the money is" for them?

While Apple's "professional customers" may be philosophically important to them, I very much doubt that we matter all that much to their bottom line. If FCP-X fits into Apple's greater strategy of making more money and gaining a larger marketshare, then that's exactly what they are going to do.

This is not a judgemental statement, it's just stating facts. As a publicly traded company, Apple has a legal obligation to make money for its shareholders. They don't owe anything else to anyone else. Charging them with "consumerism" is just silly, because consumerism is exactly why corporations like Apple exist. You might as well accuse a prostitute of pandering to "prurient interests" just to turn a quick buck. Like, duh.

So while you're probably correct that FCP-X is good news (in the short term) for Adobe and Avid, Apple won't shed a single tear if 90% of their existing FCP userbase defects to Adobe or Avid. And they really shouldn't, to be perfectly honest.

The reality is––like most of the people who bitterly complain about 1.0 product releases––FCP-X will do just fine, and 1 or 2 years from now when it becomes a much more mature product, you'll probably be happily using it.

I find it absolutely hilarious that the people on forums like REDuser who are now shitting on FCP-X 1.0 are probably the very same people who vehemently flamed anti-RED haters between 2006-08, back when the RED workflow was just as flakey and immature as FCP-X undoubtedly is today.

And I also don't understand the point of grandstanding on the internet about how you're not going to buy FCP-X and how Apple has turned its back on "professionals", blah blah blah. If you're a real "professional", you use what works for your current needs, while constantly evaluating and implementing new tools and workflows as they become relevant to you.

FCP-X is a new product, and Apple has to start somewhere. Shipping FCP-X in its current state was probably the only thing they could do in order to avoid any hemorrhaging of the pro market to Adobe and Avid. If they had continued to polish off every last "professional" aspect of FCP-X before releasing it, it would have NEVER shipped in time to prevent such defections to competing products. And because Apple does not discuss products that are still in development, the professional post industry would have assumed that Apple's continuing silence meant that they "don't care" about professionals, and are just interested in making phones and tablet computers.

In other words, Apple was probably in a position of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

If you can accept this logical assumption, the very fact that FCP-X was even released in the state that it is proves that Apple *does* care about the professional market. It's just that their definition of "professional" is much more liberal than what people on forums like REDuser might consider "professional"

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Why would you feel bad for Apple if FCP-X is (if your assumption is correct) "where the money is" for them?

While Apple's "professional customers" may be philosophically important to them, I very much doubt that we matter all that much to their bottom line. If FCP-X fits into Apple's greater strategy of making more money and gaining a larger marketshare, then that's exactly what they are going to do.

This is not a judgemental statement, it's just stating facts. As a publicly traded company, Apple has a legal obligation to make money for its shareholders. They don't owe anything else to anyone else. Charging them with "consumerism" is just silly, because consumerism is exactly why corporations like Apple exist. You might as well accuse a prostitute of pandering to "prurient interests" just to turn a quick buck. Like, duh.

So while you're probably correct that FCP-X is good news (in the short term) for Adobe and Avid, Apple won't shed a single tear if 90% of their existing FCP userbase defects to Adobe or Avid. And they really shouldn't, to be perfectly honest.

The reality is––like most of the people who bitterly complain about 1.0 product releases––FCP-X will do just fine, and 1 or 2 years from now when it becomes a much more mature product, you'll probably be happily using it.

I find it absolutely hilarious that the people on forums like REDuser who are now shitting on FCP-X 1.0 are probably the very same people who vehemently flamed anti-RED haters between 2006-08, back when the RED workflow was just as flakey and immature as FCP-X undoubtedly is today.

And I also don't understand the point of grandstanding on the internet about how you're not going to buy FCP-X and how Apple has turned its back on "professionals", blah blah blah. If you're a real "professional", you use what works for your current needs, while constantly evaluating and implementing new tools and workflows as they become relevant to you.

FCP-X is a new product, and Apple has to start somewhere. Shipping FCP-X in its current state was probably the only thing they could do in order to avoid any hemorrhaging of the pro market to Adobe and Avid. If they had continued to polish off every last "professional" aspect of FCP-X before releasing it, it would have NEVER shipped in time to prevent such defections to competing products. And because Apple does not discuss products that are still in development, the professional post industry would have assumed that Apple's continuing silence meant that they "don't care" about professionals, and are just interested in making phones and tablet computers.

In other words, Apple was probably in a position of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't.

If you can accept this logical assumption, the very fact that FCP-X was even released in the state that it is proves that Apple *does* care about the professional market. It's just that their definition of "professional" is much more liberal than what people on forums like REDuser might consider "professional"

Mel, I believe you're misunderstanding what I have said. I'll brush off your "professional" comment, that was downright rude.

I used to work for Apple. It's a great company to work for, they have a lot of passion in every aspect of business that they do. I don't doubt that FCPX will mature over the next few years, but Apple was taking a huge gamble not including the most simplistic features, i.e., supporting old FCP project files and not being able to import or export XML or EDL file structures, or even sharing media across network drives. They will most likely add these features in the near future, but unlike all of their "consumerist" products (iPhone, iPad, iPod), they didn't include what people would want the most...compatibility. You've seen it in the iPhone and all the other mobile products, it just works.

To protect myself on a personal level, I was not one of those people that flamed anti-RED haters. In fact, I was lucky to be one of the historic first 1000 customers to put a deposit down on a R1, not knowing what to expect or even if the camera was to ship. I was happy to be on the RED bandwagon, but was very nervous for where my money was going to. Luckily the RED team has always been on the same level of the customers from Day 1. I was there when the REDCODE quicktime component first came out. I was there when Crimson was the best way to roundtrip an XML and transcode files in and out of FCP. I was there when REDCINE first became available to the public, and many of the features we see in the app now we couldn't even imagine would exist at that moment in time.

My meaning of "consumerism" is that Apple has focused 95% of their energy on products that will change peoples lives and that they can hold in their hand. For me to call out Apple on "consumerism" may be obvious, but Steve Jobs even stated over a year ago when announcing the first iPad, that Apple is a mobile device manufacturer, and to quote him "This is what we do." Do you consider an iPhone a professional phone? I sure don't. It's a phone with a touch screen and a camera. iPhone Pro may have a better camera, faster quad core A5 processors...the whole sha-bang.

I was fortunate enough to live the Apple life on the inside, and seeing the trends not only in the retail stores but also through statistical figures accumulated over the past 4 years, their market is for consumers, not prosumers.

FCPX, like you've mentioned, is a new product...but based off something that has already existed for the past 10 years. Apple does immense amounts of research before they develop any product, and it just seems that for a release of a new product you would think they would have had the most basic features that I've stated above. It only makes sense. They do it in all of their other products, they should have done it here. Just because they completely rewrote the program shouldn't mean they throw out 10 years worth of experience.

Personal discretions aside, I understand your thoughts on the growth of FCPX over the next year, but I feel you're standing short on accepting others narrative stances. I stated that Adobe was my next logical step. It has made leaps and bounds the last few years in terms of RED support, and now with my EPIC-X waiting to be shipped, I can only gawk at how awesome these products will work together. Apple just doesn't have that edge for me at the moment, and therefore has bombed out on this release.