Final Cut Pro X Released

[Ryan Nichols]

Mr. Progue has already had his post removed off of the blog.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

Well, I think Apple communicating this via the New York Times is an attempt to stop this from hitting stock price.

Whatever Apple is doing seems to be working mighty well.

AAPL stock before FCP X released, June 20th: 315.42
Huge jump to 325.30 by the end of June 21st. That's 10 points in one day! Call it a co-incidence or not, it was FCP X release day. Back past $300bn market cap and sitting pretty on 328.51 at this moment.

Say what you will, Apple is simply unparalleled as a business/marketing force.

 

[Brandon J.F.]

All the info for the article came from Apple according to a comment Pogue left at the ULR below.

And ALL of my information in this post came from Apple. As I've said, I am not a professional video editor. So I collected the gripes of many, many editors who had blogged or written to me about the deficiencies, and asked Apple to address each one. I have confirmed everything that was in my power to confirm (menu commands, third-party offerings, features in the program, etc.) Where I wasn't able to confirm, I wrote "Apple says" or "Apple intends."

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/

 

[Brian Merlen]

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112946/doomed-industries-bnet


According to yahoo post production is one of the top 10 dying industries! I guess Apple knows what they are doing... Money talks and apparently we are going the way of the printing press and horse shoe maker? Imovie and youtube has killed the NLE post production star? I hope not, but probably only top people will be working still according to these figures

 

[Robert Frank]

All the info for the article came from Apple according to a comment Pogue left at the ULR below.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/

I read the article yesterday and there were a few comments that said "thanks for clearing this up", and the rest ranged from "wrong, and here's why" to "are you kidding?, you obviously don't know what you're talking about".

 

[Subhadip Sen]

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112946/doomed-industries-bnet


According to yahoo post production is one of the top 10 dying industries! I guess Apple knows what they are doing... Money talks and apparently we are going the way of the printing press and horse shoe maker? Imovie and youtube has killed the NLE post production star? I hope not, but probably only top people will be working still according to these figures

The more I think about it, it's a brilliant move from Apple, and it might be their most financially successful NLE yet. The Youtube Generation is swelling exponentially, no doubt Apple are trying to capitalize on this huge, nascent market, which they think will completely dwarf the professional market in sheer volume. At $300, it's a killer app at a killer price. Think about it - if you are filming on a DSLR, you have one do-it-all (editing, grading, sound, finishing, effects) app and it renders and posts straight to Vimeo. Granted, Vegas Movie Studio has been doing this for years, but the Apple brand name sells. It's a pretty great product for it's target market at it's target price.

 

[Robert Frank]

It's a pretty great product for it's target market at it's target price.

There's the rub. The "pro" market thought it was for them, and the backlash is that it isn't.

This product is Final Cut Express X. But, IMO, in a marketing move, Apple decided to call it Pro. Here's the thing, the amount of publicity is amazing even if it's negative. All of a sudden it's on the radar of a new, very large market, fills the needs of that market very well, and that market looks at it as a Pro product. A friend who bought it emailed me and said it is perfect for the 27" iMac customer. And it will sell new computers to these new customers.

Perhaps this is Apple's way of breaking up with you, but not telling you because they know you'll be mad, and just not calling you anymore. But, who knows at this point? It could just be a f*#kup.

Again, it's all about Apple managing expectations. One way or another.

 

[Ben Rojas]

Apple's not only taking a thrashing online, this aired the other night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRzLP0FJ82I and funny enough for a niche or inside joke kinda thing, the video has 12K hits in 1 day! I really don't think Apple knew the backlash and heat they were going to get... AND IT'S WELL DESERVED!

 

[Maxi Claudio]

I think this is an Adobe conspiracy. No coincidence, Adobe release great new features in CS 5.5 Creative Suite, Just weeks before Apple releases a crippled competitor. Adobe you are a sly one. Next you'll tell us that you support R3D!!!!

 

[Brian Merlen]

Agreed, but none the less I am a bit concerned personally for my well being. My school that I finished at 7 months ago or so taught on FCP6 and I bought 7 and knew the interface super well. So although the move makes great sense for Apple, had I known the interface and market segment was changing I would of gone to a school that fixated on Avid or Adobes suite instead and based my education around that software. Luckily I own all three suites so I should be fine but I need to really work on learning the other suites as well as I know a suite I have used for 3+ years. Yes post is post and tools are tools, but three years on one application is a lot of invested time and memory allocation, and I had that bad boy dialed and could do circles around it (with ample render breaks)! As it stands now I need to refocus myself to getting that same level of comfort in another suite. I suppose I could learn FCPX as well but I am not sure if the pro segment will embrace it and if not then its not a priority for me. Yahoos link scares the heck outta me I gotta make a lot of payments on education loans and what not...

 

[Terry VerHaar]

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112946/doomed-industries-bnet


According to yahoo post production is one of the top 10 dying industries! I guess Apple knows what they are doing... Money talks and apparently we are going the way of the printing press and horse shoe maker? Imovie and youtube has killed the NLE post production star? I hope not, but probably only top people will be working still according to these figures

This is an interesting article but I can't help but think it isn't completely explaining the reality that exists. It seems to me that the demand for video will continue to explode as the internet continues to get more robust and more and more people get used to seeing information presented that way. And I refuse to believe the every company will be willing to put up with poor production values in the programs that represent them. Perhaps what is really happening is that the titles and roles will shift - less specialization/more generalization, at least at all but the top levels of feature film and television production.

While it is true that many aspects of production and post production are getting easier and cheaper, they still takes talent and knowledge. So, yes, I think every operson in the industry will have to be as efficeint and effective as possible to win business but, with all the business that should be out there, it hardly seems like the industry will die. :001_smile:

 

[Jared Caldwell]

Agreed, but none the less I am a bit concerned personally for my well being. My school that I finished at 7 months ago or so taught on FCP6 and I bought 7 and knew the interface super well. So although the move makes great sense for Apple, had I known the interface and market segment was changing I would of gone to a school that fixated on Avid or Adobes suite instead and based my education around that software. Luckily I own all three suites so I should be fine but I need to really work on learning the other suites as well as I know a suite I have used for 3+ years. Yes post is post and tools are tools, but three years on one application is a lot of invested time and memory allocation, and I had that bad boy dialed and could do circles around it (with ample render breaks)! As it stands now I need to refocus myself to getting that same level of comfort in another suite. I suppose I could learn FCPX as well but I am not sure if the pro segment will embrace it and if not then its not a priority for me. Yahoos link scares the heck outta me I gotta make a lot of payments on education loans and what not...

Editing is a skill, not something you install on your computer. FCP is an excellent tool to practice with as you hone your editing skills. You should be able to pick up any other tool pretty easily if you know how to actually edit, so I wouldn't sweat it.

 

[IAN SUN]

I haven't tried it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't work. RED probably needs to update their FCP package for X. If that's the case, or if it's simply not working for a different reason obviously David was wrong and didn't even try it.

It works. The H proxies on my c2d 2.53 MBP play grindingly slow especially as background transcoding is going on, but it works. I'd like to see what it's like on beefier HW but I'm not ready to try an install on on my MP. I guess I could throw a new boot drive in though.

 

[alexx_hg]

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112946/doomed-industries-bnet


According to yahoo post production is one of the top 10 dying industries! I guess Apple knows what they are doing... Money talks and apparently we are going the way of the printing press and horse shoe maker? Imovie and youtube has killed the NLE post production star? I hope not, but probably only top people will be working still according to these figures

hmm, what have we learned in the last 3 Years? Never ever trust any finacial analyst, they always have problems with semantics.
just replace "decline" with "alter" or "diversify" and we are still good to go...

bg
alex

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112946/doomed-industries-bnet


According to yahoo post production is one of the top 10 dying industries! I guess Apple knows what they are doing... Money talks and apparently we are going the way of the printing press and horse shoe maker? Imovie and youtube has killed the NLE post production star? I hope not, but probably only top people will be working still according to these figures

Dateline 1990: The Graphics Industry is dying!

Dateline 2011: The Graphics Industry is still alive!

We are undergoing the same professional changes that graphics illustrators and layout artists dealt with in the late 80's and early 90's, and we should draw our lessons from them.

First off ... all the top tier industry jobs are still there in the same places. If you worked for Chiat|Day in 1988, you would find a counterpart doing essentially the same job at TBWA|Chiat|Day today.

What has changed is that now "Joe's Laundry" can afford to buy the kind of services Chiat|Day used to provide to well heeled clients like Apple. Budgets are down ... and interestingly more of the budgets go to the artists. That's for three reasons, first off on smaller budgets labor becomes a larger segment. Second, more artists rise to higher ranks in their agencies, or establish agencies of their own. Three, more of the "distasteful" ad executive types have moved to other industries because of the lack of power/money in advertising. Sure the top people at TBWA|Chiat|Day are still powerful, but as you can see by the name alone ... there are far fewer of those top people despite the fact that the agency has roughly the same amount of work.

Well, that's happening in video/film as well.

So, the jobs are still there. And yes, if you want success you have to be flexible ... the age is truly already here where the "slashes" (like me) are increasingly the norm. That means a lot more learning has to happen for us to be successful about a lot more facets of film making. Increasingly however tools like FCP X's "Match Shot" coloring tool will decrease our need for technical knowledge/skill ... but it won't lower our need to understand the art of color correction.

So. I'm not worried. Where there is change there is opportunity.

 

[Cody Cuellar]

This thing may be a toy now, but its a bloody powerful toy.
Playing around with some color match and skimming through different looks one to another all without stoping playback, is damn good fun.

Those guys at Apple are sure smart. Their 300 dollar toy has maxed out my Core 2 MBP.
Looks like Ill have to drop the coin on a new Sandy-i-whatever just now.
Brilliant.

This all sounds great, but unfortunately you don't know exactly what you're seeing without a properly calibrated output to a reference monitor... also, I'm not sure if maxing out a laptop is the issue, as just about every app on my 2-core MBP is capable of maxing it out. The question is can it properly utilize all the system resources on a 12-core tower? From what I've read, FCPX is capable of this which actually is impressive! It's just unfortunate it's currently missing so many important features.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Editing is a skill, not something you install on your computer. FCP is an excellent tool to practice with as you hone your editing skills. You should be able to pick up any other tool pretty easily if you know how to actually edit, so I wouldn't sweat it.

Hmmm ... I'd say that's less true than ever with FCP X.

If I know FCP 6/7, I can start using Premiere in minutes, Avid in a few hours and Smoke in at most a day or two.

If I know FCP X, then I have a huge learning curve to climb to be able to operate any of those applications.

Now, the essential truth you are after is that if I can edit creatively in FCP X, then I'll have a good artistic foundation for any editing application. An FCP X editor may be technically lost on Smoke, but creatively they'll be as strong as ever. That part is true.

Part of the big gamble I think Apple is making though is that at $299 any post house worth the sign on the door will happily buy a copy of FCP X to accommodate the skills of their new editors. I mean, if I was hiring an editor whose work I liked, but they only used Avid I'd spend the $2500 or so for an MC5 license ... so what has changed on that front?

(Answer: FCP X doesn't support project interchange. Counterpoint: Apple will fix that or some 3rd party will ... and again any post house will learn to work with the solution in order to capture the talent.)

So ... go learn to be talented. It simply won't be enough to solve technology problems as an editor - Apple clearly sees that as their job, and they have proven very good at it.

 

[IAN SUN]

This all sounds great, but unfortunately you don't know exactly what you're seeing without a properly calibrated output to a reference monitor... also, I'm not sure if maxing out a laptop is the issue, as just about every app on my 2-core MBP is capable of maxing it out. The question is can it properly utilize all the system resources on a 12-core tower? From what I've read, FCPX is capable of this which actually is impressive! It's just unfortunate it's currently missing so many important features.

Like I said, toy. What need of a reference monitor if you are delivering to Facebook?
As more work moves in that direction, a MBP an FCPX may be all the the gear some "Pros" need.
Maybe it will turn out to be more than a toy eh? Apple's been wrong before, but I wouldn't bet against them.

 

[Jared Caldwell]

Hmmm ... I'd say that's less true than ever with FCP X.

If I know FCP 6/7, I can start using Premiere in minutes, Avid in a few hours and Smoke in at most a day or two.

If I know FCP X, then I have a huge learning curve to climb to be able to operate any of those applications.

Now, the essential truth you are after is that if I can edit creatively in FCP X, then I'll have a good artistic foundation for any editing application. An FCP X editor may be technically lost on Smoke, but creatively they'll be as strong as ever. That part is true.

Part of the big gamble I think Apple is making though is that at $299 any post house worth the sign on the door will happily buy a copy of FCP X to accommodate the skills of their new editors. I mean, if I was hiring an editor whose work I liked, but they only used Avid I'd spend the $2500 or so for an MC5 license ... so what has changed on that front?

(Answer: FCP X doesn't support project interchange. Counterpoint: Apple will fix that or some 3rd party will ... and again any post house will learn to work with the solution in order to capture the talent.)

So ... go learn to be talented. It simply won't be enough to solve technology problems as an editor - Apple clearly sees that as their job, and they have proven very good at it.

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, I wasn't specifically making the case for FCPX (though it applies here as well). Brian had just mentioned he had spent years on FCP, and now that FCP is not being produced anymore, he was concerned that learning FCP initially was a dead end. I'm saying that the tool doesn't make the editor. In the case of FCPX, the tool is limiting the editor (until it supports standard import/export features), but the act of learning a tool is trivial compared to learning a skill. So when you leave FCP (whether that be for Avid MC, PPro, or FCPX), I wouldn't be so concerned with the prospect of learning a new tool. Learning a new tool will take hours-days. Skills take years-decades to learn. :}

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, I wasn't specifically making the case for FCPX (though it applies here as well). Brian had just mentioned he had spent years on FCP, and now that FCP is not being produced anymore, he was concerned that learning FCP initially was a dead end. I'm saying that the tool doesn't make the editor. In the case of FCPX, the tool is limiting the editor (until it supports standard import/export features), but the act of learning a tool is trivial compared to learning a skill. So when you leave FCP (whether that be for Avid MC, PPro, or FCPX), I wouldn't be so concerned with the prospect of learning a new tool. Learning a new tool will take hours-days. Skills take years-decades to learn. :}

Hmmm ... I half disagree.

The point I am making is that FCP X hides a lot more of the chores that aren't creative from new editors ... you know things like keeping material in sync and timeline management, bin organization etc etc.

I find that for a lot of new editors all that stuff is hard to learn. It's so logical ... very "left brain." The act of editing is very "right brain."

FCP X may foster a generation of editors who are fine at the right brain creativity of editorial, but have no experience, training or aptitude for the left brain functions editors must deal with in editorial on every system we normally work with.

Unless the other applications work hard to obscure the "behind the scenes" left brain stuff, it may be very hard to find good candidates for an Avid editorial facility by looking at FCP X users.

FCP 6&7 however require a lot of the traditional left brain skills, so a good FCP 6 editor can work easily in a Smoke or Avid environment with minimal training. That's the half agreement part.