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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Final Cut Pro X...?

AnthonyFlores said:
But did they officially state whether the $299 version would include Motion, Color, etc? Because there's speculation it would not -- and those would be extra apps that need to be purchased as well via the Mac App store. If this is the case, the real price of the FCP Studio package would actually be pretty close to past editions.

Like everyone here, I'm praying for better Red/4k compatibility and support. With the majority of Redusers being Mac users ... and give the imminent popularity of Epic and Scarlet -- I think they would be soooooooooooo dumb not to have better prioritized Red in this edition.

We'll find out soon enough, I guess ...

Anthony
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Anthony - there was absolutely no mention at all of any applications beyond FCP at the presentation. Personally, I think that means nothing except that they didn't want to reveal how all this would come together. To me, just as others have pointed out, it seems completely irrational that Apple would start their presentation by bragging about their place in the professional landscape, and then proceed to introduce a product that ignores that market. Whether people agree or not as to whether they have hit their mark, I believe they are as interested as ever in the professional editor; I think they would hate to lose Walter Murch as an FCP fan.

Some folks have suggested the other apps in the Studio would become plug-ins. I think that would be a good approach. But, however they integrate them, I can't see Apple walking away from software that has had a long and successful run, that still has relevance to what people want to accomplish (motion graphics, audio, color grading, etc) and that is so well integrated into the FCP workflow. My take is that these applications (probably including some of the capabilities of the long dormant Shake) will find their way into the Apple ecosystem by the time this application ships. The one component I can see disappearing is DVD Studio Pro. I think Jobs is willing to lead the pack (along with RED and REDRay) toward ushering in the end of hard media. And the cpability of Compressor may be completely embedded into FCP.

As for R3D support. Some have suggested that the omission of any reference to RED - and the fact that there were no R3Ds in the demo - suggests an intentional message that RED won't be supported. I think this is rampant and ridiculous speculation. We all know RED has been on Apple's radar from the beginning and that Apple owns two RED ONEs and shoots RED footage all the time. Does anyone seriously think the Apple guys who shoot with RED don't ever talk to the software guys? The presentation made a point of talking about native 4K support. Sure, maybe they are having secret talks with Sony and that's who they meant, but who else is there? I believe support for R3Ds will be great.

As far as pricing - who knows. I was sort of disappointed there was no upgrade price since I last upgraded the entire suite for $299. But I can see how they want to shift everything to the Apple store. I don't begrudge new people being able to get into FCP for $299 but, of course, the implication is that to acquire the other applications in the suite, even old FCP users will have to "pay up." Maybe the other applications will become plug-ins and each will cost $49 or $99? I think that would be pretty cool.

In any case, I believe the entire Studio will move forward in some way and, hopefully, with as much innovation as was shown in FCP X. I have given a lot of thought to the features of the new FCP and, while I wasn't convinced immediately, I have come to feel they will be a huge boost to productivity in the application. As always, time will tell. :coolgleamA:
 
Scott Crawley said:
They don't like to rely too heavily on 3rd party tech, or apparently to pay royalties on proprietary codecs. Direct editing of R3D would mean doing both.
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Um... No. R3D is free to use, no paid licensing. And other than ProRes, every codec supported is "third party tech". So I fail to see your point.

We already have confirmation that QT is no longer a necessity for working with footage. Of the demos floating around, we're watching ProRes QT's along with h264 and AVC files in M4V and other standard containers being dropped right into bins and onto the timeline. Most serious FCP users I know are raving about this detail alone. As am I.

People thinking that $299 does not equal a "pro" application are being silly. FCP has the largest installed base of any "pro" NLE software, they will do just fine at that price and possibly pull in another host of new users. Apple is condensing their product offerings, essentially there is no more FC Express. It doesn't look like there is "upgrade" pricing either. FCP-X = $299, that's it, done. And as others have pointed out, we don't know the status or pricing of other apps in the suite yet. But I don't see how this is a bad thing. Apple is making a competitive move and it's a move that is going to put a hurting on Avid. We also have to consider the role of Premiere in all this... Premiere is nice and they were the first to the table with a truly format-agnostic timeline, real-time direct R3D editing and a host of other nice features. That is why it caught on over the past couple years and is, frankly, the reasons it still exists. But let's face it, Premiere has a couple glaring problems. First of all, Adobe has yet to offer a compelling solution for a working codec in the form of ProRes or DNxHD. CineForm, kinda assumed that role, at an extra expense. Rumors were flying about CineForm being shopped around... Most people expected Adobe to buy. That didn't happen... GoPro bought them. Anyone using Premiere in serious editing workflows are already Avid or FCP users because they will typically need intermediate or working codecs in the form of ProRes and/or DNxHD. Premiere is an extra. It's practically considered a freebie when most serious designers and pro shops purchase the Master Collection. I love editing in Premiere because of its current abilities and R3D support... But I, like the rest of the market, am fickle and will move on to the next best thing when it arrives. So where am I going with this? It's simple... FCP's only real competition on the Mac platform is Avid. And Apple is making a push that Avid will have a hard time competing with... So let's see, in a few months, I'll be able to buy AVID MC5.x for ~$2200... Or for the same money, I'll be able to buy a new 27" iMac, external Thunderbolt storage and FCP-X. Ouch. Avid obviously got wind of the FCP-X announcement and pricing rumors just before NAB. Targeting FCP users with the $995 MC5 cross-grade offer. Apple knows what they're doing. They're becoming masters of market domination and while facing many of the same issues Microsoft faced in the '90s, they are handling much of it more elegantly and tactfully.

Scott is right about one thing... Apple is moving beyond the keyboard+mouse paradigm for much of their new software. It's apparent in OSX 10.7 Lion, it's apparent in FCP-X, it's apparent in some other stuff I've seen that I can't talk about. However, it's not so much about the iPad or using it as an input device, which could happen to some degree. Apple is actually against iPad as a primary input controller for other systems. But this is about multi-touch and gesture control. Apple has multi-touch support on their mouse and their trackpad. They have been granted patents for dynamic and multi-touch keyboards. They're not the only ones pursuing this sort of thing. The future is more interactive and dynamic and less about tactile specifics. I think the days of static keyboards and expensive, function-specific control surfaces are coming to their end. The reason Apple is mostly against the iPad as a primary input device is because of it's visual nature. Like most people who work on a large screen, the last thing I want to do is take my eyes off of that screen (or screens) to reference what I'm doing on an input device. My ideal input device would be a 9x12 pressure-sensitive tablet (Wacom Intuos 4) with full multi-touch ability on the entire surface. Dynamic OLED multi-touch surface, that is.
 
I didn't realize R3D was an unpaid license... Are there no other strings attached? As for the other codecs allow me to clarify myself a bit.

Apple has done all that it can it seems to make ProRes the defacto codec in FCP and I believe they own it outright. Yes they support others but with their own codec at the heart of the application they are beholden to nobody else and their business can not be held for ransom by a third party. They would like their codec to be second to none as to remain in complete control. That is the point, I think.

Thanks Jeff for giving me a little hope for full R3D support. But even if licensing requires no fee today, that all could change tomorrow. If it were to become the dominant codec on the platform Apple could lose control of their NLE.

I can imagine apps that will transform the iPad into plethora of control surfaces. It could become the universal remote of Input because it is so completely malleable. More important though is the surface free input device... Not a device so much as an editing environment... A projected interface that can be as large or as small as you want it to be. Isn't that where gestures are leading us?
 
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Yes that is the same system demo'ed in the second link I provided. In the TED talk he claims that their tech should be widely available in the next five years... Very exciting!

I know some folks who have been using this kind of interface at university to manipulate their research for several years and have long wondered how this tech will be best implemented in editing.
 
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Rather than other apps I would like Color /Motion/Soundtrack to become rooms in the new final cut. same timeline , but you click over to color room and you get that interface , click over to soundtrack and you get more audio controls and a different level of sound tools. shouldn't ever have to leave the app except via xml to go to a finishing system perhaps
 
Scott Crawley said:
Yes that is the same system demo'ed in the second link I provided. In the TED talk he claims that their tech should be widely available in the next five years... Very exciting!

I know some folks who have been using this kind of interface at university to manipulate their research for several years and have long wondered how this tech will be best implemented in editing.
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Yeah figured but taking a look at Oblong you can actually get hold of the prototype system for development and more so you can custom build your system or so says the stuff under the client area

Tamper is their video editing soultion, same system just built specifically for the video software, its a basically the end of that second link with more added to it, think this was a while after they demo'd at TED

It wouldn't surprise me though if the custom solutions cost anywhere between 100,000 to 500,000, I'm sure when they drop to a lower price it will be used all over, Apple was looking into 3D space with displays and based on glasses and touch movements to rotate objects and maniuplate them, obviously they patent every idea and you never know when it will be used, but let's hope it'll make it into the system before 2020...since 2054 was Minority Report, hopefully our tech will be faster then that :coolgleamA:


Bing Bailey said:
Rather than other apps I would like Color /Motion/Soundtrack to become rooms in the new final cut. same timeline , but you click over to color room and you get that interface , click over to soundtrack and you get more audio controls and a different level of sound tools. shouldn't ever have to leave the app except via xml to go to a finishing system perhaps
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Would love to see this happen! it would speed up workflow too wouldn't it? Be much better then needing to take trips between applications,
It'd be as wicked as having Premier and After Effects be rooms in a single application... it'd just be so freaking awesome!

Read somewhere (can't remember now, it was a while back) that they had MASSIVE plans for the suite but had to minimize them because of the time frame that they wanted to actually do the launch, I guess if they did another year they could've probably done it but I guess they would rather release something now... could just be rubbish info though, more then likely is
 
Bing Bailey said:
Rather than other apps I would like Color /Motion/Soundtrack to become rooms in the new final cut. same timeline
Click to expand...

This would be a dream workstation for me. Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) have been like this for as long as I can remember. Right now you can buy an endless amount of Virtual Instruments, and other audio modifying software like Melodyne (pitch shifting editor), that open and run within the app.

If Apple made each of the apps that are now part of the FCS available as add-on expansion modules it would be a totally rocking system. I would also like to see Logic Pro available as an FCX expansion too.
 
Ditto +100. A while back I suggested that since Apple is posting FCP X to their App store, they may be thinking about making the other apps downloadable plugins that would run as tabs, or rooms, using the same timeline. This would save a lot of time prepping timelines for "send" to Color, Soundtrack, or Motion, and reconforming them on return. This has been a big headache, and round-tripping in general seems like old technology.

As a side note, I ran into Gary Adcock at NAB and suggested this idea. He was pretty adamant that color correction and compositing apps need to be separate and "professional," alluding to the feature workflow, i.e. different vendors for finishing. After countless hours fiddling with "send to" I couldn't see the logic of that. My response was that including plugins wouldn't prevent anyone from using separate apps. Export XML to Resolve all you want if it has the added features you need. But for one stop jobs, it would be a Godsend not to need round-tripping, and to have the other apps (plugins) use the FCP timeline whole, with all layers, effects, and adjustments. This would leapfrog Avid and Premiere.
 
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