Final Cut Rumor......2013 :(

[Chris Kenny]

IMO jumping to Avid MC is somewhat short sighted. The primary downsides to FCP right now are technical issues which Apple is known to be working on, with a major rewrite. On the other hand, the major issues with MC are more business decisions that Avid likely doesn't have any particular interest in reconsidering (pricing, support for third-party capture cards, more limited product scope, etc.). While the rewrite is holding up actual releases, Apple's mindset in this market is far more disruptive than Avid's -- in a good way, like the way the $17.5K Red or the $1000 software-only Resolve is disruptive.

That will likely pay dividends over time. Does anyone really expect Media Composer to get comprehensive GPU acceleration before Final Cut Pro? It's more likely Avid wants to sell you Avid hardware. And OK, so this rumor says Apple's attempt to integrate the Final Cut studio apps has been pushed back until 2013. Is anyone expecting Avid to have an integrated app with all of the features of Final Cut Studio before 2013? It's more likely Avid will continue to release incremental improvements while essentially maintaining the current product scope.

Adobe's approach is similarly disruptive, and they already had their major rewrite back in 2003, so they're a bit ahead of Apple at the moment on integration and GPU acceleration. But it's easily possible Apple could leapfrog. And they have the advantage of not having to worry about Windows -- the Final Cut team can take advantage of Mac-specific platform technologies where Adobe has to roll their own. There are a lot of those these days that are extremely useful in this market.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

3 years is like a decade in the postworld.

 

[Tony Augustinack]

I do most my work in Final Cut, but Premiere is still a good app along with Avid. Hopefully Apple will come around. They used to be all about the creative professionals, now they seem to be blinded with the iPhone and iPad.

I am very excited to see what the Foundry has got in store!

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

It's more likely Avid will continue to release incremental improvements while essentially maintaining the current product scope.

I think you might just be surprised at what Avid does in the next year.

 

[Chris Kenny]

I really don't want to sound harsh here, but this "Apple doesn't care about creative pros anymore" stuff has essentially no factual basis. It seems to be rooted in the fact that Apple towers don't have more slots, and that it has been three years since the last major update to Final Cut Studio. But the current Mac Pro is at least as expandable as any computer Apple has sold since the Power Mac 9600 was terminated in early 1998 (and IIRC while the 9600 had more expansion slots, it had fewer internal drive bays). And three or four years (working from the release of FCS2) for a nearly complete rewrite of Final Cut Studio is just not at all exceptional given reasonable time expectations for a project of that scope. I'd almost be more worried if they'd tried to do it in two.

Could things be better? Yes, clearly. But an objective evaluation of Apple's current product lineup and of the events of the last few years doesn't actually indicate that Apple cares less about creative pros today than they did, say, 10 years ago -- when they were selling substantially less expandable towers.

 

[PatrickW]

3 years is like a decade in the postworld.

Really?

How many years after Red One has it taken (and more time still to go) for Red to release Epic?

When you have a serious product like FCS or Epic, you don't rush to release just because you have competition. You wait, you release a polished masterpiece and you kill the competition.

 

[Bruce Allen]

Does anyone really expect Media Composer to get comprehensive GPU acceleration before Final Cut Pro? It's more likely Avid wants to sell you Avid hardware.

Media Composer had used OpenGL for its 3D DVE effects since, oh before 2006. Then in 2008 they rewrote the render engine to better use multithreading and OpenGL.

Premiere has the most recent and best GPU implementation currently, yes.

But Avid certainly have a long history of interest in GPU acceleration. I don't see them getting disinterested now when things are just heating up.

Maybe Avid didn't want to go CUDA because that cuts out all of the non-nVidia people. I'm sure they'll update the engine to take better advantage of OpenCL in the future.

Anyway, the current Avid engine is fast enough for what I do (except decode RED - but that's more of a function of the Red SDK decoder being slower than Adobe's decoder - which is more of a native implementation, I think I remember hearing?). What I want is a 64-bit version of Avid that can decode RED files without ever running out of memory I'm sure it's on its way.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

Really?

How many years after Red One has it taken (and more time still to go) for Red to release Epic?

When you have a serious product like FCS or Epic, you don't rush to release just because you have competition. You wait, you release a polished masterpiece and you kill the competition.

your example makes no sense.
it would make more sense to compare the postsituation.
3 years ago you had no avid ama, no mercury engine, no storm,
no davinci resolve on mac, no rocket, no smoke on mac,
no scratchcine, no 3d support, no clipfinder...........

today you have.

and there is no software coming out as a masterpiece, thats the nature of software, right when its mature in a way, things change and the developers have to move on and bring in another feature which will cause bugs etc.


+listening to the wise guys like bruce here makes you smarter and work with less hassle. made me at least

 

[Meryem Ersoz]

Really?

How many years after Red One has it taken (and more time still to go) for Red to release Epic?

When you have a serious product like FCS or Epic, you don't rush to release just because you have competition. You wait, you release a polished masterpiece and you kill the competition.

if you follow this comparison through, past the surface, you see how weak it is.

in 3 years, RED ONE has received countless upgrades (audio boards, higher data rate recording modules, 4.5K, better focus and exposure tools, a new MX sensor, new lens kits at great price points, REDCINE-X for free, yadda yadda yadda...)

FCP in the same time frame?

not so much.

I'm done caring much about it, though...it's clear they are not going to get this done any time soon. I'll still use it for non-RED projects, I still like the interface and have a boatload of plug-ins. But it's just not R3D friendly - bring on Storm.

 

[Chris Kenny]

Media Composer had used OpenGL for its 3D DVE effects since, oh before 2006. Then in 2008 they rewrote the render engine to better use multithreading and OpenGL.

Sure, I know there's some GPU acceleration in Media Composer -- there's some in current versions of Final Cut as well. But the rewrite Apple is generally understood to be engaged in seems a lot more ambitious than anything Avid seems to be up to. Which bring us to:

I think you might just be surprised at what Avid does in the next year.

Hey, don't get me wrong, I'll take my fix wherever I can get it. If Avid wants to become the Red of the NLE market rather than the Sony, I'm all for it. But... what's Avid's most recent major announcement? Software-only Avid DS for $10K? If Avid had really turned disruptive, they'd have done what BlackMagic just did with Resolve, and it would be $1K and work with cheap video interfaces. DS for $10K is, as far as I can see, just a response to OS X Smoke, not Avid going rouge. Avid is pretty obviously still protecting the price points of their high-end products, and it's hard to imagine they'll set the market on fire as long as they're thinking like that.

Now, if the Avid guys are about to change everything, they can shut me up fast by letting me beta test. :laugh:

 

[Michael Hastings]

Really?

How many years after Red One has it taken (and more time still to go) for Red to release Epic?

When you have a serious product like FCS or Epic, you don't rush to release just because you have competition. You wait, you release a polished masterpiece and you kill the competition.

Completely agree. This rumor seems like total made up FUD. Plus virtually all of the other companies mentioned REALLY need the cash flow from regular incremental upgrades, so don't really have the luxury of sitting back a bit and planning and then executing a major rewrite and step forward.

Jannard and Jobs both seem to work from a vision of what they think ought to be - insanely great - rather than just good enough. Jim has done well with Red and according to business magazines has a billion or two in the bank so isn't desperate for cash. As antsy as I may be to give him some more money and get my epic, his financial position means he can take his time to realize that vision. HDRx™ and magic motion prove to me that we are in good hands and it has been worth the wait.

Apple hasn't always had the money to hold out and take it as far as they would like - but right now they are one of the most cash-rich companies in the world.

Jobs understands how important being a leader in media creation is to ALL of his businesses (remember pixar and that he is the largest shareholder in disney) so I think it is much more likely that his directive is to take their time and get it right.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

This argument would be valid for Shake, too...

Phenomenon?

 

[Palmer Woodrow]

Interesting to see the shake team has so much to offer still.

The Shake team left Apple a long time ago. This article is a complete fabrication.

It's true that Apple does not care about pro customers anymore, however. Even if it utterly owned that marketplace, the numbers are way too small to interest Apple at this point. People need to take an objective look at Apple's business now and start migrating to products that have a future. Wishing and hoping isn't going to get you anywhere. If you make your living in this business, you'd best be advised to face reality and plan now so you're not floundering when the next FCP either fails to materialize entirely (see "Phenomenon") or materializes as iMovie. Don't waste valuable time struggling with a defunct, Scotch-taped workflow that's still best suited to MiniDV.

Apple has no interest in writing any applications at this point. They will only continue to write productivity apps and iMovie in order to get computers out the door of Apple stores as long as they choose to make those computers. They will do the bare minimum, so salespeople can answer "yes" when prospective buyers ask "can I do this with a Mac?" But those days too are numbered. Moving Apple TV to iOS is just one small experimental step toward Apple's real-computer-free future.

Think about it: Why would Apple want the hassle of paying expensive developers to build complicated low-volume apps that must be patched and maintained for years, when they can pump applications through the App Store and skim 30% off everyone else's work? They have no liability for updates or bug fixes. Piracy is negligible. They can pick the best of the best apps from the store, and plaster their screen shots all over Apple's commercials and Web site as though they were integral parts of the iOS platform.

Macs may continue to exist as a development platform for iOS. Thus the lame hardware updates in the last iteration. You don't need awesome graphics cards and the latest Intel architectures to write apps for a handheld computer. Pro Apps used to drive Mac sales, but Mac sales are now about laptops; Apple has very obviously abandoned the "creative people" that it used to covet as its core user base. Content creators do not use touch interfaces and walled-off devices; those are toys for people who take what they're given. The few developers who manage to create useful tools for them must implement workarounds and compromises, to overcome outrageous hurdles purposefully erected by Apple. We're three years or so into iPhone development. Where are all the interesting and useful hardware devices you can plug into this handheld computer? Scuttled by an SDK that denies access to the hardware's external connectors. You can't even get third-party application data back to a computer during a sync.

Meanwhile FCP has remained a moribund patchwork of glued-together windows, other major UI gaffes, and nonexistent media management; and there's still no 64-bit QuickTime (nor any mention of a replacement). ProRes will go down as the last gasp from Apple's "Pro Apps" efforts. If you look at QuickTime and its ridiculous gamma problems (and hordes of other issues known to developers and pro users for many years), you realize that Apple has never understood professional-grade applications. The company will breathe a sigh of relief as it completes its retreat from this space; Jobs had his fun dabbling in the high end and plastering Lord of the Rings and King Kong on the Apple homepage (paradoxically mentioning Shake as little as possible), but reality set in a long time ago.

Despite the slow pace of progress in the NLE space, everyone else has managed to show far more interest in pro users as represented by Red customers than Apple has. Who has native Red support? Pretty much everyone BUT Apple. If you think that's going to change for the sake of a few thousand Red owners, some might call you an optimist but many will call you naive.

If the state of NLEs is going to resume a forward march, a small company like the Foundry will most likely be the one to lead it.

 

[Stefan Christou]

Who cares about Final cut? So hackneyed it's painful to see people still using it :mad5: :devil:

 

[Rainer Fritz]

Thanks to Avid that they made MC5

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

If Avid wants to become the Red of the NLE market rather than the Sony, I'm all for it.

I don't know ANY editor who would cut a feature film in FCP rather than Avid because it costs $1300 less to own.

Sure - I'd love MC5 to be cheaper. But - it's a better professional product than FCP and worth more than the $1300 difference IMO.

I do agree - if they would just work with the new AJA Kona card and drop their price a bit - they would most likely see more market penetration.

 

[Jody Neckles]

I do agree - if they would just work with the new AJA Kona card and drop their price a bit - they would most likely see more market penetration.

Well said... and we live in hope!

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Mark. You've become an Avid convert! -

 

[Michael Schmitt]

Sigh. And they were doing so well until their last release.
I stared on Premiere, then went to Avid Xpress and then back Premiere when the CS products started coming out.
When I went Mac, I learned Final Cut and got certified. I like it.
I like Premiere, maybe will go back to that.
Maybe, I'm thinking, go further back still. To Avid Media Composer.

 

[Chris Kenny]

The Shake team left Apple a long time ago. This article is a complete fabrication.

It's true that Apple does not care about pro customers anymore, however. Even if it utterly owned that marketplace, the numbers are way too small to interest Apple at this point. People need to take an objective look at Apple's business now and start migrating to products that have a future. Wishing and hoping isn't going to get you anywhere.

Once again, Apple's pro hardware today is more expandable, not less, than what they were offering a decade ago. Since that time they've developed or acquired Xsan, Aperture, Logic Studio, etc. The only basis for the claim that Apple has stopped caring about pro customers seems to be a) some people don't think a major company can pay attention to two markets at once, and b) the nearly complete rewrite of QuickTime and Final Cut Pro is taking a few years. The former makes no sense, and the latter is completely normal and expected.

Apple has no interest in writing any applications at this point. They will only continue to write productivity apps and iMovie in order to get computers out the door of Apple stores as long as they choose to make those computers. They will do the bare minimum, so salespeople can answer "yes" when prospective buyers ask "can I do this with a Mac?" But those days too are numbered. Moving Apple TV to iOS is just one small experimental step toward Apple's real-computer-free future.

Huh? Apple moving a consumer appliance to an OS designed for consumer appliances is evidence that they're going to abandon making real computers? Please. This is comical FUD. Final Cut Pro has something like 50% of the video editing market -- more than any other NLE. Apple is not simply going to walk away from that, and with the exception of one rumor that Jobs personally shot down, every indication is that Apple is well into the major QT/FCP rewrite that would be consistent with their continued interest in putting their pro products on solid technical ground for the future.

Catering to creative pros isn't just about money for Apple, at least not directly. I'm quite sure Apple understands that being a major player in creative markets generates a certain caché that plays a large part in overall perceptions of Apple's brand.

Despite the slow pace of progress in the NLE space, everyone else has managed to show far more interest in pro users as represented by Red customers than Apple has. Who has native Red support? Pretty much everyone BUT Apple. If you think that's going to change for the sake of a few thousand Red owners, some might call you an optimist but many will call you naive.

You seem to be arguing as if there's no explanation other than neglect for this sort of thing. But there's a very clear alternative explanation -- development cycles. Apple isn't going to dump resources into some hack to get native Red support working with current versions of Final Cut if they're already years into the development of a replacement. If you look at how Apple handled the OS X transition, you'll see Apple is very aggressively forward-looking in some respects, and is far more willing than many companies to trade off current functionality in order to dedicate resources to future benefits.