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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 :)

Why everyone is so painfully wrong about FCPX

Emery Wells said:
I think all the FCPX criticism is very curious (i.e. obnoxious). What people fail to realize is this is an entirely new product written from a blank sheet in XCode. Roughly 2 years ago someone at Apple did the following:

1. Launched Xcode
2. File > New Project
3. Stared at a blank white screen

Naturally, you cannot recreate 15 years of development in 2 years and your version 1 app is going to be missing features. What apple has done with FCPX is actually really incredible. It is the most feature rich and professional V1 editorial application the world has ever seen. Does it address the needs of the working professional that deals with online/offline workflows, digital cinema, and large collaborative workflows? No. But that's also the SMALLEST group of FCP users. The VAST majority of FCP users cut by themselves, have no idea what an EDL/XML is, and could care less about tape I/O. Apple knew that V1 of the new FCP would be missing features and they decided to leave out features that would affect the smallest group of users which also happens to be their highest end users. Was this a mistake? Arguable but I don't think it was. I think Apples biggest mistake is failing to communicate to their most passionate and vocal users. They needed to communicate that they know FCP doesn't address all our needs today but that it is in our best interest to hang on and give them more time to flesh out the higher end feature set. So many of Apples products have followed a similar history. When they switched from OS9 to OSX they made a big leap forward while leaving out beloved features that so many OS9 users needed everyday. Some of those features made it back into OSX over time and some of them did not but no one is complaining they want OS9 back.

FCP 7 was the OS9 of editorial apps. It was built on a painfully old architecture and required too much work to salvage. Apple HAD to take this leap if they wanted to continue to stay relevant in the editorial market. FCP was looking like a joke compared to MC and Premiere. It's foundation was old and they needed to start over. The new FCP is based on AV Foundation which is shared with, gasp, iMovie and iOS. Guess what? The old iMovie was based on Quicktime just like FCP but I didn't hear anyone making that comparison then. AV Foundation is Apples next generation framework for doing advanced audio/video Applications. Ask any developer out there which framework they prefer working with, Quicktime or AV Foundation.

In short, Apple has made a mistake by not communicating with it's users and unfortunately, I do not see that changing anytime soon. The good news is, for all of us Pro users, we still have FCP 7, Premiere Pro, and Media Composer. Premiere Pro is essentially free as it comes with the Creative Suite, and MC is more affordable than ever. We all get to continue to use these great products while we sit back and watch how FCPX develops over the next 2 years. Hell, we can even try running the odd project or two through FCPX to take advantage of all the new great editorial features. Ya know, the features that actually help you tell a story (i.e. editing).
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Nailed it. Well said. Maybe someday the Pro world will get the idea that to be "Pro" in the future requires one to be nimble and flexible. Rome wasn't built in a day. And in this case, they bulldozed the Palatine hills and hired a new Architect. Good for them.
 
I'm hoping this is like when.... on my birthday my wife gives me a card that says happy birthday while she's wearing sweatpants and an 80's sweater and no makeup.... I walk around bummed all day.... then later that evening I walk into the bedroom and there's a mirror disco ball dazzling the room and she's on her knees on the bed dressed in a kinky nighty and purring like a kitten..... and then all is well.

I'm hoping..... that's what apple is up to. Just a marketing tease? Bad new travels faster than good news kind of thing?
 
In addition to the short FAQ posted by Apple, there's more developer info starting to trickle out now. There is now confirmation that more APIs (SDK) coming. But it doesn't seem as if Apple is all that interested in expanding the functionality of FCPX themselves. It looks more like they're going to leave it up to third-party developers to extend functionality to fit their own offerings. This is a double-edged sword, IMO... While it could ultimately end up being very powerful, we could very well end up in a situation where extension packs from one vendor may not play nice with those from another. Time will tell. One thing is clear, Apple misplaced that memo about the importance of first impressions.

So I guess I'm looking forward to FCP X, version 2, maybe?

At least Apple is issuing refunds, no questions asked. Not sure what else they could do here. And the FAQ and other trickle of info seems like there's a lot of back-peddling.
 
christopher witzke said:
I'm hoping this is like when.... on my birthday my wife gives me a card that says happy birthday while she's wearing sweatpants and an 80's sweater and no makeup.... I walk around bummed all day.... then later that evening I walk into the bedroom and there's a mirror disco ball dazzling the room and she's on her knees on the bed dressed in a kinky nighty and purring like a kitten..... and then all is well.

I'm hoping..... that's what apple is up to. Just a marketing tease? Bad new travels faster than good news kind of thing?
Click to expand...

Does your wife have a sister?
 
I promised myself I wasn't going to comment anymore on this topic, but perhaps one more thought... :smile:

Maybe the reason Apple is going so much toward third party integration, seeing FCPX as a platform rather than an app, is to compete with (or overshadow) Lightworks when it comes to the Mac. Being open source, it may have the potential to be a fabulous abd robust editor and could grow and expand rapidly if enough developers get on board. And, chances are the paradigm under which it works will be much like FCP7/Premiere/Avid, etc since that is the commonly accepted NLE approach at this time.

So, how do you compete with "free" and, quite possibly, competent and leading edge, in that environment? Seems to me there are at least a couple of ways to differentiate yourself; emulate open source and change the paradigm. Big gamble, perhaps, but maybe the only way to survive and, IMO, no one should doubt Steve Jobs' ability to see and change the future. As imperfect as his vision might be, it succeeds an awful lot.

So, if the first thing is to recruit a lot of people to play in your sandbox, you create the platform and give many, many third parties all the support they need to succeed on your platform. It sure seems to have succeeded with apps on the iPhone and iPad. Apple couldn't possibly put enough developers on the project to compete with the output of hundreds of third party developers who are financially motivated to produce good apps and/or plug-ins. And one of the potential advantages of Apple over Lightworks is the "curated" aspect which means that with Apple's tight integration between OS and hardware, and it's legendary tight-fisted control over third party apps, everything just might work a little smoother for mission critical situations.

Now, if it isn't quite enough to develop an entire ecosystem to support the success of your "platform" product, certainly "updating" the user paradigm adds another place where others might be slow to compete. I, personally don't believe Apple changed the paradigm just to be different but, rather, Randy Ubillos convinced Steve Jobs that it could be done better. Others will certainly disagree but Apple has rarely been afraid of following their own intuition when it come to taking a market in a new direction.

So, as painful as this "migration" has become for Apple, perhaps the long game is worth the risk for them.

Just a thought.
 
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Terry VerHaar said:
I promised myself I wasn't going to comment anymore on this topic, but perhaps one more thought... :smile:
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Couldn't help yourself?! :arf:

Terry, Lightworks as a competitor is not even on Apple's powerpoint slide!

Bottom line is nobody outside of a very small group in Apple really know what's the strategy, if there really is a master plan for Professional Tools there. I doubt that 3rd party vendors (and I've spoken to a few now) are psyched about the direction FCPX has taken. Apple can be quite vicious when it comes to strategy shifts, API/SDK redesigns, and all with very little communication to 3rd party vendors. Apple is actually much better towards its iDevice developer community as opposed to the ProTools Community. We all know why. And for 3rd party developers if you are on the wrong side of a shift, you're screwed. NVidea for example is struggling with Apple because they and CUDA are out of favor. Now every update, even minor, results in broken systems that rely on key NVidea tech. Does Apple care that that impacts every Adobe Premiere CS5.x and DaVinci Resolve for Mac user? Um, no. Which means they don't really care that much about me either.

The best advice I've seen from very knowledgeable resources through all this is: If your software tools are critical to your business, you should be using tools from a vendor who views you a critical to their business.

For, me I don't see
 
Apple put up a new page listing the 'Pro Features' of FCPX:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/pro-features/

I guess you are all right, none of these seem like pro features to me.... 4K, optical flow, realtime scopes, 5.1 audio, linear light/floating point rendering, secondary CC. Has iMovie written all over it. Nice move Apple.
 
The problem isn't with what is in FCPX, it what is not in FCPX. And following suit with previous iterations of FCS apps that bring functionality over from others, we see a dilution of capability. Otpical flow from Shake to Motion to FCPX is a good example, as are the CC functions from Color.

Here's a serious question for you, Emery. Are you actively using FCPX on real projects right now? If so, in what capacity?
 
Some people act like FCP is the only editing app available in the world...today you have multiple editing app that can do everything FCP7 can do and more, that are just as stable and actually have better performance... You can edit R3d natively on a laptop, no transcoding required...yet those people refuse to move on beyond anything Apple has to offer and limit themselves to having to work with all the annoying and antiquated limitations that FCP had/has. I still don't understand how so many editing houses cannot deal with r3ds and require transcoding to prores mov files. Really? You're working on a national spot and charging premium rates but you can't afford at least one or maybe 2 licenses of another editing app? Most editing apps are so similar that it's really easy to jump between them and the learning curve isn't that high at all.... So FCPX did not live to its expectation (at least for now)...If you are shooting RED and have all the expensive accessories/computers needed for it then I am pretty sure buying one license of a non Apple app like CS5.5/Avid/Vegas/Storm to get you editing natively (until FCPX catches up) won't kill you and won't put you out of business...it may even broaden your knowledge... ;-)

P.S: I am not referring to anyone specific in this forum...I am just speaking out of frustration from dealing with people/companies who refuse to look outside their box...
 
Emery Wells said:
Apple put up a new page listing the 'Pro Features' of FCPX:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/pro-features/

I guess you are all right, none of these seem like pro features to me.... 4K, optical flow, realtime scopes, 5.1 audio, linear light/floating point rendering, secondary CC. Has iMovie written all over it. Nice move Apple.
Click to expand...

Could be indicative of either consumer or pro. I don't really care about the distinction but...

I played with a 4K camcorder from JVC at Cinegear. Gonna be $5K next year.
Optical flow is useful for consumers who realize after the fact that they want to slow things down.
5.1 audio is consumer.
Secondary CC... are you telling me that consumers won't say "hey man, can we just change the red colors to pink?"
Floating point rendering is useful to consumers who make things too bright, then want to put another filter on top to make it darker again.

That leaves Linear light as the only thing that is only useful to "pros" at this point.

What's confusing is their FAQ.

Either they don't understand what pros want... or they are intentionally misleading them?

Seriously - have you read what they say about external monitor support? It is like a statement from a politician. RED workflow they suggest is rather awful too.

RE: external video and RED support parts of their FAQ, did they:
a) know they were giving a misleading / bad answer but cynically go ahead anyway
b) not understand the question because they are idiots

Can anyone find another possibility? Either answer is really really disturbing to me.

Why can't they just say "We recommend Final Cut Pro 7 for demanding R3D workflows at this point until we have XML output. We also recommend Final Cut Pro 7 at this point if you need true video monitoring."

I'm just not sure why folks are defending a company that composes its press releases based on smarmy lies / half-truths?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
The problem isn't with what is in FCPX, it what is not in FCPX. And following suit with previous iterations of FCS apps that bring functionality over from others, we see a dilution of capability. Otpical flow from Shake to Motion to FCPX is a good example, as are the CC functions from Color.

Here's a serious question for you, Emery. Are you actively using FCPX on real projects right now? If so, in what capacity?
Click to expand...

No Im not and I don't plan on using it for a while. I also would not recommend that any facilities use it just yet. We'll probably wait for the 2nd major release which I would expect around NAB time next year unless they can fill some of these holes sooner. I'll probably use it for smaller jobs or personal projects just to get my feet wet and be prepared for when we can migrate. Im just being rational about the situation and understand they many of the features people are complaining about will back be in due time. Some may never come back (such as all the tape I/O functionality) but can you blame Apple? Tape. Is. Dying. Wy put all that development effort into something that only has a few years left? Other solutions can be a stop gap until then. Really the only critical missing piece for us to start utilizing it today is lack of EDL/XML. We could probably start using it in a totally professional capacity once we have those two things. And because FCP is mostly an offline tool for us, it's not even that critical that we have an SDI output for monitoring (although AJA has beta drivers already that address this). For file based delivery stuff we could start using it almost immediately for finishing as well but for the moment Im just kind of sitting back and seeing how things shake out. We have Premiere, FCP 7, and Media Composer on pretty much every system here so honestly it's just not that big a deal to me.
 
Bruce Allen said:
Seriously - have you read what they say about external monitor support?
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I have. Have you? External monitor support requires drivers from the makers of the external monitor boards (Kona, Decklink, etc). It's up to THOSE companies to provide support, not Apple. AJA already has beta driver for the Kona 3. What did I miss here?
 
Emery Wells said:
And because FCP is mostly an offline tool for us, it's not even that critical that we have an SDI output for monitoring (although AJA has beta drivers already that address this).
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Oh wait... you're defending Apple... because you actually believe them?

You actually think that what they wrote in their FAQ is a legitimate solution to the problem?

You actually think that AJA's drivers properly address the problems of video monitoring?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
The beta drivers are preview quality and allow the Kona card to act as an extended desktop. That's not video monitoring.

Why weren't Blackmagic and Kona given a heads up on FCPX? Why isn't the framework in place for them to write drivers at launch? Why did Apple feel it was necessary to leave them in the dark and render every hardware card that worked with FCP7 useless with FCPX?
 
Emery Wells said:
I have. Have you? External monitor support requires drivers from the makers of the external monitor boards (Kona, Decklink, etc). It's up to THOSE companies to provide support, not Apple. AJA already has beta driver for the Kona 3. What did I miss here?
Click to expand...

Communication in a word.

ie what is the timeline development and whats in that timeline. We pretty well need a like for like app to allow upgrade from where FCP7 is now to a new tool hence the import feature. Im sure some stuff wont work but there must be a means of doing this.

Basic stuff like import, Monitoring, XML export ( We havnt used EDL's persay for years.) plus a huge long list of functions that can be found on other lists here.

Also some info such as if FCP X is a suitable framework to integrate too, what might the likely cost be to create a working system. If we know the options of what upgrade might be available then a choice could be made on what to purchase from other vendors. XML export for instance.

On balance Im just about supportive of the app but only when Im not in a blind darts match with one hand tied up behind my back. We need to be able to make informed decisions here not operate in a world of secrecy and fed with bogus info.
 
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