Conspiracy Theory

2 things...

I am a pro because of my skill as a story teller and my technical knowledge, not because of the software I use. Using a particular tool will not make me any more of a pro than putting on a pair of Air Jordans will make me a pro basketball player or a pair of Ray Bans will make me an airline pilot. If you cannot separate your identity as a film maker or post "professional" from your tools, then you're in much more trouble than you think, and not because of anything that Apple has done or not done with FCP-X.

FCP-X will succeed for the same reasons and with the same "core" group of people as the original FCP. It's way cheaper than many other options, with a fairly good tool set for the price. It's easy for someone with no experience to learn and use. These are the people who made the original FCP a hit, people who've never made a movie or worked in the film or TV industry. Not a small group of editors making studio pictures or big budget TV shows, not online editors in big gun post houses.
 
If you are a pro editor, you are assisting someone's story with your skills. If your tools aren't up to par to work with other pros in post-production, you are at a disadvantage. You don't have to work in a big studio or television broadcast environment to see this sort of workflow. For a while, I worked as an editor on a number of independent documentaries. A lot of independent documentaries are not huge productions. However, they are productions with a budget, and they hire people with a range of skills, not just one editor to cut a feature doc.

All of them hired people to do post-production for sound in Pro Tools. All of them hired After Effects artists for motion graphic design and so on. Some of them had people who did color design in a finishing program too. If I was using Final Cut Pro X at the time, I would not have been able to do my job. You can say that Apple will add all of those features over time, but since they weren't forthcoming, a lot of people feel nervous about banking their careers on a Final Cut Pro workflow. Apple might add those things later, and people may add Final Cut Pro X to their workflow, maybe even myself. However as it stands, I am diversifying my workflow. Final Cut Pro 7 is too old, and I wasn't really happy with its stability on long projects. Maybe in a few years, I would add Final Cut Pro X if they really aren't trying to drop the pro market after all, and I have clients who request Final Cut Pro X.
 
The discussion is - in a way - mute. It's not that hysterical "pros" can not accept a possibly revolutionary & professional tool .... errr .... sometime, maybe in the coming future because "possibly, sometime, maybe" is not acceptable for people who work in this business. By not providing a clear roadmap Apple has brought this run-away discussion onto themselves. Had they clearly stated that this is the basic module of a program that goes this or that way within the next year - nearly everybody would have accepted that and tinkered with the new one until it was "grown up".

Btw: I just bought it in the hope they go along.
 
The problem here is that most FCPX supporters don't understand how the broadcast/ film industry works. There are many standards. Waveforms and vectorscopes exist for a reason. Audio mastering is an art in itself. You can be a "one man band", but when you are going into the broadcast and film world, specialy when we talk fiction and documentary, you really need specialized people for grading, sound mixing, special fx's. As an editor, you can obviously try to do all this yourself, but filmmaking and editing are co-operative arts. When I do a TV Commercial, I tend to do a rough CC to give a "feel" of what I want the piece to work. and then send the xml or edl to a colorist. The sound needs to be professionally mixed and punched up for broadcast- there is a "noise war" in broadcast and audio compression and mixing for broadcast is an art for itself. In film, I'm not seeing myself doing as an editor 7.1 or 5.1 surround on my editor. This should be done by a professional sound mixer and engineer in his specific audio software.

FCPX is closed on itself, doesn't talk with other professional video and audio apps. Its Color Correction tool, while giving more options in a certain way (masks are a big plus) is not precise and currently there's no way to get accurate color grading for broadcast. These features are not people venting or not wanting to embrace change, but 100% "features"that make the software unnaceptable to use in the broadcast market. .
 
SPZ said:
The problem here is that most FCPX supporters don't understand how the broadcast/ film industry works. ..... These features are not people venting or not wanting to embrace change, but 100% "features"that make the software unnaceptable to use in the broadcast market. .
Click to expand...

Agreed. For the moment I will use FCPX - only have it since yesterday, so I will give it a chance and myself the time to learn - as a stand-alone tool for "quick and dirty" projects. And will produce stuff that has to go into a professional chain as described by you on FCP 7. It's a bit like a musician having a guitar he takes with him on stage and another one he likes to just play along with... and that doesn't deny the latter it's status as long as it is used by a pro. It's just purchased for another purpose.
 
SPZ said:
The problem here is that most FCPX supporters don't understand how the broadcast/ film industry works. There are many standards. Waveforms and vectorscopes exist for a reason. Audio mastering is an art in itself. You can be a "one man band", but when you are going into the broadcast and film world, specialy when we talk fiction and documentary, you really need specialized people for grading, sound mixing, special fx's. As an editor, you can obviously try to do all this yourself, but filmmaking and editing are co-operative arts. When I do a TV Commercial, I tend to do a rough CC to give a "feel" of what I want the piece to work. and then send the xml or edl to a colorist. The sound needs to be professionally mixed and punched up for broadcast- there is a "noise war" in broadcast and audio compression and mixing for broadcast is an art for itself. In film, I'm not seeing myself doing as an editor 7.1 or 5.1 surround on my editor. This should be done by a professional sound mixer and engineer in his specific audio software.

FCPX is closed on itself, doesn't talk with other professional video and audio apps. Its Color Correction tool, while giving more options in a certain way (masks are a big plus) is not precise and currently there's no way to get accurate color grading for broadcast. These features are not people venting or not wanting to embrace change, but 100% "features"that make the software unnaceptable to use in the broadcast market. .
Click to expand...

No one said (even Apple) that FCPX is ready for prime time... it will be in the future.
Until then, keep using your old NLE ...
 
toxotis70 said:
No one said (even Apple) that FCPX is ready for prime time... it will be in the future.
Until then, keep using your old NLE ...
Click to expand...

Toxotis, I would like to know what do you know more than all of us about Apple's strategy towards FCP that gives you that confidence of "it will be in the future". If we knew Apple's FCPX roadmap and the features they will implement in the next few months, that would certainly make planning a lot easier. The problem here is not "keeping" the software and working with the older while the software evolves. Its not that simple. This might work for the "one man band", but for a post house this means big bucks. Not knowing if important missing features are coming back or if the company is comited to the market implies doubt in the upgrade path of equipment, from IO/ decks, etc.

There's no problem for an editor working alone to have its old FCP and the new FCPX "waiting to evolve". However, is it wise to keep editing on a platform were you clearly don't know about the commitment of the company in that platform for broadcast work?

These are valid questions for both one man editing shops or post-production houses.

Personally, Apple hasn't said anything that makes me confident about their commitment to the pro market. The competition, however, immediately came with press releases stating their commitment to pros.

I like my ipad, iphone and igadgets- like I said, it was FCP that pushed me into Apple and I am now very happily living with many Apple electronics. But FCP? This is my bread and butter we are talking about. Apple is currently treating me and the product I use to make a living like any other Ipod or Iphone launch. And this doesn't work for a business that needs specific features that currently this product doesn't include, and Apple does not provide any information on wether they will include these in the future or not, and when. They released a FAQ alright, telling we'll see the return of Multicam in the next Major release- when's that? FCPXI? will it be a paid upgrade?- They say there's going to be XML export done by 3rd parties. Which 3rd parties? Are they working on it now? Any time table? Price? Will it be something like the 500 USD Automatic Duck? Exterior monitor output has a shady answer, and they say Aja has a beta driver for their Kona card. But what we are getting is a 2nd desktop space kind of output, not correct gamma and colorspace. Are we going to get this? When? By who?

Many, many other questions need to be answered, but above all what was needed was a clear statement from Apple telling they are 100% behind FCP as a professional App, addressing studios and professional editors concerns. They did a Demo in NAB, they could do an Open day like they did with the Antenna Gate ordeal with Q&A with selected media channels, like creativecow contributors, Larry and others critical to the current version. That would certainly make everyone much, much more confortable with sticking with Apple.

The online petition is almost approaching 8000 signatures and is growing day by day. This must mean something in such a specific market. FCPX continues to have a 3 star overall rating in the app store, And FCP is out of the top 3 best selling apps. Its time for Apple to do some soul searching and think about this.

The problem is not about getting the prosumer and the imovie crowd, but alienating the crowd that made FCP a high end and respected brand in the first place. Professional Broadcasting and FIlm Editors are not affraid of a new generation of editors coming- We are always learning with each other- they are upset the editor they use is no longer useful for their work.
 
Last edited:
I've given this a lot of thought, and I see FCPX as much more of a wild curveball than anything even resembling a conspiracy theory.


The amount of work put into creating the new program pretty much negates the idea that they're just coming out with a New Coke verison of FCP. Apple claims FCPX is entirely new code from the ground up. Most companies don't invest that kind of time and effort into a project just to turn around and release Final Cut Classic. There may be an iPod Classic, but I wouldn't wait around its Final Cut cousin to appear on the market.


On one hand it feels like Apple is getting out of the pro market completely, but if that were so, why would they re-write FCPX from the ground up? It seems to be a fairly CPU hungry program. Don't expect to be running it on an iPad in the next 24 to 36 months, or ever. This is a brand new program for someone who owns a powerful Mac. In one stroke it's clearly stated that Apple is still in the business of making both powerful computers and resource consumptive programs for creative people. Perhaps the sky isn't falling.
 
Sam Mallery said:
I've given this a lot of thought, and I see FCPX as much more of a wild curveball than anything even resembling a conspiracy theory.


The amount of work put into creating the new program pretty much negates the idea that they're just coming out with a New Coke verison of FCP. Apple claims FCPX is entirely new code from the ground up. Most companies don't invest that kind of time and effort into a project just to turn around and release Final Cut Classic. There may be an iPod Classic, but I wouldn't wait around its Final Cut cousin to appear on the market.


On one hand it feels like Apple is getting out of the pro market completely, but if that were so, why would they re-write FCPX from the ground up? It seems to be a fairly CPU hungry program. Don't expect to be running it on an iPad in the next 24 to 36 months, or ever. This is a brand new program for someone who owns a powerful Mac. In one stroke it's clearly stated that Apple is still in the business of making both powerful computers and resource consumptive programs for creative people. Perhaps the sky isn't falling.
Click to expand...

Given the amount of time since the last 'real' update to FCP, given the 'not done yet', state admitted by Apple... what does that suggest... a quarter baked product served up cold.

For certain things... Since I believe CS3, or CS4, one could author Bluray disks, taking advantage of HD. Unless someone is going to tell otherwise, FCP X doesn't include even DVD authoring... What's with that... Audio... we don't need no stinking audio... etc...

Now, if Apple had 'given away Beta' code called FCP X, X standing for 'eXperimental'... I think there would have been absolutely no 'outcry'... had it come out 2 years ago... and now 2 years later, have some set of packages that a 'pro' or serious amateur would be interested in...

You want a 'beta product' with 'features to be added later'... here Lightworks Beta (to be an Open Source project...). There it is. It's free, and currently only runs on Windows... but they've announced Mac and Linux... soon... but did I mention... it's free...
 
Add the fact that they killed support for FCP7... Hard to play the waiting game. I don't even edit on fcp being a PC person but I have a partner that does. He's not impressed. He just did the switchover to mac and FCP last year.


No support means:
Can not purchase another copy for new machines.
When the new 64 bit OS is released will FCP7 even work?

No road map to the future means companies that budget purchases a year in advance will wonder if the product is to risky to even budget for.


Apples only road map for FCPX has been that it will be "Awesome". Yeah, that says a lot.

There are enough complaints from the small business editors. Broadcast took a long time to start adopting FCP in the first place. Hell, most places I know of still use AVID and many were switching to Edius due to cheaper licensing and the fact that Grass Valley makes a lot of broadcast hardware. FCP (at least up here) and PPro have been mostly used by small production/film companies and small broadcast; like realty TV etc. News has definitely been AVID based. AVID and Edius listen to broadcasters and in AVIDS case Film editors. In fact one of Edius's minor complaints is they listen to what broadcasters want to much (ie minor feature requests from broadcasters that throw us all off for a bit after a new release).
 
Last edited:
toxotis70 said:
According to this... http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/faq/

Multicam will come in the next upgrade ... many other PRO features will come also, fromApple or third party software.
Click to expand...

Toxotis, that doesn't answer my questions. I'm well aware of the faq. The questions are asked with the faq in mind. I can see you chose to address Denwa's post which was a bit uninformed and chose to ignore mine. Interesting.
 
Last edited:
Vultch said:
I have read speed changes are now limited to 25% or 50% ....it's things like that which destroy it's credentials.
Click to expand...

See the problem is many people opened it. it was different and they closed it and said it is unwaorkable. Now you claim something you read and it is wrong.

Not only can you achieve ANY speed by simply dragging the clip longer or shorter, no it also plays it in realtime and you can even use the Floating Point algorithm, so your FCPX slomo gets close to a Twixtor effect. Not there, but the same engine that is in Motion is in every clip now.
 
Denwa said:
There are enough complaints from the small business editors. Broadcast took a long time to start adopting FCP in the first place. Hell, most places I know of still use AVID and many were switching to Edius due to cheaper licensing and the fact that Grass Valley makes a lot of broadcast hardware. FCP (at least up here) and PPro have been mostly used by small production/film companies and small broadcast; like realty TV etc. News has definitely been AVID based. AVID and Edius listen to broadcasters and in AVIDS case Film editors. In fact one of Edius's minor complaints is they listen to whaty broadcasters want to much (ie minor feature requests from broadcasters that throw us all off for a bit after a new release).
Click to expand...

I used Edius before and it was way superior to FCP7 already in version 5. Now Edius is 6 and it is a great tool. I wonder why there aren´t more jumping to it.

FCPX is now close to Edius editing wise, but Edius has the parts FCPX misses: true native support for any codec, good hardware to output and view properly AND they have salespeople in the right broadcast meetings already.....in meetings where they order for millions in hardware and the software is just a gimme......it ONLY has TO WORK.
 
SPZ said:
Toxotis, that doesn't answer my questions. I'm well aware of the faq. The questions are asked with the faq in mind. I can see you chose to address Denwa's post which was a bit uninformed and chose to ignore mine. Interesting.
Click to expand...

Huh? What?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top