New FCP due in spring

ullanta said:
I think if we rely on tools rather than skill to make us stand out, we're in trouble!
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Yes but Buck has a point. 10 Years ago I made a lot of money on slideshows with ken burns effects, transitions, text, etc. 6 Years ago I made a lot of money on sports highlight videos and other everyday-people event coverage. 3 years ago music videos in Portland.

Today... well, it's getting harder. It's not that my work isn't better, it's that I can't/won't do it as cheap as Bob's friend who got his 13" MBP and $300 copy of FCP X and 7D camera. Sure, I'm distinguished by skill - but the market gets very slim when you can get something "good enough" for cheaper... or buy all the gear yourself to get acceptable results for the same price as getting a video made, or cheaper. ($1200 MBP, $300 FCPX, $1500 DSLR equipment). I have potential clients tell me all the time "I don't want anything fancy, just cheap. I just need it to get the point across." That means I can't exist in a smaller everyday-consumer market nearly as well as before, and it's one less option. Gotta hit the bigger businesses, along with everyone else who does video in the city, and it just makes things harder. But hey, capitalism is capitalism.

For people who just want to be creative, this is super exciting and AWESOME. For people who try to make a living off of this, the market is getting slimmer and slimmer. iPhoto and Animoto killed slideshows. iMovie/DSLR cameras and possibly a $299 FCP are moving towards making videography a very tough market.

Now that said - I don't know how big of a role FCP X will play in this. I think a non-upgrade price will probably still be $1,000. And the features FCP X adds are awesome, but they still appeal more to people who already understand FCP and editing at least to a certain extent. It's not like it's filled with iMovie-esque "auto trailer" features that automatically edit a great wedding or music video. But it's true, in the next 5-10 years as software gets better and better and MORE SO - image acquisition better and cheaper - I think we're gonna feel it in the market... I already am.

As a video nerd I am still super stoked about all the equipment though, because doing this stuff just for fun and having better results than ever for cheaper than ever is nothing short of thrilling to me.
 
Does anyone know if there is more information posted anywhere?? Nothing on apple.com, can't find a video of the keynote, can't find more screenshots or a full features/what's new list.

I want more!!! :)
 
"We" don't rely on tools rather than skill to make us stand out, but the average person having access to all this digital stuff can make some very cool things without relying solely on talent. What has happened in the digital photography world is a case in point. Long time, established, big name photographers of the past have now had to completely rethink their business strategy in order to stay full-time in the business.

Someone shooting a home-movie on a Hi-8 tape and edited in Windows Media results in a bland, crudely made video. Give that same exact shooter a cheap 3-chip camcorder and they learn FCP (and can easily afford both), their video will look 100 times better. Nothing changed but the technology, but the end result is off-the-charts better. It's easier to learn a technology (FCP, Photoshop) than it is to have a natural eye for composition, lighting, etc. You can make up for a lot of stuff in post these days in the right hands. Allz I'm saying is the "WOW!" factor bar is continually being raised, it's tougher to visually impress with photos and videos these days vs. the analogue days and getting more and more so. Again, digital cameras have SHAKEN the pro market to the core, all from hobbyist with much better equipment and a new enthusiasm to learn it.
 
Filmguy, I agree, I've been Googling everything, including Google Earth and Google Pluto, to find more info. I'm surprised the buzz is relatively quiet for such a big event! Maybe because it's so late on the east coast? I dunno. I thought the net would have exploded with talk about it beyond the furry of one-liner Tweets.
 
More info here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20053364-248.html

"On the back end of the platform, the software has absorbed Color and Soundtrack, the tools designed to help video editors make color and audio adjustments."

Perhaps future "stay tuned" info will include a full tour of Color & STP being fully incorporated into FCP? Or included as more fully featured, unlock-able modules with a "studio" upgrade?

Guess we'll see.
 
Buck Forester said:
"We" don't rely on tools rather than skill to make us stand out, but the average person having access to all this digital stuff can make some very cool things without relying solely on talent. What has happened in the digital photography world is a case in point. Long time, established, big name photographers of the past have now had to completely rethink their business strategy in order to stay full-time in the business.

Someone shooting a home-movie on a Hi-8 tape and edited in Windows Media results in a bland, crudely made video. Give that same exact shooter a cheap 3-chip camcorder and they learn FCP (and can easily afford both), their video will look 100 times better. Nothing changed but the technology, but the end result is off-the-charts better. It's easier to learn a technology (FCP, Photoshop) than it is to have a natural eye for composition, lighting, etc. You can make up for a lot of stuff in post these days in the right hands. Allz I'm saying is the "WOW!" factor bar is continually being raised, it's tougher to visually impress with photos and videos these days vs. the analogue days and getting more and more so. Again, digital cameras have SHAKEN the pro market to the core, all from hobbyist with much better equipment and a new enthusiasm to learn it.
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Maybe it depends on your niche. But even so, I don't think the argument holds. Photography probably went through the same process with everything from Brownies to Polaroids to Instamatics, auto-exposure and auto-focus... and in the end, I don't know of any photographers who feel really threatened. With video, everything from handheld cameras to Digital cameras to HD cameras to cel phones have had wide societal impact... but it doesn't seem that that has had much impact on successful films as a whole... you don't see things shot by some doofus with an HVX threatening other films at the box office. (Well... Blair Witch, once, as a gimmick, maybe). I work primarily in classical music recording, a field which should be most threatened, especially at the mid-to-low level, by the huge number of high-spec cheap audio recorders. But it hasn't happened, and won't. Clients of mine have often said that at first they hired someone who sold themselves on great equipment... then they hired me the next time, and all subsequent times. Why? In that niche - and in most professional situations - people want reliability, knowledge, experience, and skill. They learn that the first time they hire someone who bungles a job. It takes time to learn and know any piece of equipment, to handle different situations, to appear confident and competent. In my work, "takes" are often 40 minutes to 70 minutes long, and one minor glitch or problem makes the whole thing useless. And there are no re-takes. Good equipment helps the good people do their jobs more effectively. No piece of equipment helps a careless person do critical work.

Also, an editor is a complex piece of software that not even most professionals understand all of. The flashy stuff you seem to worry about is the stuff coming up from the consumer level, not the things that distinguish FCP. I don't think the doofus will do a better job with FCP than s/he does with iMovie; in fact, they'd likely have a harder time because of the "professional" features.

(Disclaimer: I am not prejudiced against doofuses. Some of my best friends are doofuses!)
 
Will this work with my 2009 2.66 Quad Core MacPro running snow Leopard?
I believe the 2009 MacPro is 32bit, but I could be wrong?

$299 is definitely a great price point. The interface looks very similar to me like Sony Vegas, which I loved. Everything is rolled into a simple and powerful interface that can do practically everything (capture, edit real-time, audio, color, 3-D, and even export) from inside one app.

If I can run it on my current system, then I'm in with both paddles. If not then it's not in the cards right now to update to a new system. Or the wife will kill me. :(
 
vegas06 said:
Will this work with my 2009 2.66 Quad Core MacPro running snow Leopard?
I believe the 2009 MacPro is 32bit, but I could be wrong?

$299 is definitely a great price point. The interface looks very similar to me like Sony Vegas, which I loved. Everything is rolled into a simple and powerful interface that can do practically everything (capture, edit real-time, audio, color, 3-D, and even export) from inside one app.

If I can run it on my current system, then I'm in with both paddles. If not then it's not in the cards right now to update to a new system. Or the wife will kill me. :(
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Yes, and it will run great. You're golden. Snow Leopard is the key, as snow leopard is a 64-bit operating system and has Grand Central Dispatch/OpenCL which is what the FCP X utilizes. Pretty much every chip processor made after 2005/2006 has been 64-bit enabled.

They have released official specs but it's very safe to say "yes" based on that system. Further, I am going to make an educated guess that FCP X should run BETTER on any Intel system that ran FCP 7 well. The idea is FCP X harnesses hardware BETTER. A slower system will simply mean you won't see all of the benefits or make full use of the new abilities. But your system should not only run it, but run it much faster than FCP6/7! Another reason to say FCPX will likely work on a wide range of hardware is that Apple is obviously trying to expand it's install base, meaning appealing to the vast majority of it's consumers that run 13" MBPs.
 
ullanta said:
But even so, I don't think the argument holds. Photography probably went through the same process with everything from Brownies to Polaroids to Instamatics, auto-exposure and auto-focus... and in the end, I don't know of any photographers who feel really threatened.
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Professional photography clearly did not go through the same processes with polaroids and instamatics. Those weren't technologies that allowed for pictures to 'technically' be taken on the same par as a professional. Note the word 'technically' and not 'artistically'. So once you have the 'technical' parity, then one can use technology to approach the 'artistically'. Pro photographers in the 70's and 80's and much of the 90's did not have serious competition from hobbyists. Introduce affordable dslr's and Photoshop, and hobbyists now have a complete darkroom, so to speak, at their fingertips to manipulate images any way they wish... didn't know how to white balance? No prob... click. As good or better than a pro did in the field. Didn't know how to set exposure? No prob, slide exposure *perfectly* to taste in Lightroom. Blown out highlights and dark shadows a prob and don't know how to use filters in the field to nail it? No prob, simply bracket three RAW exposures in the field and come back to PS and merge them to nail a huge dynamic range perfectly. It's even better than a GND in the field because there's no dark areas from the filter. Or one can process the same RAW image for different exposures and combine them into a perfectly exposed image from shadows to highlites that normally could not be achieved on film. Need to dodge or burn specific areas? No prob in post. Don't like that dead branch in the corner? Crop it out or simply clone it out. Don't like your composition? Well, with 20 heckapixels to work with, crop as you want and still have a poster-sized print.

If you don't think that has had a huge impact on the pro market, then you're not in it. I'm in it. Art Wolfe and Peter Lik are in it. They're not doing "Edge" movies for kicks and giggles, it's part of their new business plan to make a living because the stock agencies are now inundated with amazing images. It's also much more difficult for a pro to charge $500 for a 16x20 when there are so many amazing pics of the same scene from gazillions of people only asking $60 for the same sized print from the same pro lab. The new big names you see in Outdoor Photographer Magazine are nearly all from within the last few years... hobbyists with new, inexpensive tools that allowed them to compete with the pros. There's a YouTube video on Art Wolfe talking about this too. The digital revolution has leveled the playing field and the old guard is rethinking their strategy or retiring.

You don't think wedding photographers and videographers are now competing in the marketplace with Uncle Bob with a new digital camera/vid who says he'll shoot the darn thing and edit with fancy transitions? The serious hobbyists (which probably many of us here are/were not long ago) hit the pro market big time, and now Uncle Bob is even hitting the semi-pro market. I'm not saying Uncle Bob will make a video on par as a pro by any means, but it DOES affect the $$ marketplace in a big way.

If you didn't think technology was important, you wouldn't be on this forum learning about the 'latest' tech stuff to improve your offerings. I don't care how good you are talent-wise, if you were shooting an old VHS camcorder and editing with two VHS machines, you could not compete with an end product against a serious hobbyist shooting an EX1 and editing on FCP with a Mac Pro who also had jibs/stabilizers, color correction and was to be shown on a 60" HD 1080p television. Technology DOES matter. A lot. It's why we're here in the first place. Those who always say, "it's all about the talent" are missing a big piece of the puzzle these days. It's usually the older guys saying it's all about the talent. And I'm getting pretty old, ha ha! But still young enough to see the young technologically-amazing whipper snappers pass me by.
 
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ullanta said:
Maybe it depends on your niche. But even so, I don't think the argument holds. Photography probably went through the same process with everything from Brownies to Polaroids to Instamatics, auto-exposure and auto-focus... and in the end, I don't know of any photographers who feel really threatened. With video, everything from handheld cameras to Digital cameras to HD cameras to cel phones have had wide societal impact... but it doesn't seem that that has had much impact on successful films as a whole... you don't see things shot by some doofus with an HVX threatening other films at the box office. (Well... Blair Witch, once, as a gimmick, maybe). I work primarily in classical music recording, a field which should be most threatened, especially at the mid-to-low level, by the huge number of high-spec cheap audio recorders. But it hasn't happened, and won't. Clients of mine have often said that at first they hired someone who sold themselves on great equipment... then they hired me the next time, and all subsequent times. Why? In that niche - and in most professional situations - people want reliability, knowledge, experience, and skill. They learn that the first time they hire someone who bungles a job. It takes time to learn and know any piece of equipment, to handle different situations, to appear confident and competent. In my work, "takes" are often 40 minutes to 70 minutes long, and one minor glitch or problem makes the whole thing useless. And there are no re-takes. Good equipment helps the good people do their jobs more effectively. No piece of equipment helps a careless person do critical work.

Also, an editor is a complex piece of software that not even most professionals understand all of. The flashy stuff you seem to worry about is the stuff coming up from the consumer level, not the things that distinguish FCP. I don't think the doofus will do a better job with FCP than s/he does with iMovie; in fact, they'd likely have a harder time because of the "professional" features.

(Disclaimer: I am not prejudiced against doofuses. Some of my best friends are doofuses!)
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It definitely depends on your niche. The point isn't that hollywood and the box office will be usurped. Or big business with big budgets. No way!

I'm talking about the prosumer market, and that which deals primarily with consumers, not businesses. That has been my main niche for 10 years and it's forcing me out, not because people don't love my quality, but simply because people don't NEED or WANT to pay $1000-$4000 for a video anymore. A High School will hire (or take a volunteer) a student or parent to record their sports or grad night. People at weddings will pay a lot for a photographer, but leave the videography to their friend with a 7D and a 13" MBP for free or $400 instead of $2500. Local artists who want a music video just won't pay much for it anymore, because they know lots of people who will make a music video on their DSLR for free to "get their reel going" and don't want to spend so much money on a video, they'd rather put it towards gear or recording studio time. Yeah I've got 2 great cameras for dual camera, great sound gear, an awesome real with great shots and wonderful edits, but people see it and say "that's really good, but I don't need anything fancy, I can get my friend to do it for $400, can you match that?" I hear that all the time. "Your work is phenomenal but it's too expensive."

I used to hear "that's a great deal!"

The game's changing, because EVERYONE has got the equipment. When it comes to average people, you're no longer selling them on quality or skill. They buy that 100%. You're selling them on spending $4000 instead of a volunteer parent/student or a $400 college kid trying to get experience. They know it's better, they know your equipment is better, but they know they'd rather have an "OK" video and a trip to Europe. And so would I if I wasn't such a video nerd - so I can't blame them. And like I said, other markets have disappeared all together, like making wedding/birthday/anniversary slideshows. I used to do a ton of those - scanning photos, ken burns effects, transitions, etc.
 
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David Saraceno said:
I don't believe any specs are out yet.

I've read that a lot of Color and SoundTrack are now built into FCP X.

And Apple representatives told one person (Larry Jordan) that the demo was for just FCP X, and there will be further announcements down the line.

http://www.larryjordan.biz/goodies/blog.html
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Great write-up! Very excited for the new version. The list of the editors concern actually put me at ease. If these are his only concerns and he's seen the preview twice and talked with all of Apple, there's not much to be concerned about. From what Apple has shown so far it seems clear they are very interested in making this an awesome release, and I have little doubt that every concern on his list will not only be handled, but handled very well. And WORST case scenerio, Apple drops the ball on every one of those items (highly unlikely), I am still not too concerned. I own FCS 3, so FCP X would just become an addition to all the tools I already have, all the media files I already have, etc. But I would bet money that we will land far from a worst case scenario.

I literally cannot wait to edit my first project in FCP X this June!!
 
Buck Forester said:
Professional photography clearly did not go through the same processes with polaroids and instamatics. Those weren't technologies that allowed for pictures to 'technically' be taken on the same par as a professional.
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It's true. My Facebook News Feed is now full of everyday people who have taken up photography and produce pretty decent results for dirt cheap with their DSLRs and Lightroom/Aperture 3. Stuff you'd only have seen at a much higher level 10 years ago. No, their work isn't better than professional photographers. But when you have 7-8 pretty good photographers producing pretty good results and charging only $100 for family portraits, I've heard first hand how it's affecting my really talented photographer friends. You have to remember, people who aren't photographers are more easily satisfied as well. I've heard many people comment "$600 for portraits! That's ridiculous. My friend does great work and does it for $100!" - you wouldn't have heard this 10 years ago.

The ubiquity of cheap equipment and thus cheap labor producing "good enough" results is devaluing the industry, photography and consumer-based segments of prosumer videography.

Buck Forester said:
I'm not saying Uncle Bob will make a video on par as a pro by any means, but it DOES affect the $$ marketplace in a big way.
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Exactly. Saving money and "good enough" are the name of the game for most consumers.
 
A huge question is, how will Apple handle support for a "Pro" video application that cost $299,- "Hi, I have a AF100 and connected it over HDSDI thrue BM Ultrastudio to FCPX, now problem "X" happens"...support will most likely come back to you with "Sir, the AF100 you talk about, is that an accessorie to iPhone? And the Ultrastudio is that the iPad 3rd part app?
Consultants of FCPX will have loads to do and get rich doing it I guess.
 
I've been using Final Cut for about 10 years and never called support. The internet/forums is where most people go for help.

lrtv said:
A huge question is, how will Apple handle support for a "Pro" video application that cost $299,- "Hi, I have a AF100 and connected it over HDSDI thrue BM Ultrastudio to FCPX, now problem "X" happens"...support will most likely come back to you with "Sir, the AF100 you talk about, is that an accessorie to iPhone? And the Ultrastudio is that the iPad 3rd part app?
Consultants of FCPX will have loads to do and get rich doing it I guess.
Click to expand...
 
I'm not concerned in the least about amateurs encroaching on my business (i shoot 90% weddings) if anything an influx of amateur videographers are going to eat up al the lower paying gigs for those who don't value what we do and the professionalism we bring to the table.

Furthermore a rising tide raises all boats. Better software may make entry to the business easier but it will also make my work easier and better.

This is simply going to make it less expensive and easier for amateurs to do poorly conceived, poorly executed, meaningless drivel to upload to youtube.

Those of us who have always pushed ourselves to be better and create compelling stories will do the same as we've always done.
 
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