Adobe and Avid Target Final Cut Pro Users With 'Switcher' Discounts

[jaduffy108]

haha, do you really want him answering that?

Probably not

As is clear from my "vibe"... I'm really getting annoyed with people who marginalize what pro editors working in FCP environments are now facing.
Responses like "just keep using FCP7", etc or the nonsense charlituna is spewing...shockingly clueless.

I'm utterly clueless about a lot of things, but I hope I don't go around spouting off about stuff I have no idea what I'm talking about....too often

And when I do ... I can only hope I listen when someone comes along to point out my silliness.

 

[THX1139]

They need to address this in a meaningful way. Forget about the FAQ page or giving an interview here or there. Steve Jobs needs to have a press conference similar to the iPhone 4 Death Grip. It doesn't need to be as vast as inviting the broad newsmedia, but it needs to be as serious and impactful.

You make is sound like they didn't know that this would be a fiasco. This was all part of a long-term strategy. Steve Jobs is not going to get up and make some kind of "we blew it" announcement because in their eyes, nothing is wrong that an update won't take care of... or 3rd parties will supply if you really must have it. This new software is NOT geared towards typical professionals. Apple is clearly going after the weekend video editor and youtube type person. Looking ahead, practically every consumer device is going to have some type of video recording function, and Apple thinks that is where the money is. They are concentrating on getting those people to use FCX to edit their iPhone or DSLR footage so they can post it to social networks with ease. Better to have a couple million people paying $300, than to cater to the high-end crowd who have stringent and finicky requirements.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Until FCX came out, when was the last time we saw a substantial update to Final Cut? Yeah... July of 2009 - 2 years ago! That's how long professional Final Cut Pro users have been waiting. No wonder they are pissed.

The two year update cycle is par for the course, but I wouldn't even call the '09 update substantial. It was downright anemic. The last significant update to the Final Cut Suite was in '07, IMO.


Lethal

 

[jaduffy108]

I pretty much agree with your assessment. And, Apples track record is proof. Take a look at how often Apple updates software related to their iToys and compare that to how often they issue updates for their professional line. Until FCX came out, when was the last time we saw a substantial update to Final Cut? Yeah... July of 2009 - 2 years ago! That's how long professional Final Cut Pro users have been waiting. No wonder they are pissed.

It's really hard to express the degree to which Apple has screwed over those who embraced their format in the tv broadcast / film industry. "Pissed" really doesn't come close. If one takes the time to go to forums where many pro editors / post supervisors "hang"...creative cow, etc...it's obvious the backlash is going to be swift and massive.

But "massive" within our world is teeny, tiny compared to the enormous potential audience Apple has with FCPX for people creating content for the web and their mobile iOS devices. As I've said before, I really don't think Apple cares...which gives an added "charge" to our pissed-off-ness.

 

[jaduffy108]

You make is sound like they didn't know that this would be a fiasco. This was all part of a long-term strategy. Steve Jobs is not going to get up and make some kind of "we blew it" announcement because in their eyes, nothing is wrong that an update won't take care of... or 3rd parties will supply if you really must have it. This new software is NOT geared towards typical professionals. Apple is clearly going after the weekend video editor and youtube type person. Looking ahead, practically every consumer device is going to have some type of video recording function, and Apple thinks that is where the money is. They are concentrating on getting those people to use FCX to edit their iPhone or DSLR footage so they can post it to social networks with ease. Better to have a couple million people paying $300, than to cater to the high-end crowd who have stringent and finicky requirements.

I think you're spot on. But...it sure wasn't "ok" to mislead people / companies into investing millions of dollars into your product, have individuals build their resumes around your workflow...etc, etc, etc...all based on promises of long term support....and then EOL it with a shocking degree of callousness. That is deeply offensive.

 

[jaduffy108]

The two year update cycle is par for the course, but I wouldn't even call the '09 update substantial. It was downright anemic. The last significant update to the Final Cut Suite was in '07, IMO.


Lethal

I would agree.

 

[KnightWRX]

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused at this point. Wasn't Rosetta supposed to use Carbon libraries? And Lion would have drop those and that is the reason why FCPX has been rewritten in Cocoa and also take advantage of 64bit and GCD and such?

Carbon is a 32 bit API that is mostly source compatible with the older Mac frameworks found in Classic. It is available for both Intel and PPC. You can very much compile Carbon code straight to native Intel x86 machine code, and the Carbon x86 32 bit librairies are available on Lion.

Rosetta is a PPC emulator that requires a full PPC build of every Carbon/Cocoa/Quicktime/etc library on the system. It is not an API.

The only reason to rewrite your apps to Cocoa is to get 64 bit support, since Apple promised but never shipped Carbon 64 bit.

 

[Durendal]

Probably not

As is clear from my "vibe"... I'm really getting annoyed with people who marginalize what pro editors working in FCP environments are now facing.
Responses like "just keep using FCP7", etc or the nonsense charlituna is spewing...shockingly clueless.

I'm utterly clueless about a lot of things, but I hope I don't go around spouting off about stuff I have no idea what I'm talking about....too often

And when I do ... I can only hope I listen when someone comes along to point out my silliness.

I don't think anyone is advocating the use of FCP7 until the end of time. It's more along the lines of staying with it for another few months if possible until FCPX gets some updates. If you need to upgrade now and FCPX doesn't cut the mustard then go for Adobe, Avid, etc.

 

[jaduffy108]

Yeah, now explain how that supports the original post on Apple placing NO value on the concerns an opinions of the pro market. Re-read that quote. Please, do tell, because what Gruber is saying is that Apple is targeting the biggest market first (prosumer, largely) and working up to the pro market. It means they're starting out by appeasing the largest group of customers initially and then moving up. If they didn't care at all about the pros then they wouldn't even bother listening to them or working to implement the features that pros want. It would have been nice to see FCPX be more complete upon release, but this is what we get. Wait a few months and you'll see how completely wrong you are about Apple not caring about the pro market at all.

Durendal...
Looking at FCPX, it's overwhelmingly obvious Apple did not listen to or even ask "pros" what we need. Apple removed many critical, MUST HAVE capabilities for pros. FCPX is a non-starter. Period. I will bet you the house & farm Apple doesn't "fix" this in a "few months". I sincerely hope I'm proven wrong but I don't think that's even possible. Plugins that significantly increase the complexity of our workflows is NOT a solution.

If Apple comes out with a timeline for replacing these must-have capabilities within the next 4-6 weeks, then they've got a shot of keeping FCP in broadcast tv / film workflows. If they don't, they're toast imo.

And again...I really don't think Apple cares. I think they know exactly what they've done...and that's why "we" are all the more angry. It's unthinkable that the Apple FCP team didn't realize the enormous importance of these capabilities. So I (and the rest of the tv broadcast / film world) need to simply accept we've been lied to...accept Apple screwed us...get over it and stop venting on forums like this... buy an AVID and start building a new skillset. And never trust Apple again.

 

[mac9000]

I've used Premier, and it's a piece of junk. It has a bad interface, lacks features, and is crashy.

 

[mac9000]

The two year update cycle is par for the course, but I wouldn't even call the '09 update substantial. It was downright anemic. The last significant update to the Final Cut Suite was in '07, IMO.


Lethal

I miss pro Apple
Anyway, how did you get away with your signature having a full line of punctuation?

 

[jaduffy108]

I've used Premier, and it's a piece of junk. It has a bad interface, lacks features, and is crashy.

I haven't tried Premiere since a doc I cut in India (2005). It sucked then but I hear it's gotten much better. You would know better than I.

If you work with tapeless formats and don't work in multi-user environments, FCPX will probably be a joy to use.

 

[mac9000]

I haven't tried Premiere since a doc I cut in India (2005). It sucked then but I hear it's gotten much better. You would know better than I.

If you work with tapeless formats and don't work in multi-user environments, FCPX will probably be a joy to use.

The Premier I used was CS3. I forget what year CS3 was...

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Yeah, now explain how that supports the original post on Apple placing NO value on the concerns an opinions of the pro market. Re-read that quote. Please, do tell, because what Gruber is saying is that Apple is targeting the biggest market first (prosumer, largely) and working up to the pro market. It means they're starting out by appeasing the largest group of customers initially and then moving up. If they didn't care at all about the pros then they wouldn't even bother listening to them or working to implement the features that pros want. It would have been nice to see FCPX be more complete upon release, but this is what we get. Wait a few months and you'll see how completely wrong you are about Apple not caring about the pro market at all.

Thanks, I understood what it meant when I posted it. I guess because of your general hostility you didn't see that I agree with Gruber, and from what it seems, I agree with you.

Don't let that stop you from sounding like a "toolbox", though.

 

[macmuchos]

I use both products professionally. If Avid would fully support AppleProRes, I would now leave FCP behind.

Exactly. Avid needs to:

1. Implement native ProRes support
2. Allow us who have FCP to use our existing I/O hardware (aja LHi board in our case).

No way we're buying FCP X. You can bet we're re-auditioning Avid and Premiere (shoulda never left Avid 10 years ago)

 

[dbates]

Thrid party solutions

I think one wildcard in all of this is Apple's reliance on third party providers to fill in some of the missing functionality of FCP X.

I'm a long time user of Avid, and when I had to cut a project on Final Cut Pro, one of the most pleasant surprises was the inter-app integration. If you needed some advanced sound work, just send your sequence over to Soundtrack Pro (and then just bring it back... easy). And, even though Compressor wasn't that easy to learn, it still benefited from its close integration with all of the other pro apps. Same with DVD Studio Pro.

One of Avid's big downfalls is (in my opinion) its reliance on third parties for things like DVD creation and compression. Sorensen Squeeze just wasn't that easy to master, and never worked right or worked easily for me. DVD creation was equally obtuse. We ended up just playing out the timeline and recording the DVD live. And even OMF movement to Pro Tools (which, of course, Avid owns) only worked more or less correctly in the last few years. Consolidating a sequence for correct OMF export in the past was just a nightmare. And doing this with all of the craziness and deadline pressure of network television just makes it worse.

My point in all of this is that Apple seems to be giving up one of its greatest strengths by relying on third parties to provide some of the core functionality that it used to provide natively.

Might be more of a bumpy road than anyone at Apple anticipated.

We'll see...

 

[writestuffla]

I've Worked with Premiere 5

Their video card support is really poor. It is my tool of last resort. Yes, AE blows Motion away, but both Adobe and Avid are horribly overpriced and their slashing their prices still makes it cost prohibitive to the average indie filmmaker.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Exactly. Avid needs to:

1. Implement native ProRes support
2. Allow us who have FCP to use our existing I/O hardware (aja LHi board in our case).

Avid can work with ProRes if you have the read-only version of the codec installed (it might come w/QT 7 now, not sure). You can't export to ProRes though because Apple won't release the full version of the codec (only way to get it is to buy FCP).

Avid is also working on greater support for third party hardware from what I hear. Matrox MXO2 mini will get you output only and the AJA Io Express is full in/out support. I know you have the LHi but maybe that support will come.


Lethal

 

[Leddy]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I think being able to slash 50% off your original selling price really says something about just how much you (over)value your product.

This is great news for the many users looking to switch.

I think FCP X will soon be discounted. Pro users won't be buying it and it's too pricey for the average dabbler in video editing.

 

[Sketchbookmedia]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

For me.. I won't be changing my workflow anytime soon! Whether to FCPx or avid.. I'll happily keep going with fcp7 for anouther couple of years.. Honestly too busy to relearn ANY new workflow.. and am not going to risk cash- flow. I'm not going to be changing what works out purely of spite. If I look back to when FCP was first released no pro users would touch it.. It wasn't till version 3&4 they started jumping on board.
I think Apple know the pro user better than we think, & know they are slow to adopt anyway.. We've seen it with OS9 - OSX & when FCP first came on the scene.. Even saw in pre press companies hold on to quark for years without even a hint of an update! (in that Case the cheaper less capable indesign slowly crept in, but it was atleast 3 years before industry adopted it) in that case all the young up and coming designers learnt indesign because they could afford it and quark was way out of reach.. I think something similar will happen here.. All the students with their DSLRs will grab it, learn it. And in a year or so when it's upto speed we'll all change to it.

I could be wrong & apple may have blown off the pro user.. But I believe they think longer term than that. I know I won't be changing anytime soon but I hope when I am FCPX is ready..

 

[robeddie]

It's really hard to express the degree to which Apple has screwed over those who embraced their format in the tv broadcast / film industry. "Pissed" really doesn't come close. If one takes the time to go to forums where many pro editors / post supervisors "hang"...creative cow, etc...it's obvious the backlash is going to be swift and massive.

But "massive" within our world is teeny, tiny compared to the enormous potential audience Apple has with FCPX for people creating content for the web and their mobile iOS devices. As I've said before, I really don't think Apple cares...which gives an added "charge" to our pissed-off-ness.

I'm not so sure. I think at $299, it's expensive enough to make many hobbyists just decide to stick with iMovie - especially with the negative publicity. Creating web and mobile content is just fine with iMovie.

Which leaves FCPx kind of in a no man's land: Not good enough for hi-end, but too expensive and no killer feature that makes the most others want to spend $300, when they have a perfectly fine alternative.

To bolster my point, note that the total number of reviews of FCPx has almost stalled. There were more than a thousand reviews within a few days of the release and now there's just a little over 14 hundred.

If the number of posted reviews is in any way indicative of the sales pace, since that initial burst, FCPx is not selling well at all.

 

[Nostromo]

This is a challenge to Apple and I'm curious how it will respond.

 

[2jaded2care]

You make is sound like they didn't know that this would be a fiasco. This was all part of a long-term strategy. Steve Jobs is not going to get up and make some kind of "we blew it" announcement because in their eyes, nothing is wrong that an update won't take care of... or 3rd parties will supply if you really must have it. This new software is NOT geared towards typical professionals. Apple is clearly going after the weekend video editor and youtube type person. Looking ahead, practically every consumer device is going to have some type of video recording function, and Apple thinks that is where the money is. They are concentrating on getting those people to use FCX to edit their iPhone or DSLR footage so they can post it to social networks with ease. Better to have a couple million people paying $300, than to cater to the high-end crowd who have stringent and finicky requirements.

So Apple's long-term strategy is to p*ss off its professional customer base? If that's the case, it worked brilliantly.

 

[cheesymogul]

Exactly, the only real issue is that you can't legally get more copies of FCP 7 if you need to expand. Apple should really address that issue and then probably everything would be just fine unless FCP X never gets new features.

Why would frustrated people have any qualms about "stretching" their FCP7 license, when Apple a) has screwed them over with their current product not being useable (yet) to bring money on the table and b) obviously isn't the least interested in selling the old product...

APPLE DOESN't CARE ABOUT FCP7 ANYMORE!
So they won't give a rat's behind on how many machine you'll install it.

Besides, who said the famous line "great artists steal"?

I was in the same situation when upgrading to an Intel Mac shortly before FCS3 came out. Coming from a G4 I was still working with FCS1/FCP5.
My perfectly legal FCP5 Power Mac version acted buggy as hell on the new machine. Unfortunately at that time Apple did no longer sell the universal binary update required to make FCS1 Intel-compatible either.

Take a guess: Did I waste any money on the legally available, but soon to be up- and outdated FCS2, or did I get the universal binary fix via "alternative" sources to bridge the time until FCS3 was released?

 

[chukronos]

(2) Even those who are more realistic and even home users not working in the industry at all, when they decide what to buy that will ask "what do the pros use?" and they will buy that. Pretty much the same as when amateur photographer see all those white Canon SLR camera lenses on the sidelines of pro sports games and then decide to buy Canon themselves "becase that is what pros use." Dumb reasoning, but that's the way it works.

It is dumb reasoning, but it is the way it works. That was the reason I first bought PS. I had no clue how to use it, but the pros used it, so. . .

Now, I use it professionally (actually, the whole design premium suite). And that, is the way it is. If the pros aren't using it, then most prosumers won't use it either. Then the questions becomes, will the amateur be willing to pay a $300 premium to use FCPX over imovie? Especially, since it will be much more than what they actually need. Time will tell.

I completely understand where the pros are coming from on this issue. You have a product that still works. But, it is in dire need of an update so it will be competitive with other software already in the market. You get the update and your current product is EOL'd. But, the update, while innovative in design, is less useful than the current product, not backwards compatible, and still not as good as the competition's software.

Will FCPX be updated to what is currently available via other software companies? maybe. If I was a pro, the question moving forward is, is it worth the risk? There is a possibility that it will never be on par with other professional software.