Apple Demos Final Cut Pro X at NAB 2011

[chirpie]

I'm not too familiar with the FC app, but I'm wondering if this FCSX is the newer version of the previous $999 application... Why'd they drop the price by ~$700?

That's not quite right.

The $999 application wasn't just an application, it was a suite of applications.

Motion, Compressor, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro... all of these apps were part of that $999 umbrella.

That's why I'm surprised people are amazed by the price... it used to be this price when it was standalone a few years back.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Reading the comments about $299 being a pretty good deal truly makes me laugh. Ten years ago a system of such capacity would be > $50K and you're downplaying $299.

Grow some perspective.

Did you ever think that their perspective is that of a younger person newer to the industry who never had to pay those ridiculous prices? Sounds like you could take your own advice.


Back on topic:
I'd love to see Shake revitalized in the same way. There is some power lurking beneath the rewrite of FCP that can be spread elsewhere.

 

[tba03]

Hoping we see some sort of massive overhaul of Logic soon. Would be awesome.

please apple, don't make that
you already messed logic enough as of L9, don't dumb it down further and make it a garage band pro

and could you please bring real waveforms display in your apps? logic has the crappiest stereo waveform ever, FCP had a nice one(tho slow) but the new one loks uber crappy, not at all pro IMOHO

 

[crackbookpro]

I'm getting this, but I will still be using FC Studio 7 a ton... I agree with both sides a lot on these ongoing threads/disagreements on the new release of FCPX.

I altogether, do think it will be a great release, I just know some want some other features, functions, benefits... and are waiting.

 

[totoum]

Folks who are criticizing people who are expressing their concern about the new version, please read this post.

I thought it was mentioned that all keyboard shortcuts were still there so I don't get what the concern in that post is about

 

[hvfsl]

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Well I love the new final cut, much better than I expected. I especially like how it sorts out the colour and audio when you import.

But then I am more of a hobbest, I might do the odd wedding or school play which I get paid for, but I generally use it on my holiday videos.

 

[Affirmed]

Hold all tickets

There is very very little to tell from this presentation. There are only 2 things that everyone can agree are huge developments (at this times) - 64bit and Background rendering.

The third huge development will be Media Management - IF it is actually improved. Nobody knows until we see it.

I run post on a current television series that has 10 seats of Final Cut Studio running right now. Not one of my editors sees anything in FCPX to get excited about ... yet. We are too entrenched in our workflows to get excited about switching to a new interface.

At the end of the day it's about the work. Sure, we'll switch if there are overwhelming advantages, but you can't tell anything from this presentation. And like all software, version 1 will have bugs and nobody will be using this product in a professional environment until it's been thoroughly vetted. They might as well rename it Final Cut 2012.

 

[cambox]

Bye bye FCP

Well it was rumoured for some time and we all waited with baited breath but was Apple seriously going to end the pro app that started them off to stardom? Sadly yes they have. What genius decides to make a pro app accessible to the masses? We who use FCP have to make money from our business, so we need a little bit of smoke and mirrors to make our business needed, otherwise our clients will just get a 16 year old in off the street, download FCP (sorry imovie Pro or whatever they have decided to call it) and there you go we are out of work!

I can see the business sense for Apple but they have now taken it all away from us who stayed by them for all these years.. Thanks Apple for the kick in the teeth. I am a ''Pro'' app user and have been for well over a decade and will be sad to move over to a new system but alas nothing lasts for ever.

RIP FCP
Born 2000 died 2011

 

[teasphere]

I've just gone and read through the tweets from @fcpsupermeet, which describe the event. From comments like this (I pick this one as an example, loads of people are expressing the sentiment) I was expecting something really consumer-focussed, rather than:



Now, I'm not a video pro. I'll admit I'm a hobbyist: I was part of my university's film making society, and I've done various projects myself, but it's not my professional gig. But I can't see anything here that shows Apple moving away from the pro market. As far as I can tell they've done a really ambitious ground-up Cocoa rewrite of FCP, streamlining the workflow to make it quicker to use (no more render dialogs!), and at the same time building in loads of new tech like colour matching throughout.

Is the only thing people are bothered about the fact that they changed the UI? Because other than that, I just can't see what the complaints are about. We haven't heard any actual confirmed statements of features being removed, so why assume that any crucial ones have been? They'd have been nuts to switch away from a timeline-based system like iMovie did, and so of course they didn't do that. They rewrote everything from scratch to remove a bunch of legacy baggage (like the lack of multithreading, and the Carbon UI that prevented it going 64 bit), which is awesome, but I completely can't see any evidence of a change of focus.

Amorya

Just to clarify, I was speaking more to true high-end pro scalability... and I tried to be clear that while the product is still "pro" software alone is not the whole story. Many products in the truly pro arena are highly scalable and it just seems that Apple is moving away from this and back to single computer apps. No servers, no farms, no virtualization, etc. and as I said I am an IT professional and have and do support many systems like I mentioned and Apple is becoming essentially impossible to utilize in an environment like that.

We're talking about two different things. You are talking from an end-user/single user "pro" side and I am talking about multi-user, large-scale, modern datacenter, "pro" side. And also, I'm saying that I'd LOVE to see Apple more in that space, not less as it is going.

 

[gusapple]

Well it was rumoured for some time and we all waited with baited breath but was Apple seriously going to end the pro app that started them off to stardom? Sadly yes they have. What genius decides to make a pro app accessible to the masses? We who use FCP have to make money from our business, so we need a little bit of smoke and mirrors to make our business needed, otherwise our clients will just get a 16 year old in off the street, download FCP (sorry imovie Pro or whatever they have decided to call it) and there you go we are out of work!

I can see the business sense for Apple but they have now taken it all away from us who stayed by them for all these years.. Thanks Apple for the kick in the teeth. I am a ''Pro'' app user and have been for well over a decade and will be sad to move over to a new system but alas nothing lasts for ever.

RIP FCP
Born 2000 died 2011

I think that this is counter-intuitive. By a long shot. Why would Apple leave their customer base? They still are including all of their "smoke and mirrors" but with a dumbed down option. All that I can see from it is that file management is FINALLY going to be better than a manual system. And anyways, Apple updated the UI from something that was popular in 2000 to something that looks better for today. Plus, there are lots of people who want to start using Pro apps but don't know how. I think that it is awesome that Apple is creating interest in an industry that will grow rapidly in the next few years.

 

[tk421]

Nobody I know that's a professional editor (as opposed to a hobbyist) is very excited. If I had to sum up the opinions in two sentences, it would be: It looks like a mixed bag. I need to hear more.

My thoughts: On the surface, they seem to have addressed a lot of "problems" that didn't exist for me. At the same time, they did NOT address what I found to be the largest shortcomings: Media Management, and Multi-Editor Support. Which leads me to believe that it targets a different audience than I am. For example, I didn't see anything that makes it better for feature film use. But a lot of automated stuff (audio processing, color correction, etc.) will make it better for wedding videos or projects with really small budgets.

Some things, like making audio and video merged in a single track, sound like a drawback, not a feature. But I would have to try it out myself. Maybe it'd be good once I got used to the new way of doing things.

There were some things that sounded good. Utilizing multiple cores, 64 bit, background rendering, editing while ingesting, and PluralEyes-like audio syncing. Of course all this depends on how they're implemented. Just like I might actually like merging audio and video, I might end up not liking these things (for example if you can't disable background rendering). One other "feature" I really like is the price, but that's secondary to the actual functionality.

I guess we'll see. I'm interested in hearing more.

 

[Jamieserg]

Keynote

I like the new Final Cut Interface the old one was getting tired. Plus rendering in the background will save me SO much time. A lot of my time is spent hitting cmd+r at the moment. Looks like a brilliant release but as always i'll save my final judgement for when I get my hands on it.

 

[cambox]

Original post by gusapple

I think that this is counter-intuitive. By a long shot. Why would Apple leave their customer base? They still are including all of their "smoke and mirrors" but with a dumbed down option. All that I can see from it is that file management is FINALLY going to be better than a manual system. And anyways, Apple updated the UI from something that was popular in 2000 to something that looks better for today. Plus, there are lots of people who want to start using Pro apps but don't know how. I think that it is awesome that Apple is creating interest in an industry that will grow rapidly in the next few years.

I think what you are talking about is called Imovie? Accessible by 10 year olds and its wonderful for that and for people who do weddings etc, but in my world we use the traditional layout because it works just fine and why fix something thats not broken? 64 bit is great and yes we need that but not the shinny useless bits that kids want on the iphones, ipads and Garageband. I think Apple has lost the plot here and also lost the respect of pro app users..well those who truly are pro FCP users.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

What genius decides to make a pro app accessible to the masses? We who use FCP have to make money from our business, so we need a little bit of smoke and mirrors to make our business needed, otherwise our clients will just get a 16 year old in off the street, download FCP (sorry imovie Pro or whatever they have decided to call it) and there you go we are out of work!

So basically what you are saying is that you are a two bit hack and a kid with just an ounce of creativity can easily replace you because any kid can afford a $300 program, whereas a $900 one keeps them artificially out of the game.

The really ironic thing about your post is that FCP 1.0 was a cost revolution itself bringing video editing to he masses for really the first time ever, which you took advantage of. Now that Apple is doing it again and you are at risk you seemingly outraged.

 

[Blipp]

Well it was rumoured for some time and we all waited with baited breath but was Apple seriously going to end the pro app that started them off to stardom? Sadly yes they have. What genius decides to make a pro app accessible to the masses? We who use FCP have to make money from our business, so we need a little bit of smoke and mirrors to make our business needed, otherwise our clients will just get a 16 year old in off the street, download FCP (sorry imovie Pro or whatever they have decided to call it) and there you go we are out of work!

I can see the business sense for Apple but they have now taken it all away from us who stayed by them for all these years.. Thanks Apple for the kick in the teeth. I am a ''Pro'' app user and have been for well over a decade and will be sad to move over to a new system but alas nothing lasts for ever.

RIP FCP
Born 2000 died 2011

If a 16 year old kid getting their hands on your editing software is enough to put you out of business then you're probably already in trouble with or without this release. Also they clearly are still calling it Final Cut Pro, so nice try with that half-assed snub.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Well it was rumoured for some time and we all waited with baited breath but was Apple seriously going to end the pro app that started them off to stardom? Sadly yes they have. What genius decides to make a pro app accessible to the masses? We who use FCP have to make money from our business, so we need a little bit of smoke and mirrors to make our business needed, otherwise our clients will just get a 16 year old in off the street, download FCP (sorry imovie Pro or whatever they have decided to call it) and there you go we are out of work!

Competing with 16 year olds is a bad position to be in.

I can see the business sense for Apple but they have now taken it all away from us who stayed by them for all these years.. Thanks Apple for the kick in the teeth. I am a ''Pro'' app user and have been for well over a decade and will be sad to move over to a new system but alas nothing lasts for ever.

The only thing you ever compete on is talent and quality of work. If that is threatening to you, shifting to a new system won't solve that problem. Is having an expensive, or alternative program going to make you more competitive against the 16 year old or the client doing it themselves?

By the way, wasn't Final Cut Pro (not studio, but just the app) only $299 when it first came out? Seems to me Apple's been keeping that price point consistent.

 

[cambox]

So basically what you are saying is that you are a two bit hack and a kid with just an ounce of creativity can easily replace you because any kid can afford a $300 program, whereas a $900 one keeps them artificially out of the game.

The really ironic thing about your post is that FCP 1.0 was a cost revolution itself bringing video editing to he masses for really the first time ever, which you took advantage of. Now that Apple is doing it again and you are at risk you seemingly outraged.

Try and get your facts right before spouting off and obviously you are no pro app user. Premier was before FCP and FCP was taken from premier as the person who built FCP was the same. Premier was the first cost revolution not FCP.1 as Macs didn't sell many at that point. It stands to reason that if you dilute something in price it will then be worth less, and in business you need a premium product to keep your head above water.. Its all very well Apple releasing garage band as this is ment for kids and individuals to play around with and when or if they decide to go and pursue this for a career they can up sell them to Logic or Pro Tools etc. This is a huge step up for that route, but what I am saying is this: If everyone has the same tools then how can it be called a pro app? The new FCP is pretty much based on Imovie and for those who dont except that try and use them both together and then you will see.

Take the Red camera.. this could sell for 5k and everyone would have one, so why would you pay a daily rate of $1500 to have someone use a camera that only costs $5k? Wake up and smell the coffee but as your post indicates you dont live in the real world as companies will pay more for something they feel is better than it really is. Its simple business logic and psychology. Companies pay a premium for a professional using professional gear not an app you download from the app store.

 

[AppleDroid]

As a new After Effects user this is good news! I prefer Final Cut to Premiere but I never liked Motion so to be able to get it for cheap (as a stand alone) would be a wonderful option.

 

[dawindmg08]

Watch and learn

Everyone needs to sit back, have a cup of coffee and WATCH THIS:
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/13/video-of-final-cut-pro-x-introduction-now-available/

I think you'll find a lot of your questions answered. And if you still want to hate on it, then that's your prerogative.

 

[Blipp]

So basically what you are saying is that you are a two bit hack and a kid with just an ounce of creativity can easily replace you because any kid can afford a $300 program, whereas a $900 one keeps them artificially out of the game.

The really ironic thing about your post is that FCP 1.0 was a cost revolution itself bringing video editing to he masses for really the first time ever, which you took advantage of. Now that Apple is doing it again and you are at risk you seemingly outraged.

Try and get your facts right before spouting off and obviously you are no pro app user. Premier was before FCP and FCP was taken from premier as the person who built FCP was the same. Premier was the first cost revolution not FCP.1 as Macs didn't sell many at that point. It stands to reason that if you dilute something in price it will then be worth less, and in business you need a premium product to keep your head above water.. Its all very well Apple releasing garage band as this is ment for kids and individuals to play around with and when or if they decide to go and pursue this for a career they can up sell them to Logic or Pro Tools etc. This is a huge step up for that route, but what I am saying is this: If everyone has the same tools then how can it be called a pro app? The new FCP is pretty much based on Imovie and for those who dont except that try and use them both together and then you will see.

Take the Red camera.. this could sell for 5k and everyone would have one, so why would you pay a daily rate of $1500 to have someone use a camera that only costs $5k? Wake up and smell the coffee but as your post indicates you dont live in the real world as companies will pay more for something they feel is better than it really is. Its simple business logic and psychology. Companies pay a premium for a professional using professional gear not an app you download from the app store.

You're still just spouting the same point they are ragging on you about which is that the only thing separating you from everyone else is that you can afford the big toys and they can't. Where is the talent, customer service, work ethic and turn around time that sets you apart? A "pro" app isn't pro because it costs more, it's pro because of the tools it offers to the user. Just because some schmo can sit down in FCPX and crap out a family video doesn't mean he knows how to use all the tools together to make something truly unique with a professional's touch. Just because I own a tool box and some wrenches doesn't mean I'm going to put my mechanic out of business.

 

[DrDomVonDoom]

So basically what you are saying is that you are a two bit hack and a kid with just an ounce of creativity can easily replace you because any kid can afford a $300 program, whereas a $900 one keeps them artificially out of the game.

The really ironic thing about your post is that FCP 1.0 was a cost revolution itself bringing video editing to he masses for really the first time ever, which you took advantage of. Now that Apple is doing it again and you are at risk you seemingly outraged.

Try and get your facts right before spouting off and obviously you are no pro app user. Premier was before FCP and FCP was taken from premier as the person who built FCP was the same. Premier was the first cost revolution not FCP.1 as Macs didn't sell many at that point. It stands to reason that if you dilute something in price it will then be worth less, and in business you need a premium product to keep your head above water.. Its all very well Apple releasing garage band as this is ment for kids and individuals to play around with and when or if they decide to go and pursue this for a career they can up sell them to Logic or Pro Tools etc. This is a huge step up for that route, but what I am saying is this: If everyone has the same tools then how can it be called a pro app? The new FCP is pretty much based on Imovie and for those who dont except that try and use them both together and then you will see.

Take the Red camera.. this could sell for 5k and everyone would have one, so why would you pay a daily rate of $1500 to have someone use a camera that only costs $5k? Wake up and smell the coffee but as your post indicates you dont live in the real world as companies will pay more for something they feel is better than it really is. Its simple business logic and psychology. Companies pay a premium for a professional using professional gear not an app you download from the app store.

I think that is 'Professional' world that your living in is starting to change. Applications aren't just a forte of a few high and mighty code monkeys. For example I could go get Xcode off the App store and download it for 5 bucks, thats all you need to make a Killer iPhone app, 5 bucks. Angry Birds, made millions of dollers, and it started with 5 bucks. It could be used by a Fortune 500 company to create a in-shop app that can do much for the company, or it can be used by some kid in his room to create a game. This idea of there is a special elite out there is changing. Technology is embraced by everyone, and everyone born today will have the same oppertunity's to use them. Computers or Video Editing isn't just something that is done by geeks in a basement on some College campus using machines the size of desks. Its done by Granny's, Kiddo's, everyone. High Definition cameras are affordable to anyone with a little skill in saving. People aren't gonna need 'Professionals' forever. Why hire a Photographer for a wedding, when I can afford just as good Camera, photo editing software for less then it would be to hire them?

We can't keep professionals around just for the sake of keeping them around. If they are productive, if society needs them, then they will do fine. I'm sure your industry needs you, and plenty of regular joe's do to. But not forever, definatly not with the next generation of script kiddies and technology savvy teens.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I thought it was mentioned that all keyboard shortcuts were still there so I don't get what the concern in that post is about

It was mentioned in this thread with nothing to back it up. So far, with all of the video that's now on the web, there's no mention of shortcuts, remapping, etc.

There should always be concern when upgrading to a new app or system. Once you've made the mistake of not having concerns or questions too many times, it'll be second nature.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Wake up and smell the coffee but as your post indicates you dont live in the real world as companies will pay more for something they feel is better than it really is. Its simple business logic and psychology.

Yes, how will you stay in business if 16 year olds can undercut you on price and have the same quality?

Companies pay a premium for a professional using professional gear not an app you download from the app store.

Does it matter where a carpenter buys his hammer?

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Does it matter where a carpenter buys his hammer?

Usually no but with the AppStore no corporation can buy anything. All licenses belong to the attached AppleID that makes the purchase. Its a huge flaw in the AppStore Model.

 

[Eidorian]

The professional amateur, amateur professional arguments aside.

It came to me when I was trying to fall asleep last night that Apple only really wants to get you to make an AppleID and then entice you to bleed your wallet dry. Now I am quite sure the shareholders enjoy that but people really appear to have little control over their impulses at $0.99.

Death by a thousand paper cuts or...

When am I going to need a birth certificate and SSN to get an AppleID?