Apple's Final Cut Pro X Woes Boost Sales of Adobe Video Tools for Mac by 45%

[roadbloc]

So much for people adapting to FCPX.

 

[talmy]

We can't know sales, but one barameter (not scientific of course) would be to look at the NUMBER of reviews for FCPX.

After the first week, when people were rushing to buy it sight unseen, FCPX already had 1500 reviews in the mac app store.

Now here, almost 3 months later, there are only 2007 reviews.

Only people who buy FCPX can review it in the mac app store, so the glacial growth of the number of reviews in the past 3 months may hint at the sales pace as well.

We do know it is the second top grossing and 13th top paid, outselling 16th Aperture which isn't controversial.

Number of reviews doesn't tell much. People rush to give reviews when a product first comes out, But why review now when there are already so many? It would be very difficult to get a "helpful" score now so that one's review would ever get read!

If you look at the number of stars, it's pretty much a 50%/50% love/hate relationship with few in-between.

 

[Jiten]

Hobbyist here. I'm probably what the professional Apple video editing folks call as the bottom feeding iMovie users. Been using iMove for 3 months and loved it for basic editing for my presentation, business and family outings. Bought FCX and was pleasantly surprised how good and easy to use it is (for me).

I'm sure the pro folks have very legitimate concerns but for use unwashed iMovie masses, FCPX is just fantastic.

 

[acearchie]

We can't know sales, but one barameter (not scientific of course) would be to look at the NUMBER of reviews for FCPX.

After the first week, when people were rushing to buy it sight unseen, FCPX already had 1500 reviews in the mac app store.

Now here, almost 3 months later, there are only 2007 reviews.

Only people who buy FCPX can review it in the mac app store, so the glacial growth of the number of reviews in the past 3 months may hint at the sales pace as well.

Or the fact that once 1500 similar opinions have been heard people wonder if there is anything new they can add to the argument.

I personally don't review apps on the App store normally because I am late to jump on the bandwagon and instead of searching for up and coming apps I just like to download what others have already tried and tested.

For FCPX this was not the case as it is one of the things that is more important to me. I still didn't post a review as I just say pages and pages of whining/complaining/complaining about other complainers and just felt that my opinion would not be heard so I instead came on here and posted my views.

 

[danimal99]

I am seriously asking. I like a few things about FCPx, and I really like one or two. I don't want to give it short shrift.

I can't speak to the noise issue, as I haven't seen that.

Besides being a software developer in my day job and on the side as an iOS app developer, I recently went back to school and earned a B.A. in Communication-Broadcasting. We produced both live and live to tape TV shows during the program, and used FCP throughout the program. I bought my own Panasonic DVX100B and FCS3 so I could shoot and edit on my own time without checking out school cameras or having rely on an open seat in the lab. I bought FCPX a couple of weeks ago and reimported a couple of weddings I shot and am working on that are due in a few weeks. I'm certainly no expert on FCPX, but am getting familiar with it and so far like what I see.

The only feature I see missing from it right now is the multicam editing, which I used extensively in one of the weddings. However, I'd already completed the ceremony in FCP7 with 3 different camera angles, so I'm not hurting to have it available. You can do a good approximation of it though from what I have seen, although not a perfect replacement. The results of course would look the same regardless of which FCP you used, you just don't have the ease of switching cameras on the fly and building a broadcast.

Being able to fully utilize the computer's resources (CPU, GPU, RAM) is a huge plus. Background rendering, plus. The organization features, big step up. The flexibility of moving clips around, and collapsing elaborate clips and edits into the timeline, plus. Auditioning clips, HUGE plus. You can set exact duration of mattes and transitions. You can edit extensive controls of any effects and filters. Some functionality of some filters may be improved reducing the amount of controls needed, but the power is still there. It's not just a pretty new interface, there is a lot of power under the shine.

You implied you haven't taxed the application yet, so there may be a lot of tricks to discover still. I know I haven't even scratched the surface yet myself. IzzyVideo.com has a very good overview showing many features, and what Izzy did that a lot of people didn't was jump right into the software and figure out what you could do with it, instead of looking for what you can't.

I sold my copy of FCS3 and won't be looking back.

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We can't know sales, but one barameter (not scientific of course) would be to look at the NUMBER of reviews for FCPX.

After the first week, when people were rushing to buy it sight unseen, FCPX already had 1500 reviews in the mac app store.

Now here, almost 3 months later, there are only 2007 reviews.

Only people who buy FCPX can review it in the mac app store, so the glacial growth of the number of reviews in the past 3 months may hint at the sales pace as well.

Most people don't leave reviews for anything. I have an app on the iOS App Store that has over 9,600 sales, but only 65 reviews last time I looked. It's still a 4/5, but the handful of negative reviews sting extra hard because they stand out. Even worse when they're complaints that could have easily been resolved or explained with an email to my support address.

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Ok, Danimal99 (who's handle honors one of my all time favorite Chicago Bears players) do you have an answer?

He didn't whine, he laid out some very specific things that make FCPX a WORSE way of doing things, rather than better.

You made a strong statement without backing it up. He's given you a chance to refute him ... so where'd you go?

To bed, then to work.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

What makes me really wonder why is FCPX still at 10.0.0 ? No update yet. And the app has bugs. Why didn't they close at least some of them. E.g. I assume there must be a memory leak because after some time using it I have to quit and restart.

Is Apple just giving up on Pro Software or will they fight for getting in number 1 again? Something in between is usually not very

 

[mw360]

So Adobe cut the price to 50%, and sales only rose by 45%? That means this month they're making 27.5% less revenue than usual. Normally that would be a pretty bad outcome, not a boasty press release.

 

[Consultant]

It's not about the relative pros and cons of FCP 7 vs FCP X, it's about Apple's propensity to EOL a business line without notice. That's what makes it difficult for companies to commit investment to a corporation that demonstrates no obligation to provide a reliable and transparent future.

Surely it's only Apple that does that.

Let's see. HP just EOL their whole line of PCs, which include enterprise servers.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Surely it's only Apple that does that.

Let's see. HP just EOL their whole line of PCs, which include enterprise servers.

No HP did not do that. They spun it off as its own company. That is very different than EOL. There is still a road map and everyone knows what is coming. The only differences is the label on the product will be something other than HP.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

No HP did not do that. They spun it off as its own company. That is very different than EOL. There is still a road map and everyone knows what is coming. The only differences is the label on the product will be something other than HP.

And not even that (the label change) is certain. I think what HP is doing is not comparable to what Apple is doing .

 

[Nostromo]

What makes me really wonder why is FCPX still at 10.0.0 ? No update yet. And the app has bugs. Why didn't they close at least some of them. E.g. I assume there must be a memory leak because after some time using it I have to quit and restart.

Is Apple just giving up on Pro Software or will they fight for getting in number 1 again? Something in between is usually not very

I don't think so.

After this strong reaction they have to do get a lot right with then next release.

I guess there will be some programmer putting in heavy overtime, filling the bags underneath their eyes with lack of sleep.

 

[jakebrosy]

Fool me once...

I heard the kvetching and moaning about FCPX, but mostly it was about importing legacy work and for me, once I finish a project, it's done. As in dead. So that didn't bother me.

And I really wanted to take advantage of all the cores and memory in my new machine, and the demo at NAB was so exciting!!, so I sprung for the 3 apps and worked on 32 hours of footage for almost a month. A month. A freaking month.

Even bought Izzy's excellent quickstart tutorial. I think the project might have taken a week to complete in FCP7 but I chalked the loss up to a learning curve.

Positives: The timeline was nice. Being able to highlight and tag portions of clips was nice. Color matching was nice (and here come the negatives...) but didn't always turn out like you hoped and there were no fine controls to fix it since color correction is a few big ole buttons without a method to manually input a value for fine control. How do you fix anything with big fat crayola controls? Sound correction is a couple of "fix this" checkboxes - no filters or fine control - just on or off. And background rendering? It's the same as regular rendering but you can still work with the app: if you DO something the background render stops. You still have to let the thing sit unmolested for a few hours to render a couple of hours of video. I was so frustrated that I moved back to FCP7.

Then I deleted that mess-o-stuff and sent an email to Apple Store Support - who promptly and courteously refunded my $429. I added a few dollars, took advantage of the promotion, and upgraded my CS5 Design Premium to the CS5.5 Production Premium.

For now, pressing projects are still in FCP7 (time is money) but when I have a bit of downtime I'll learn the Adobe products and take advantage of my sadly underutilized computing power.

If - IF - Apple revamps FCP to a real professional app I'm not confident I'll jump again. (Fool me once...)

It does feel like a big let-down after >10 years of making money with FCP. Oh well, it was great while it lasted.

 

[toby53]

For me final cut x rocks !

Having just completed a couple of small video projects I had to say something in defense of FCP X.

First off I took the excellent Lynda.com final cut x essentials tutorial by Abba Shapiro. This guy knows his stuff and provided good contrasts between the bones of FCP 7 and FCP X.

I started off using Sony Vegas which is a great windows based video editor but the rest of my career was going MAC so I switched to FCP 7.

I mainly do DVD and web projects by my self ( about 50 projects to date and mostly are events ). Moving from Sony Vegas to FCP 7 was a step backwords. Running on a mac book pro I constantly had to re-render everytime I did a video cut, added an audio track, added a transition or text title... You get beeps when previewing un-rendered media. You never worried about this is Vegas.

FCP X works very well for me. It has been very stable and runs great on my 2009 macbook pro. It renders in the background, you can skim clips and easily make in/out points before bringing them into the time line, it easy to do transitions, you can make compound clips and easily import them into different projects, tap you itunes library for audio, share to the web ...

I hope the real FCP pros can get their important updates soon.

my 2 cents

 

[cgbier]

worked on 32 hours of footage for almost a month. A month. A freaking month.

Even bought Izzy's excellent quickstart tutorial. I think the project might have taken a week to complete in FCP7 but I chalked the loss up to a learning curve.

Weird, it was just the opposite with me. The last 2 months I only have touched FCS for DVDSP.

Audio filters: As those filters are from Logic and STP, there are all parameters and settings available. You just have to click on that tiny icon.

 

[Sackvillenb]

Well. Hopefully this will prevent Apple from messing around with Logic too much in the next update... after FCPX I'm really paranoid that they'll wreck Logic...! Hopefully not!

 

[ericmooreart]

Apple is capable of making mistakes and bad choices, just like any other company. They aren't infallible.

It wasn't a mistake. It was arrogance. And if not arrogance then just plain stupidity

 

[toke lahti]

FYI Apple put the old version back up for sale. The feedback worked!

It isn't for sale the way it used to be.
Not available in apple store or anywhere online and no upgrade at all.

And for those who say that you can use FCS like yesterday, yes, but how long.
FSC has now lived practically 4 years without any significant upgrades.
Unlikely it will ever get anymore any.
If you're a new editor, why would you buy it? No future in it, so it will be forgotten.

If a client asks editor to make a dvd, does editor ask Apple to call the client to tell that dvd's are old fashioned?
Well, DVDSP is now 6 years old and doesn't even have decent templates in 16:9...
Apple has ditched pros so good that there's no way they want them back...

 

[Depressionman]

When marketers take over-it is always **** happening

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I use Adobe Premiere 5.5 on my Mac Pro. Love it. I dont know what Apple was thinking with Final Cut X. Fail.

Not apple.MAREKTERS-they rule everything.SO in theirs stupid brains they were thinking everyone's just stupid.Same is going to happen to Logic.Bye bye apple and sweet dreams.Pro field is not an iPhone area u morons.