Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Video Software Chief Randy Ubillos Retiring After 20 Years at Apple
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
In 10 years, I be all the people we know now and before will have retired. I wonder what Apple would look like in 2025.
The first thing that entered my mind also. One would hope Apple could attract equivalent-caliber talent to replace these long term company 'assets' who have decided on a career path change.
They did add it in after FCP-X but it's horribly slow and not very accurate. It has a very difficult time using camera scratch audio as reference to match boom. That's why pluraleyes is basically automatically budgeted into the purchase if your workflow is going to be premiere in the industry.
Ah, but Apperture was eliminated. Photos is not like the FCP situation. Photos is an iPhoto replacement with improvements. Whilst FCPX was perhaps underwhelming in terms of features (at least to begin with), it was still a great deal above what iMovie was and is (and even iMovie actually lost features from '11 to 10). iPhoto isn't really that much ahead of what iPhoto was in terms of feature set, and is well behind what Apperture was. So I wouldn't call it the same, but I see your point, and hope you're right.
Addendum: Apple even knew it wasn't the same, since they guided users to Lightroom
----------
When iWork got updated, I was screwed for quite a while. I had to keep both the old version (thank God for Time Machine) and the new version to be able to complete my studies, because a lot of the features I relied on were missing, and compatibility with Office files was crippled with the missing features. I didn't start using Final Cut before 10.1 (with the exception of a few short trials), so I never got to feel the features loss, but I love and rely on the app, and am happy to see features come back, which I know were in FCP7. I'd be pretty sad to see Final Cut lose support and disappear, as the free updates are part of why I prefer it so much over other solutions, such as Premier (which generally also just ****s with my workflow). And whilst I've gotten to like the "new" iWork, I still sometimes miss the old iWork. Especially the design. So simple.
Last edited:
Maybe Randy is leaving because he was forced to dumb down FCP into iMovie Pro and not allowed to improve Aperture because of other priorities at Apple. Maybe he did wreck the Pro apps because of poor priorities. He was there for twenty years during the really bad times and the crazy success times. Maybe the pro apps worked in spite of him, but I doubt it. This doesn't feel good to me and I'm also sick of the pro apps being dumbed down or left to die, when consumer ones could be introduced or improved separately.
I hope we can get real pro apps back or supported, but it doesn't look promising to me, seeing they killed FCP before X was anywhere near useful and dumped Aperture in favour of a new iPhoto, along with Color, Shake, Logic, etc, for bits to be included in other products.
It doesn't seem the pro market is loud enough any more to be properly supported and that reorienting of priorities is disturbing.
I hope to be proved wrong (with products, not abuse).
Actually Logic is the one app that's still going very well. I'm a musician primarly, and have been using it since the Emagic days. On music forums, i remember everyone was getting convinced Logic was going to get shelved, because there was a big 2 years without update, and then Bang ! They hit us with an awesome update, and again another smaller but significant update a few months ago.
One thing that may play, is that a big chunk of the original devloppers are still in Germany. So maybe the team has more freedom than the Aperture or Fcpx team, but Logic is the one app that's still going very strong and very competitive vs other DAWs
Great Software
I am so glad I can post a thank you to Randy Ubillos.
I came from the Windows platform and was so happily astonished at the ease I had learning to use Final Cut Pro.
The software was simply stunning in the offerings. I had never seen so many different functions. I could not resist using every one either. I made dozens of short videos with flipping, twisting titles and music.
I am a freak about editing too and every wish was satisfied with the kind of ease you only usually can find in your dreams!
Every little clip was truly a work of art
I even started making animations in Keynote, in iBooks and of course I used Final Cut Pro.
To explain how inexperienced I was I had to ask what rendering was?
I tip my hat and thank you profusely Randy Ubillos for making it so much fun! And for making me look like a genius.
I am wishing you great happiness and joy in your next adventure.
I am so glad I can post a thank you to Randy Ubillos.
I came from the Windows platform and was so happily astonished at the ease I had learning to use Final Cut Pro.
The software was simply stunning in the offerings. I had never seen so many different functions. I could not resist using every one either. I made dozens of short videos with flipping, twisting titles and music.
I am a freak about editing too and every wish was satisfied with the kind of ease you only usually can find in your dreams!
Every little clip was truly a work of art
I even started making animations in Keynote, in iBooks and of course I used Final Cut Pro.
To explain how inexperienced I was I had to ask what rendering was?
I tip my hat and thank you profusely Randy Ubillos for making it so much fun! And for making me look like a genius.
I am wishing you great happiness and joy in your next adventure.
Perfect! After a century of increasing productivity and industrialization, we should all expect to work less and live more. The expectation that we continue to work 60 hour workweeks from 18-64 is outdated. We have a surplus of workers and not enough work to employ them all.
Everyone should work 24 hours per week and retire when they're 50. Otherwise what have we been automating and overeducating ourselves for all this time? To work til we die of heart attacks and fall dead into our machines?
USA needs to update its attitude.
----------
That's very nice.
You should put that in an email and send it to apple so Randy can read it.
Because here, you're just writing that to us.
I use both premiere and fcx, and fcx is just faster (to edit) when you get the hang of it. The only thing that bugs me is that I can't set the quality of the playback of my RED 6K and 5k like in premiere. Fcx handles it automatically and I often would like less quality on my aging Mac pro for better performance.
I now love things I laughed at in the beginning; Share to Vimeo or YouTube.
I thought that was for holiday videos, but it's great to show client versions this way. All I have to do when finished a version, hit share, it's renderd, coded and uploaded to Vimeo. I'm already sitting in my sofa when an email tells me it's ready to be shared from Vimeo and I can do that from my iPhone
Thanks.
I do understand that other nles might be better suited in a larger collaborate environment, but I'm not in one, is FCX works great for me on a lot of projects
I now love things I laughed at in the beginning; Share to Vimeo or YouTube.
I thought that was for holiday videos, but it's great to show client versions this way. All I have to do when finished a version, hit share, it's renderd, coded and uploaded to Vimeo. I'm already sitting in my sofa when an email tells me it's ready to be shared from Vimeo and I can do that from my iPhone
Thanks.
I do understand that other nles might be better suited in a larger collaborate environment, but I'm not in one, is FCX works great for me on a lot of projects
Which is to say we're lucky that he stuck around long enough to do so. Not only did he change the way we edit with FCPX for the better, but he stuck around long enough to mature the app significantly before his departure.
My only concern now is whether or not the momentum he's built with FCPX can be sustained in his absence.
Big shoes to fill.
Many people in a position like this do not want the fame and just the cash. Know many in entertainment you never hear of in public. If you are in the business, you know they are essential making things happen.
I met Randy at the FCPX launch in Las Vegas a few years ago. Very nice guy.
FCPX was a disaster when released but over time turned into an amazingly powerful product. I switched to using it mostly last year or so after having switched to Premiere Pro for a while. (I use both).
I hope without his leadership they continue to innovate. Randy originally coded Adobe Premiere; he's come a long way.
FCPX was a disaster when released but over time turned into an amazingly powerful product. I switched to using it mostly last year or so after having switched to Premiere Pro for a while. (I use both).
I hope without his leadership they continue to innovate. Randy originally coded Adobe Premiere; he's come a long way.
I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry at your comment. FCP X on PAR or SUPERIOR to Avid MC or Premiere PRO???? Are you on freakin' drugs or something??? It's not even on par with Final Cut Pro 7! FCP X is now completely out of the professional post world.
My experience with it has been pretty amazing. I worked on a web series recently and I would select all the footage shot for an episode (usually 16hrs of shooting using 2-3 cameras plus outboard audio) and let Premiere do its thing. 15 minutes or so later and it would be all synced up. Hundreds of clips of varying audio quality, sometimes the crew followed people giving a tour in a working factory, and I'd say it was spot on 99% of the time. Camera, lav, boom... no problems. Sometimes clips and audio got matched up based on just ambient noise.
I used Pluraleyes a couple of times with FCP 7, and maybe once with Avid, but I see no reason to use it with PPro. Over the course of few projects I'd say I've used PPro to to sync up a couple hundred hours of footage and I've not no complaints with regard to its speed, accuracy or robustness.
Why would we want that? FCP 7 is dead and I'm glad it's gone. All of you people who are saying that FCP X is out of the professional video editing realm are out of your minds and the new update was spot on.
Last edited:
Randy has literally shaped modern video editing. The entire industry owes him much thanks. My career, which has been quite successful, is literally thanks to his efforts. My firm was one of the original Apple Video VARs, and we have grown immensely over the past 12 years or so we've delivered professional video solutions to organizations large and small. Thank you, Randy.
I also remember him appearing in one of those "It Gets Better" videos. Have to appreciate that as well, because I think it's an important message. In this era where the CEO of the MOST SUCCESSFUL COMPANY ON THE PLANET EVER is now out, we should all appreciate the steps along the way like Randy's that made it easier for successful businesspeople and technologists to be themselves publicly, thus sending a positive message to people of all stripes who don't feel like they fit into the mainstream narrative. Again -- thank you, Randy.
I also remember him appearing in one of those "It Gets Better" videos. Have to appreciate that as well, because I think it's an important message. In this era where the CEO of the MOST SUCCESSFUL COMPANY ON THE PLANET EVER is now out, we should all appreciate the steps along the way like Randy's that made it easier for successful businesspeople and technologists to be themselves publicly, thus sending a positive message to people of all stripes who don't feel like they fit into the mainstream narrative. Again -- thank you, Randy.
Having overseen the editing of a TV series we shot last year, using CC, I was quite disappointed. A lot of bugs and stability issues.
Everything was shot in 4K or 5K, except a few 1080 shots. We had 6TB of footage, so we were pushing the systems quite hard.
The top half of the viewer would go black every time we rendered our timeline. Neither HP nor Adobe could give us an answer. Neither could Google.
We are running one HP 820 Workstation and a custom built PC. They have 12 and 6 GB video cards, RAID etc..
Premiere would very often hang and crash if we tried to copy clips from one sequence to a new sequence.
Trying to use media manager in the end to archive and move the projects around never worked on either machine in the end. We used it a few times during the editing, but at the most crucial time, it won´t work. Hangs every time.
Of course I don´t know if FCX would have faired any better with such a heavy project as I have never tried it, but I was´t very impressed with Premieres performance.
Anyway, thanks to Randy for making video editing possible for everyone. I still remember an Avid guy laughing in my face when I was a film student and asked what the software cost. This was 1997.
Everything was shot in 4K or 5K, except a few 1080 shots. We had 6TB of footage, so we were pushing the systems quite hard.
The top half of the viewer would go black every time we rendered our timeline. Neither HP nor Adobe could give us an answer. Neither could Google.
We are running one HP 820 Workstation and a custom built PC. They have 12 and 6 GB video cards, RAID etc..
Premiere would very often hang and crash if we tried to copy clips from one sequence to a new sequence.
Trying to use media manager in the end to archive and move the projects around never worked on either machine in the end. We used it a few times during the editing, but at the most crucial time, it won´t work. Hangs every time.
Of course I don´t know if FCX would have faired any better with such a heavy project as I have never tried it, but I was´t very impressed with Premieres performance.
Anyway, thanks to Randy for making video editing possible for everyone. I still remember an Avid guy laughing in my face when I was a film student and asked what the software cost. This was 1997.
You're over-dramatizing this. The guy was at Apple for over 20 years. He stuck with the company for a long time. He was there even "Before the Return of Dear Leader Steve"
His retirement is well deserved. Let him retire in peace and let's just wish him well, rather than negatively speculating that his departure is some kind of "hemorrhaging" internal bleeding disorder in the company.
----------
A genetically modified fruit.
Who would you suggest paid for all the people living 30-50 years without a job?
I'm not sure why you think a person should only be paid enough to live paycheck to paycheck until old age and then drop dead because that's what it sounds like you're hinting to. If you've been working for decades then obviously you earned it. Like Randy. It sounds like you're saying I'm going to have to pay for poor old lazy Randy Ubilos since he's retiring at 50.
The fact of the matter is he was paid a good salary for his work. Would be nice if standards were raised to where more workers were paid a larger share of profits made by companies.