from webpronews.com
For years Apple has been the standard in professional video editing. Many of the practices and procedures developed in the industry were molded around the features engineered into Apple’s software. Six months after Apple’s newest editing software, Final Curt Pro X, was released, there has been a considerable amount of backlash and ship-jumping.
For years Apple has been the standard in professional video editing. Many of the practices and procedures developed in the industry were molded around the features engineered into Apple’s software. Six months after Apple’s newest editing software, Final Curt Pro X, was released, there has been a considerable amount of backlash and ship-jumping.
According to many in the industry, Apple seems to have shifted its focus from the professional to the amature market. Of particular contempt for many, is the removal of the “Edit Decision List (EDL)”. This feature has become a staple of the industry where it is common practice to hold footage for post production. The list held information about what to keep and what to cut.
Another set-back for Apple was the decision to remove the digital to tape feature on their software. By not allowing editors to output their finished work to tape, they cut-off a huge segment of the market that still needs this capability.
To make the software even less attractive, users who have owned earlier versions of the software will find they are not able to import that work to Final Cut Pro X. They are not compatible with one another. What was Apple thinking?
So what is the industries response to these changes? It has forced many to pursue other professional production solutions, like Avid. With any market, If the products aren’t offering the features consumers demand, no matter how innovative they are, they will fall out of favor. Their is always someone on the heels of the winner looking to be the next big thing, the new standard.
Actually, considering that Apple has discontinued it's rackserver hardware, hasn't updated the Mac Pro tower in 18 months, and then released Final Cut Pro X without feature parity, it looks more like it was Apple that "moved away" from professional production. I suspect they knew all along what the reaction would be.
ReplyDeleteWhile I think it's a shame they way they handled the transition to Final Cut Pro X, in the long run, Apple is probably better off business-wise targeting the semi-pro and amateur video markets.
I switched away from Apple a little while ago due to cost restraints (mostly). I took over this video business and it was all Mac when I got here. Now, we've completely switched over to Windows and Linux machines and my team couldn't be happier. Supporting the Mac hardware on the network was a nightmare and very costly. It just didn't make good business sense any way we looked at it.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me some people have had a real knee jerk reaction to this. The latest update to FCP X was just released on the 31st of January and it shows that they are incorporating all of the pro features into the the new 64bit platform at a pretty reasonable rate. The fact that FCP 7 works with the new Lion operating system means you don't have to make any decision about your editing software for another year. Here is a link.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.technobloom.com/apple-updates-final-cut-pro-to-version-10-0-3/224880/
Also, aja and blackmagic have been working on the edit to tape feature for FCP X from the beginning. Same with edl and xml support. Was always in the works. However, i do agree that the cost of Mac products is prohibitive.
Here's a more detailed lis than my previous link.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/software-update.html