Defending Final Cut Pro X

Things always end badly, or they don't end. 
- Tom Cruise, "Cocktail."

Don't fall in love with technology. It will never love you back. 

- J.D.W.

Breakups are hard, and they can reveal a lot of unhappy truths, which the forbearance of an ongoing relationship would make difficult to express,  such as: 

"You snore at night," or 

"You spend too much time fussing in the mirror," or worst of all, 

"You don't really love me anymore."

Final Cut Pro X Unhappy Truths:

Apple Inc. does not value it's ProApps as much as it does it's iApps.

To Apple Inc. we are all consumers, weather we make money using our nifty Apple gizmos or not.

And worst of all:

Apple Inc. does not love the "Professional" market as much as Apple Computer once did. 

Man, the truth sure hurts sometimes.

The New Kid

Most of the anger directed at Final Cut Pro X is not about what the software does or does not do, it's about how Apple has treated it's professional users. Those of us who have been a part of the Apple revolution for a long time have seen the signs for many years. 

My own history with the company included a very potent lesson on how Apple viewed the Professional DVD Authoring Market, and an installed base of loyal Apple/Astarte users. <link>

And there have been several more times since then that Apple has marginalized or abandoned a motivated, loyal group of professional users.

Shake and Final Cut Server users know the feeling, as do those IT people who were brave enough to install an Xserve, or Xraid in their rack room. Now we can add DVD Studio Pro, Color and some would say Final Cut Pro, to the list of programs that Apple has purchased, strip-mined  and abandoned. (After harvesting the core technology to make their "less technical" programs better.)

There are reasons for this. Some of these reasons are business reasons, some are just the philosophy of Mr. Steve Jobs, and  although their validity may be open to debate, their existence isn't.

Reason #1: Ease of use.

Smells Like UNIX

Final Touch/Color was an awesome program but the interface was decidedly UN-Apple like. It even smelled like UNIX. The number of FCP users who actually took the time to learn it was small, and the number of actual users who became professional Colorists with it was almost nill. But there it was, a program that used to cost $25,000 now bundled in for free with FCP.

Now it's gone, but the technology lives on the the great new AUTOMATED color correction in FCP X. And lets face it, the things that the average professional editor used Color for (fixing bad white balance, matching skin-tones from shot to shot, or creating a color look.) can be done much more easily in FCP X.

This makes sense from the point of view of the editor who never bothered to learn Apple's Color, because it gives him additional functions without additional effort, but it's going to piss off the Colorist, and the Editor who made the considerable effort, to learn the software.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, there will always be more people who never learn a complex piece of software, but would enjoy having some of the features given to them for free.

I call this "Digital Pan-Handling."

This is why DVD Studio Pro users could never author a Blu-Ray disc, but you could burn one (without menus or advanced features) directly from Compressor.

So they screw some of their pro users, to help others -- Not a problem as long as they help more than they screw.

Reason #2 Diminishing Returns:

Apple is making their flagship editing program more accessable to a wider group of editors (some professionals, some not) but they are pissing off the high-end editors who actually used things like Multi-cam and OMF export. (Me)

My Edit Suite

Let's call this group of users "Broadcast," to distinguish them from "professionals," who may earn their living editing video, but do not need some of the more advanced features (EDL export, RED, 2K capture, etc.)

If you think that REF-IN is something that happens at the start of a hockey game, and you get a puzzled look on your face when you hear the term "Scratch Disk" (you'd be surprised how many broadcast professionals still fit this description) then you will probably get along just fine in FCP X

But if you are like me, and the last person you got paid to edit for has an academy award sitting on his mantle, then you will probably see the new Final Cut Pro as a mixed bag, or an outright downgrade.

So, the only thing that is really up for debate is: Did Apple do this on purpose, or did they misjudge their market.

This is where my brief experience "inside the fruit" helps.

Apple, perhaps more than any other big corporation, is is led by the vision of it's CEO (Or is he still the iCEO?)

And Steve Jobs wants to create markets, and lead revolutions.

Bite This

What revolution would he lead by giving a small (but outspoken) group of users the ability to edit the footage from five cameras, each costing $50K to $100K, while viewing the video output on a broadcast monitor costing $20K, after their AE (costing $500/day) captured and organized all the footage, and before the Sound Dept. and the Colorist (if you have to ask you can't afford them) do their jobs?

Answer -- None. That is a broadcast workflow looking for incremental changes that save money by decreasing the most expensive element - Skilled Human Labor Time.

On the other hand, if Apple can give a person who spent $500 on a Canon T3, $1k on his iMac and $400 on his software the ability to produce a broadcast quality HD film...

That's a revolution.

Almost as much of a revolution as including a DVD drive in a computer for $1000 back in 2005, when the cheapest DVD-R drive before the Supredrive came along was $10,000. Weather I like it or not, and I sure didn't at the time, Apple created the DVD revolution by democratizing a once expensive technology.

The original FCP did the same thing. 

For Sale Only $60,000 - Cheap!

Back then avid was around $100,000 and FCP 1.0 cost $1000 and came in a box with a t-shirt and a firewire cable. And although I still have the t-shirt, it was the firewire cable that really was valuable because it allowed you to connect FCP to a Sony VX-1000 and get 1st generation DIGITAL input/output.

That started the revolution.

And perhaps more importantly, Apple, as a company, is absolutely not set up to service the broadcast industry. Let's face it, we are a demanding bunch. We expect the best and are willing to pay for it, but when the system crashes, we expect a tech person to show up within the hour, and get to work fixing it.

We can't exactly drag our edit suite to the Apple store for a consult at the Genius Bar.

Hell, most of the software bugs I troubleshoot today could not be duplicated, except on-site. And despite their modest efforts, the Apple Professional Video Certifications and Support never took off the way that AVID's ACSR program has.

Full Disclosure - I am an both and ACSR, as well as an Apple Certified FCP Instructor.

And despite what us broadcast professionals would have you believe, providing the service and support that we need/expect does not necessarily a profitable business make. 

AVID, the company that could benefit most from Apple's new FCP X is not exactly a cash cow anymore, in fact they lost 11% of their value in April 2011 alone, and are now valued somewhere around 700 mIllion.

That was one month before Apple became the most profitable technology company in the world. According to Forbes, Apple Inc. made 14 BILLION dollars PROFIT last year alone.

Gone but not Forgotten

I may not like it (I don't) but discarding Professional applications (Shake, FCP Server) and systems (Xserve, Xraid) has made Apple MUCH more profitable. And I don't see them suddenly changing the company culture that has been so successful. 

To put it in an editor's terms: Apple has a rock-solid post workflow... 

Why would they change?

They wouldn't -- Certainly not just to make a few thousand broadcast professionals happy for a few moments. (We're never really happy anyway, except when we're getting an award.)

So like the spurned lover, we find ourselves, if not broken up, then at least having to deal with the fact that we are not the first love anymore -- If we ever were.

Most of us will look elsewhere, like AVID, Adobe or maybe even Sony Vegas. Some of us will adapt our workflow to the new paradigm, and invest the time to learn the new software. But what Apple is betting that we WON'T do, is to jettison the rest of our Apple products as well.

Sure, we might switch back to Media Composer but that still runs on a Mac, right? Oh, are you going to go out an learn Windows 7, AND a new editing program at the same time? Then why not go the whole 9 yards and put your iPhone and iPad up for sale on Craigslist, throw that Apple TV into a closet and give that Mac Pro to the kids to play with.

Come on, who are we kidding. We might be mad now, but are we REALLY ready to burn our bridge to Cupertino? 

Unlikely. 

Why don't you guys like me?

Are we really going to show up at your next production meeting toting an HP Slate? 

Seriously?

It's a much safer bet that we will accept the insult of our new diminished role, like a married person still in love with our cheating spouse.

Sure, we may flirt with Linux and an Android phone, but damn few of us will actually find the courage to throw the cheating bum out on their ass.

No Log & Capture = No Problem!

The majority of the professional editors that I know are upset at the rumor that tape capture will be dropped from the new version of Final Cut Pro (FCP X.)

I was too. But then I did some testing, and I found that it can be much better to capture in another program, because you can EDIT WHILE YOU CAPTURE!

I demonstrate in the following video:

In the best possible situation, Apple would write a separate batch capture program/utility instead of relying on AJA/BlackMagic but I think that is a long shot.

Either way, ingest while you edit (something that Apple mentioned during the sneak peek at the SuperMeet is possible, even from tape, with FCP.

I will post more on this topic later. First I have to rant about Apple using my iPhone to spy on me (us.)

Why no BluRay?

Just a few hours to go till we see the first glimpse of the new Final Cut Pro, and people have been asking me my thoughts regarding DVD Studio Pro and if it will finally include BluRay authoring.

Sorry Charlie. It isn't going to happen.

Allow me to elaborate...

Many years ago, before there was such a thing as BluRay, or even High Def for that matter, I worked for a company called Astarté.

Our Trade Show Booth.

We made an awesome program to author DVD's called DVDirector. It cost up to $10,000 and was a combination of software and one or more hardware cards (PCI.)

The $10K version.

My boss at Astarté was the mighty Mike Evangelist who would eventually become the Director of Product Marketing at Apple.

My Old Boss.

That was because in 1999, at NAB, Apple purchased our little company. 

We quickly set about re-working DVDirector into DVD Studio 1.0 and we were ready to go in just a few months after the acquisition. It was a good thing too, because Astarté had a few hundred DVD creating professionals who had invested $10K in our products and they were stuck waiting. 

They were waiting for the "Apple Version" of DVDirector to be released so that they could get some  critical bugs in the program fixed. Bugs that were causing them to lose money. It was my job to support these users during the transition, and believe me it was no picnic listening to these people on the phone, pissed-off, day after day.

The Apple Version of DVDirector.

And we had a new, much improved version (DVD Studio Pro 1.0) ready to go. I would have it running on my G4 laptop (something impossible with ANY other DVD authoring program at the time)  and I would be talking to some frustrated Astarté user about how the new version would fix all the bugs, as soon as it was released, but, there was a problem...

You see,  Steve Jobs wanted a free program that he could bundle with iMovie, that would allow anyone to make a DVD.  And it just didn't exist.

It took our programmers almost a year to create iDVD, and Apple would not release DVD Studio Pro until iDVD was ready. So all those Professionals who had invested $10,000 were just ignored for almost a year, so that Steve could create the consumer DVD revolution.

The Little Program that caused all the trouble.

Most of them didn't/couldn't wait a year to get paid (there were professionals remember, not just enthusiastic Apple supporters) so they jumped ship and brought competing programs (mostly from Sonic Solutions.)

Thank you Steve!

This sad little tale has been repeated several times since, as Apple has bought great Pro Video products and little by little strangled them to death by releasing "dumbed down" versions while the people who invested in the expensive versions, eventually got the shaft.

Have you seen this missing child?

So, given my history, I think I am as good a source as any to comment on the BluRay situation, and since Steve has already said several times that he does not personally believe in BluRay:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/14/steve-jobs-calls-blu-ray-a-bag-of-hurt/

That means there will never be BluRay drives offered in Macs, and DVD Studio Pro (if it even continues to exist) will not support BluRay authoring.

Steve Jobs does not ask people what they need, and then create it for them, he tries to predict the future and then convince the world to follow.

When it works (The Mac, firewire, ipod, iphone, ipad) he changes the world.
When it doesn't work (Apple TV, Mac TV, Apple Lisa) he changes course.
But he "never" changes his mind. And iSteve has dismissed BluRay.

Remember these?

Apple as a company is far less concerned with supporting Pro video users, than they are trying to lead a new video revolution. Let's face it, they could have bought AVID years ago, or at the very least, they could have crushed them 3 years ago when AVID was so close to bankrupcy that they had to pull out of NAB.

But they didn't, and the reason is simple: AVID's run on Macs.

Big media companies buy expensive MacPros to run AVID's, so why would Apple kill a company that helps sell high end Macs? They won't, and they won't buy AVID either. The pro video market is relatively small, and filled with whiny hollywood types that are notoriously needy and cheap. Not a high-growth market.

Do I look like I'll compromise?

Nope, Steve Jobs will stick to what he does best -- Create new worlds, that he can control.

And he will never control BluRay, so it's dead to him, Fredo.

What say you?

The New Final Cut Pro

Well, it is finally here:

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/shullfish/story/are_you_ready_for_fcp_x/

And, as usual, I will hold off judgement on this until I actually see it on Tuesday.

But from the info that my sources are giving me, I would bet on the following:


1. Final Cut Pro 8 will be completely different:
Obvious, maybe... But the new version will be completely new from the ground up. It may be called FCP 8 or FCP X or whatever, but it will be a completely new piece of software written specifically for OS 10.7 (Lion) and will not work with older OS' or processors.


2. FCP 8 will be an "editing & finishing" product:
The current version and all the previous ones, were for editing only. That's why we now have Final Cut Studio, because you currently need an entire suite of applications to finish a program. But I believe the new FCP will be more like Smoke, or Avid DS -- You will be able to edit, color correct, composite, create titles and 3-D effects, AND audio post, then conform/output to DVD/web/iphone etc. ALL WITHOUT LEAVING FCP. That means no more round-tripping between applications (and all the headaches/bugs that brings.)
Imagine Premiere and After Effects and ProTools combined into one, and you will have an idea what I am talking about.


3. FCP 8 will be optimized for a single, computer monitor:
So many people run FCP on a laptop, or a single large (27" or above) lcd, that Apple will optimize FCP 8 to work well on 1 screen. Not to say that you won't be able to run multiple displays, but the "unibody" look will be prevalent.


4. Tape is Dead, Long Live Tape:
FCP 8 will only support out-putting to tape, not capturing. Don't get mad at me, I don't like it either, but I am hearing this from too many people to ignore it. In practice, this is not that big a problem, as MOST professional tape I/O inside FCP, is handled by 3rd party capture cards/devices anyway (AJA, Decklink, Motu) and all of them have separate batch capture utilities.
Also, most of the professional acquisition devices used today are not tape based (Film, Red, HDSLR's, SxS, P2.) In fact, video tape seems like a consumer video technology right now. (HDV anyone?) Not to mention the Tsunami has destroyed HDCAM SR tape for the near future at least.

http://www.televisionbroadcast.com/article/115606

This "crazy" move may turn out to be a prophetic one by apple.

But the Professional Editors won't like it, because it forces change, and Pros hate to change. If something works, and it is making you money, why take a risk on a new workflow/technology? This is the one feature that is prompting some people, who have seen the new version, to say that Apple is abandoning the Pro market. In fact, the reverse could be true - the pros could abandon FCP because it is too new. The newest versions of Avid and Premiere are evolutionary. The New FCP will be Revolutionary.


5. FCP 8 will be Real Time:
Everything will be realtime. Effects, compositing, color correction, audio effects, titles. The amount of realtime capability will, of course, depend on your system horsepower, but for most of us, rendering will only be done on output.


6. FCP 8 will be Format Agnostic:
You will select the canvas size before you start working, but all decisions about compression, frame-rate and color-depth will be output decisions, just like it is in After Effects, Motion, etc.
You will be able to mix all frame rates, frame sizes, compression ratios while editing. And everything will still be realtime.


7. FCP 8  will be iPad/iPhone integrated:
Not only will you be able to stream to the iOS devices, real-time, while editing (iChat Theater), but they will also act as input interfaces for FCP. Just like they can for PhotoShop:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/11/adobe-introduce-photoshop-touch-sdk-and-3-ipad-apps-for-photoshop/


8. FCP 8 will be networked/distributed:
You will no longer need to buy Final Cut Server separately, because it will be included, or at least the functionality will be. Also, like compressor, FCP 8 will be able to distribute rendering for output among nodes on your network. This is supposed to work now, when sending to compressor from FCP, but it has big issues working in the real world. I also think that FCP 8 will have the ability to share Projects among multiple editors natively. Like having AVID's Unity/ISIS built in. I think this will be a feature of the Lion OS, used heavily in FCP 8. You won't need to purchase a separate copy of XSan to effectively share projects anymore.


In Summary:
Let's face it, the number of studios/tv stations who COULD use FCP to replace AVID is relatively small when compared with the number of people who dream of being the next Spielberg while posting their videos on YouTube. So from that point of view, it almost makes sense that Apple would risk pissing off the very high-end users (like me) by throwing out everything FCP has become in the last 12 years, and starting over.

But that's how you start a revolution.

Apple creates worlds, and the current digital, non-linear, pro video world was created by, and still runs on AVID, even though I wish otherwise. That's why I think that instead of continuing to compete with AVID, Apple will try to create a new paradigm for video creation, and hope enough users will adopt it.

If it works, Apple will once again own the marketplace like they did with the iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc. None of those devices were CREATED for the "Pro" market, but they all were adopted by them, and are now an essential parts of doing business in the creative world.

The same thing happened by accident when Canon created the HDSLR, and pros started using them for film making. They were not really a pro camcorders, but people made them pro, by using them to get paid.

Will this be the case for FCP 8?
Time will tell.

To Be Continued.>