Re: DaVinci Resolve 8.1 -- now with FCPXML roundtrip support : Apple FCPX or Not: The Debate

[Walter Soyka] "If FCPX could output either EDL or FCP7's flavor of XML, it would have been interoperable at launch. Apple put the burden of interchange on the rest of the industry instead of assuming any themselves. It strikes me as a statement about their priorities."

From another post, here's how I feel about 3rd parties, complete with repeat:

"Here is my thoughts on third party development.

I think this is really smart. The video business is becoming very fragmented. This can lead to specialization ("we only shoot, Red, man") or it can lead to generalization ("I have SD, 720p, 1080i, 23.98, 59.94, 29.97i, , 29.97p, 5k, 4k, Alexa, Beta, DV, Digibeta, 7000fps, MPEG4, MPEG2, AVI, wmv all going in one timeline. Help me"). Camera manufacturers are developing their asses off right now. There is some really healthy competition out there. Film, is truly dying. This means that every manufacturer is going to have their way of doing things. By creating a proprietary digital system, this means you need to support a proprietary method of handling that media. So, with all the variety out there, would you rather have a specialized system or a generalized system? What if you could create a specialized system depending on your needs? What if you could turn the specialized system in to a more general system ? This is how I see third party support working in FCPX. FCPX will provide the underlying language and method, then people would be able to hook in to this to interact and interchange. When Red's 28k sensor comes out, we won't have to wait for Apple/Avid/Adobe to develop a method, Red will have to support it in FCPX. They have the hooks, go to town. Support yourself.

Now apply this to OMF, AAF, XYZ, CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and Discovery. If you need specialization, you purchase it and interact with that developer who will listen and respond to you directly. I do not see this as a bad thing. Apple broke their own stuff, (Qt/itunes Updates causing FCP craziness) so owning the whole system didn't prevent them for making mistakes. Things break sometimes. Apple has a pretty decent developer relationship going. They have leveraged that relationship to everyone's advantage. Why can't this happen with FCPX and why is it a bad idea? Sure it's a new idea, but is it a bad one? Look at Lightworks. Open source. Is that a bad idea?"

Jeremy