Re: AFTER NAB thoughts regarding Final Cut

[walter biscardi] "At this level? You mean you want a $1,200 Final Cut Studio to provide the exact same features as the Nitris DX which from what I can find, is priced at $36,000. Good luck with that."

No. I expect, like Walter probably does, that Final Cut Pro will offer competitive, if not leading video editing features and functionality via bug fixes and updates.

The point had to do with the earlier poster's frustration
"they add all these great bells and whistles and dont take care of simple things that everyone has been stammering for for [sic] years now"

Walter's solution to denied feature requests was to just go out and buy the other product that works. But this is not our expectation. And Walter could not live with his solution either. He's still using FCS and didn't buy the other product. This is why 720p drop frame and hardware acceleration are comparable. Not that they have equal value. Both are features that have emerged as desirable in the marketplace. One (hardware acceleration), Walter thinks, should be solved by just going out and buying a whole new editing system. The other (720p drop-frame) he thinks ought to be solved by incessant lobbying to the manufacturer. I think both are better solved by the latter.

Now let's get to Ron Lindeboom's point as well as Walter's about cost, because initially that's probably why we all threw are hat in the FCP ring. But that was then and now is now.
The posters below reflect well the real world cost of setting up an edit suite.
I offer a more realistic comparison than I think Walter's figures represent or Ron's allude to:
The Avid Media Composer Mojo DX vs. Final Cut Studio with a Kona card is about $10,000 vs. $4,000.
Not $1,200 vs. $36,000. (Walter's $36,000 price may have been for the Symphony Nitris with an 8-core Mac Pro.)
By the way a Media Composer Nitris DX is $15,000.
The storage solutions are about the same.
The monitoring solutions are about the same.
The furniture is about the same.
The VTRs and miscellaneous terminal equipment is about the same.
Over the course of a three year investment, that difference in price is about $10 per business day. A little over a buck an hour. Even if you buy the Nitris DX instead, the cost difference is only two bucks an hour. $6,000 is $6,000 or $9,000 is $9,000 and you could keep all that in your pocket if you bought the FCS instead of the Nitris. You could buy another MacPro, but you couldn't build another edit suite for the difference.
[walter biscardi] "What I have learned is that all of the clients who come to our facility really don't give a rats a-- what tools we're using. They come because we do really good work and they want to work with myself and the other artists in my facility."
This is good for Walter's situation, but not universal for all FCP users as several posters have indicated in this thread already. Some of my clients come to me for the same reason, especially when doing turnkey work. But for hourly production and short turnaround jobs it's a different story.
So to Mr. Boghosian's point below:
"I'd be willing to bet that if a company could make a board or box that would give FCP these true real-time abilities, that company would fair well in the marketplace. Whether it's Apple, AJA, or some third party-I'll bet you'd all be buying. And I'll bet that company could charge upwards of $5K for that kind of feature. Sure there is no one solution to everyone's work/price point. Those who say they're satisfied with 5 or more layers in real time should try adding a drop shadow to those layers. And those of us who require green screen can forget anything resembling real time in FCP. But if I offered that to you, you'd be willing pay for the speed and convenience, not to mention the creativity that comes with that smooth workflow."
AMEN! $5K is just about right. Keep lobbying for that one!
And while I'm on it, how about better media management.
And another thing, how about a better scaling option in FCP akin to Motion's.