Article: What a Long, Strange Year It's Been!

Just about where my head is.

Mark,

Before going back to Media Composser did you guys try out Premiere Pro. Was there any reason you didn't go in that direction? Are you switching over to ISIS and Avid 100% or using AMA & Xsan in addition to ISIS?

Thanks for a great analysis -- it seems as tho you've truly "moved-on," as I don't sense any anger from you directed at Apple. Good for you.

In keeping with your Grateful Dead reference -- in a way, Apple currently is what happens when you give the Grateful Dead 2 Billion dollars: some brilliance and a lot of wackiness.

It's been said before: If Apple were struggling financially, you could see abandoning the Pro Edit Community -- with all their success tho -- it feels like a betrayal.

[Ken Zukin] "It's been said before: If Apple were struggling financially, you could see abandoning the Pro Edit Community -- with all their success tho -- it feels like a betrayal."

To paraphrase your point, since they make $400,000 in profit for each employee, you'd think they could at a minimum put some more people on the FCPX team? Updates (meaningful ones) could come faster.

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." - Winston Churchill

Thanks for that Walter.

Great essay.

I'm a big dead fan, you'll hear me in the background of the London Lyceum recordings of 1972 and that gives an indication that I'm no spring chicken. And luckily just as my dad survived the 2nd world war I survived the psychedelic minefields of the late 60's.

So having spent many years learning FCP7 and the array of outboard bits and pieces you need to make a small Apple based NLE set up work I like many others was totally taken aback by the launch of FCPX.

But also excited. I made a commitment to learn the new software and it's been a frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience which is only now really starting to pay off. I'm definitely not saying it's faster, the freezes, pauses and crashes definitely hold it back. But it is slowly revealing itself to be a far deeper bit of software than my first impressions led me to believe.

I totally see why editors like yourself are, or have, switched software providers and platforms. I can't see anybody in top end studio production being able to work collaboratively with this software.

And collaboration is at the heart of this whole debate. With FCPX the inter connectivity was been stripped out.

I'm going to see where the next upgrade is going to take us. The depth of the next release will surely give a fair representation of whether Apple is committed to adding missing core features back into to the software, of having listened to the outrage.

I will totally take one of those licenses...if you still have any!

[Phil Hoppes] ""Apple imploding"

?????

I wish that my business should implode so badly..."

We were referring to their position in the Post Production market. One of my colleagues who is a long time Avid user was simply stunned when he saw FCP X and called it a "lifeline" to Avid. If Apple had released a 64 bit FCP Studio 4 or whatever you wanted to call it, that progressed from the previous 11 years of applications, Avid would have been all but dead.

But because of the completely new reboot that didn't work with anything when it was released, it caused a resurgence of Avid in the Post Production community and gained huge market share for Adobe.

So in terms of Post Production only, Apple was on the precipice of complete Post Production domination. Instead, Apple imploded for the very reasons you cite in the link. They are cash rich selling to the consumer masses. They have absolutely no need for the Enterprise or Professional market so why bother following that path.

As Steve Jobs makes clear in the recent biography, he hated the Enterprise and Professional markets because the end users dictate what they want. With Consumers, they "don't know what they want until we show it to them." Sounds like the game plan for the NAB FCP X rollout in April 2011.......

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Phil Hoppes] "Again, I'm simply confused by the confusion. It's very clear to me what Apple did and why they did it and had I been in their shoes to make the decision, I would have done the same thing. "

Most of the confusion and anger towards Apple across all forums is that Apple has never come out and admitted that their primary target is the general public and the "masses," not the professional post production market in the traditional sense. I'm sure some in Apple figured the entire industry would pivot along with their thinking and some are, most are not.

There are folks out there who seem to think Apple "needs the pro market" for some reason to survive. They don't and quite honestly they don't care. But when you take a product that has been the lifeblood of production for many, and helped many hundreds if not thousands of people across the globe, yours truly included, start and grow their own businesses, and then suddenly throw out that entire workflow, well you can understand the confusion. For me it was crystal clear in April of last year during the "sneak peek" that there was no immediate future for me with FCP X and I made it pretty clear in the podcast and subsequent articles why. As I said, once the blinders came off, I realized just how different both Adobe and Avid were since the last time I really played with them over 10 years ago. It's quite simple to transition over to either of them at this point.

Others choose to hold on with the hope that "Apple is going to bring back everything we need" to make it work. Apple isn't, they're not going to waste time and money to redevelop something they killed. Just like the iPad and iPhone model, 3rd party developers are making plug-ins, add on apps and such to add features back in.

Whatever works for you, make it work, I'm going down my path and while keeping an eye on the developments of X, I'm not overly concerned with what Apple is or is not doing. I'm most concerned with what my client needs are right now and what we need in house to deliver that.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Ron Pestes] " have been using PP CS 5.5 on a Dell M6600 laptop with Cuda and 16 gig of RAM and it works great. All that power in a laptop! Still use my MBP and FCS 3 for old projects that are in-process but all new projects are Windows and PP from now on.
"

Ron, as to your video card--which Quadro did you choose?

[Ron Pestes] "I have the M3000 card. The computer has USB 3 and esata for my external drives. I have had it only a short time but it seems to work well with XDCAM EX footage. I have had three layers playing in real time. The only rendering I have had to do is when I put the Warp Stabilizer on a clip in AE. My MBP will not touch this kind of performance"

Cool. I'm thinking seriously about getting one of these to run Media Composer. I'd put CS5.5 on it, too, but I'm not yet willing to burn my Mac license.

Great article as usual Walter.

For Adobe, I think you nailed it just fine. We've got a great product, a very high potential ceiling and we're listening to our customers. We admit that aspects of our products need improvement (they're never done) and we have no problem with working with other products as well - Avid and Apple included. Moving forward, a core for us is to embrace open workflows wherever it makes sense.

We very much look forward to showing the world things we've been working on in the future!

Dennis - Adobe guy

Looking forward to NAB in April to see what you guys have been up to Dennis!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Job ter Burg] "I've tried it before, without any result, but I would so much like Adobe to explain why their products are up to 45% more expensive in Europe as they are in the US. It's not import duties or taxes. This has been true for years now (no matter the currency market at any point in time)."

Quite honestly, that's a very good question, particularly in this age of software downloads where physical packaging and shipping are no longer required.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

I saddens me to consider that I might also have to migrate away from the Mac computer platform. It is evident that Apple has put the Mac Pro line on the back burner. Seems as though the "i" product line is enough to pay the bills. God, I hate Windows...

T.J. Jaglinski
dctv23.com
silvercamera.com
renderjunkie.com

Terrific article as always Walter! We're in the exact same dilemma - having invested huge in OSX, FCP, Mac Pros, and XSAN over the past 10 years. A year ago we moved our 3D department off of windows and now we're in the situation of evaluating if we need to move the whole studio off of Mac if the Pro line fades away. Definitely crazy times.

I love OSX as an operating system for the same reasons you mention in there article. Would you see Apple under any circumstances make their OS available to the masses and hardware independent? With the Mac Pro line inevitably dying my dream would be all of our artists and editors on HP workstations with AJA cards running OSX. Wouldn't that be nice??

Yea - that's my feeling as well. But if they really were set on taking down Microsoft this would definitely deal a big blow. Unfortunately, I don't see it happening either.

Quoted froma buisness web site:

Apple ended the fourth quarter with record revenues of $46.3 billion and nearly $100 billion cash in hand. The results place Apple among the high earners of all industries, such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Gazprom OAO.

During the quarter, the company sold 37.04 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPad tablets, marking a raving holiday season. In fact, the sales have doubled compared to one year earlier. Sales were particularly strong in the United States as a lot of users have waited for the iPhone 4S.

This is why I now refer to Apple as a Phone Company. They really don't need us, except to give their products a marketing cachet of "professionalism".

Walter, thank you for such a great article. As a director.producer.editor I have had the good fortune to be involved with a variety of productions from music videos and commercials to variety, reality and currently a feature documentary.

I learned to to edit early on because I recognized how large the role of post is in the creative process. For years I was an Avid snob, though I've always owned Mac, mainly because the workflow called for multiple systems and NYC's large post facilities were Avid dominated. A few years ago I sold my Symphony, and began to explore FCP, but always had Avid onboard, using them for different types of projects. And, as I got more into FCP and saw the increase in support for multiple systems on a shared network, I could see how FCP was headed toward domination.

I love Apple products, and yes, they probably don't "need" to be in the pro business--for now. However, when you look at why Apple HAS had such a good run, I believe it is in part due to the professional world in effect helping them brand. They have almost always been the tool of choice for creatives from all visual arenas except in situations where Apple didn't support beefier hardware or occasionally dropped the ball and went too consumer with their pro macs. So while short term it seems unnecessary to support the few in the pro world, I do believe this will come to impact their bottom line in years to come. It's their niche...delivering high end capability to the desktop. As a creative, I want everything on my laptop and to plug in to professional workspace when I need to, and work independently other times. It is shortsighted to abandon the professional line. I believe it could have a very negative trickle down effect. Working and living are intertwined, often more than we want them to be, but we are in a media, content-driven world. If you're not a player in both arenas, you risk diminishing your share across the board. Time will tell. Thanks again for such a great article, Walter.

Avid is a better company today because of it.

I will miss the beautiful layout of FCP7.

I hope Avid continues to improve and the strides Premiere is taking is very promising. Can't wait for PP6!




http://www.john-chay.com

Editor/Videographer

Well said Walter! You and I both started out on the FCP journey around the same time with the Cinewave card. That to me was the game-changer for FCP, broadcast quality in and out for a fraction of the price of an equivalent Avid.

Fast forward 10 or more years and it's time to move on. I'll miss FCP, it's too bad Apple couldn't or wouldn't sell the code to a company that could continue development on it.

I remember when Apple got out of the 1U server business, Steve said they were only selling 12000 a quarter (or it might have been a year) Either way, for some smaller companies, 12000 units of a product is a viable business model, but when you're selling a gabillion iDevices per quarter, 12,000 units of another product becomes a distraction rather than a profit centre.

I hate the thought of transitioning to PCs, but its inevitable that they will sneak into our work flow as our 20+ MacPros start to age.

Cheers

John C

A very nice read Walter!

Transitioning to Windows is indeed inevitable, up until now not even a hint of future macpros in sight.

Adobe really gained the upperhand on this one. I am also looking forward to NAB 2012 and how speedgrade is integrated into Adobe's Suite.

On my end, I've already decided to worked on my next project inside Adobe Premiere CS 5.5, the only thing keeping me inside FCP right now is working on STEREO Footage with regards to Cineform.

Cineform Neo 3D and Premiere Pro CS5.5 isn't as smooth yet on a MAC as compared to Cineform Neo 3D with FCP 7. I am feeling the slowdown on FCP 7 though with its 32 bit structure - opening a STEREO Project in FCP 7 is taking me 2 to 3 minutes!

Again, thanks for the write up!

Thanks for the link Walter, will try to watch this soon. My problem lies more with me constantly shifting from 2D to STEREO timeline, and right now Premiere Pro is heavily dependent on Cineform for its STEREO Workflow. Cineform on its end hasn't perfected yet it's Stereo Workflow with Premiere as compared to FCP. Plus with FCP right now, I can combine another set of STEREO Tools and Plugins - in particular the Dashwood Plugins. This Plugin is not available for Premiere though. That is why on a real world production scenario, ( as I am right now) I am still heavily dependent on my FCP+Cineform+Dashwood Workflow.

I know Cineform will eventually polish its workflow with Premiere but that will take time. Can't wait for NAB though. I hope CS6 can meet my needs, I am looking forward to see Adobe's integration of Speedgrade into the suite. DaVinci Resolve is coming to Windows as well. Exciting times indeed!

[Mark Chapin] "If everyday people can start a project in iMovie and then submit that to a professional editor to finish in FCP X, then there is the brilliance of Apple."

I do see trouble for the B,Ed&I sector (aka "corporate") since there doesn't really seem to be enough margin left to make sense for it to be a sustainable business to cater to out-sourcing. I've witnessed several local businesses go down.

However, it is extremely rare that an enthusiast production gets to a stage where what has traditionally been identified as "online" makes any sense. Its just as cold a calculation as retail markup. Over the last decade, I've come up with a kind of rule-of-thumb that loosely corresponds post budget with overall production allowance. After-camera processes don't seem to be accorded anything more than about 10% of the overall figure. So if you're going to make a go of this as a "professional", then calculate what your annual net income wants to be, and then multiply that by 10 and ask yourself if that's what even the most ambitious home movie makers are willing to spend. Frankly, I'm guessing that number is much closer to zero. To make even a solo effort sustainable, you need at least one $1-million feature a year, or multiple documentaries and so on that gets to that minimum.

A non-monetized sector is not a market.
A venture cap investor would consider all of this insanely hilarious! Well, tragically so.

jPo

You mean "Old Ben"? Ben Kenobi?

Walter that was an excellent overview of the situation as it stands for many editors. What I never understood about the hardcore Apple supporters was the willingness to pay WAY more for less. I have Macs in my house as well, and I am also in love with the aesthetic feel they provide. That being said, the lack of hardware options and power of said hardware is mind boggling.

I have built PCs since I was 14 years old, so about 24 years in total. The only reason I went to a mac was the aesthetic properties and smoothness of the operating system, that is it period. The hardware is dated compared to what you can build PC wise. Windows 7, in my opinion has lived up to the hype that preceded it. It is a solid platform free from the lockups/blue screens that plagued its predecessor. It is a shame that it wasn't around when I went over to a Mac platform. I mean for crying out loud I can build a windows laptop that would have benchmarks above current Mac pros or pretty dam close to it. For simplicity's sake the most expensive Z800 vs Mac pro. Nuff said.

It seems the only thing tethering many professionals to the Mac all of these years was the fact FCP is a Mac only product, combined with "coolness" factor mentioned above. In my opinion if you were using Avid Media Composer or Adobe Suite on a Mac, you were doing yourself an immense disservice. I will agree, Mac software/hardware is legendary for its feel and quality, however Walter as you know 8,000 dollars on a PC system would have purchased an incredible amount of power that is just not available from a Mac platform. I won't even get into upgrades, because Mac/upgrade does not belong in the same sentence.

My 2 cents.
Buddy Couch
Enfocus Studios

It was After Effects that did it.

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

I enjoyed your article and overall agree with it, Walter. I too would have like to have seen FCS4 with 64-bit and background rendering and other things Adobe already had.

I, too, am just finishing updating my edit suite to include FCS3, Avid MC5.5 and Adobe Production Premium CS5.5.

As of this morning (1/31/12), do you think that FCPX just got more appealing to professional editors with the 10.0.3 update that is now available? Multicam editing is back with PluralEyes-type plug-in features built-in, import from FCP7 is now possible via a third party app that now works due to re-added XML, and a better chroma keyer (Primatte RT possibly?) that eliminates the need to import from Motion and After Effects. They also have a beta for external monitoring and other upgrades.

It's not where it needs to be yet but, after 7 months of iMovie Pro, do you think FC"P"X is "professional" again?

A further question is, with FCPX 10.0.3, does Apple now finally have the release it needs to re-open their long abandoned booth at NAB to re-sell Final Cut to professional editors (like they first did a decade ago)?

You listed in an article several months ago specifically what Apple should never have taken out, and I do recall Multicam editing, XML and external monitoring were three major things (and you probably had chroma keying, too).

I haven't bothered with FCPX and instead have been investing in and re-learning Avid, but perhaps as of today it's worth another look?

G5 Quad Desktop with 4GB Ram, 750GB HD & eSata ~ 30" Cinema Display & 17" Sony SVGA
~ Swift Data 200 Internal 1.6TB SATA II RAID 0 ~
2.33gz Intel MacBook Pro with 3GB Ram, 500GB HD
AJA Io LA
Final Cut Studio 2 on G5 & 3 on MBP
Sony UVW-1800 Beta-SP
Sony DSR-40 DVCam

P D Post Productions, Inc.
TV~DVD~WEB-Device
for Corporate Communications, Commercials, Infomercials, Television Programs and Family Occasions since 1983
E-mail PD@PDPost.com
Website http://www.PDPost.com
Business/Cell Phone (847) 275-5671

What's missing from the Apple updates is the "trust factor." There are features returning, though we don't know how good they really are until folks really start to hammer away at them. According to Gary Adcock Apple sent folks out to meet with editors to find out what they need to make FCP X a tool they could use, something they should have done BEFORE April of 2011.

I'm wondering who those editors are cause I know quite a few folks in LA, Chicago, LA, Miami, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco and none of them know anything about this. I'm wondering if they are the same "professionals" Apple touted as consulting prior to the original release. Evan Schechtman is the only person I know of that Apple is actually talking to, and he is a great guy to consult. But are there any feature film / documentary folks talking to them because I still don't see a great workflow for 250+ hour raw material documentaries.

Now I have not downloaded 10.0.3 yet, but I will do so soon along with the 7 to X XML tool and see what happens when I take a massive project like Foul Water Fiery Serpent and move it forward. Well actually all three projects forward because you see that's how the project is organized. We have the Capture Project, the All Tapes Project, and then the Edit Project. That was one of the beauties of FCP that we could decide on which projects to open as the editing process progress so by the time I was on the final cuts, we only had to open the Edit Project which only accesses the media required for the timeline, not the 250+ hours in the Capture Project.

I still want to see Apple add an option for Track Based editing so when we have multiple editors working on the same project, we all know what's what, particularly in the audio tracks, by simply looking at everything visually.

But honestly I know of more shops and long time editors who will not have anything to do with Apple simply because of the trust factor. They are a consumer based company first and foremost. Folks still leery to trust a company like that with their livelihood. How long until they get bored with this version of FCP and re-invent it again? :)

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

[Richard Herd] "Did you write an article on your organizing? If so I missed it, but am still very interested."

No, we followed Shane Ross' excellent DVD, "Getting Organized in Final Cut Pro" sold here on the Cow.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook

Excellent article Walter. Thanks so much for taking the time to write this.

Much appreciated.

Alex Hawkins
Canberra, Australia

ProRes is still a non-native codec to Avid and it's a quicktime codec. Avid blazes through MXF so it's hard to really compare since Avid is in no way optimized to work with Quicktime codecs.

What we do is convert everything to Avid MXF because it's just so doggone fast to make the conversions.

Overall, the workflow is Avid and Adobe are both much faster than the workflow in FCP 7. I don't have a need for X so I couldn't tell you how that compares right now.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

"This American Land" - our new PBS Series.

Blog Twitter Facebook