Matrox FCPX hardware support is coming

Yesterday I had a very nice talk with Matrox, they returned my call from last week.

I have a MX02 breakout box, a very nice interface for hardware monitoring.

The techie assured me they will have the MX02 family working in FCPX, they are working on it. I did not press for a date, no point in pushing something he can't answer.

Matrox is very positive about FCPX and they even have a Thunderbolt cable coming out in July. This will even fit my 3 year old MX02 and it will work with the new MBP's for true pro external monitoring. And it makes it possible to get professional monitoring from an Imac, this is great. And with the Imacs there will also be the possibility of a fast raid 5 now because they have dual channel Thunderbolt. The MX02 will need one channel by itself according to this techie.

This is very positive to me, I also talked with an AJA rep last week and he also assured me that they will have a solution for many of their products, no specifics or timeline. But they are working on it.

So it may take a while but I am sure FCPX will get all the "Pro Features" I and many others need.

Olof Ekbergh

[Jerry Hofmann] "I think the current feature set satisfies about 3/4 of the actual users of FCP 7. Those not making a living from it."

If only there was some way to verify the number of people using it but get making a living from it.

[Jerry Hofmann] "Then fill in the blanks with updates and upgrades... That is exactly what happened IMHO."

But I think a few of the features they left out even impact non facility workflows. Of course they may mean nothing if you're not making a living from it though.

These days many wedding videographers need multicam so not including that is a major problem for a large portion of the lower end of the market.

Not importing FCP7 projects is another big one. Imagine the "home" indie film/doc maker who wants to update their slow moving no budget project product that's taking 3 years to make.

While many feature certainly impact facilities, the above features also impact the bottom end of the FCP market.

Then there's "halo" markets. There's the student who knew learning FCP might get them an entry level position at a facility or some low level freelance work. Since facilities won't be buying FCPX for some time if ever, those students looking to learn a professional skill are going to start to look elsewhere. Add to the fact that learning Premiere, Avid, even FCP legacy, provides fundamental skills that allow one to get comfortable with the other NLEs in short order. Not so with FCPX (which I do think holds potential) which uses very unconventional functions and structures.

Add that the inability to see shared storage and schools themselves probably have no incentive to purchase FCPX for the time being.

That last bit brings us into the facility world where startups and facilities looking to add seats can't use FCPX. New small facilities must look elsewhere. Establish facilities are going to consider moving to other NLEs for new jobs coming in.

Then there's the impact on the one person shops. The ones who do lower end corporate video, local cable spots and the like. Many have to sustain projects going back a few years as clients keep old material current with revisions rather than completely new projects. Without FCP import they may have to look at Premiere, which supports FCP import, as they update their NLEs.

The impact of the missing features are going to ripple across the entire market from the wedding videography to students, schools, startups, facilities looking to expand. Each impacting the other, increasing a spiral away from FCP.

Basically FCPX won't even hit it's non facility target market. Granted I suspect all the above features will eventually be accommodated but once the momentum is set away from FCP, it's going to be very hard to get people back, if ever.

I don't fault FCPX, which I think lays the badly needed foundation for faster modern workflows. Apple's marketing and business management has been truly disastrous (IMHO). The damage to "perceived brand value" is far more costly then some bugs or a product still under development.

It's actually pretty astonishing that a company that handled the move from OS9 to OSX and PPC to Intel acted is if they had no prior experience bringing their customer base through a major transition. The handling of FCPX defies their track record. Something changed somewhere. It doesn't take a MBA to have seen this coming . . . to have worked out a transition plan. Did the brilliant minds who handled those transitions leave Apple?