I received the following email today from someone who needs to remain anonymous. However, I trust them and their opinion and wanted to share their thoughts with you here as a way to continue our discussion.
While I don’t agree with all of this, it does spark an interesting chain of thought.
Larry
P.S. I did not write this, nor did I ask it to be written. I have obtained permission to share it with you.
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Apple says that FCP X is about the future of NLE. After thinking about it, I think they are right.
It’s not just about the GUI or features per se… but the fact that our culture is going mobile and our work along with it. A new generation is growing up and moving them from iMovie to FCPX will be easy. Also the new generation will invent their own workflows and their own content and their own way of doing things. Apple may have jumped the gun in a way that made it impossible for a percentage of the current editing community to go along, but those folks are not the future. Not in the same way a 16-year-old iMovie whiz is.
Look at the big picture. Sales of standard PCs have fallen while portable products have been flying off the shelves. This is no fad, it’s the future.
Watch as the system requirements for NLE on the Apple side look more and more lean. Apple owns both hardware and OS, my bet is that they will leverage that to guarantee they are ahead of the curve in performance requiring smaller and smaller hardware overhead. It’s in this way, as the new generation of editors comes up, FCP will take back it’s place as the de facto platform for any level of project. I’m absolutely convinced (as is Apple) that sooner than you think, a teenager today will be working on an episode of “Extreme _____ Makeover” using an iPad__ with lots of storage on board. I already saw someone using an iPad as a 2nd display for FCP X and how some functions were already touch screen enabled. Those pissed off edit suite owners may be pissed off at what Apple has done, but just wait till all those up-and-coming digital kids start to see those very expensive edit suites as dinosaur grave yards.
That’s where Apple is headed and a powerful, sleek FCP that uses iCloud technology along with all the other new technologies is where the future really is. Does anyone remember those $250,000 edit suites that got replaced by a $1,300.00 Final Cut Studio, back in the day? Well, Apple is doing it again with one major change, this time they are obsoleting themselves before someone else does.
It really is the future, or at least it’s headed in that direction.
109 Responses to The Future of Non-Linear Editing?
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Eben Abbaan says:
July 26, 2011 at 1:06 am
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Larry says:
July 26, 2011 at 1:20 am
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Graham White says:
July 26, 2011 at 7:55 am
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Nivardo Cavalcante says:
July 26, 2011 at 8:09 am
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CF says:
July 26, 2011 at 8:59 am
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Ed Huber says:
July 26, 2011 at 9:22 am
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Lou Borella says:
July 26, 2011 at 9:24 am
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cmoore says:
July 26, 2011 at 9:51 am
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Ryan says:
July 26, 2011 at 10:16 am
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Markus says:
July 26, 2011 at 10:58 am
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Hector says:
July 26, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Newer Comments →Based on the author not using spell check I’m guessing it’s a teenager.
Sorry, my fault for not proof-reading properly. I’ve now cleaned this up and, no, it isn’t a teenager.
Larry
So the future is slapping templates on our footage – witness the night vision cheese – and calling it done? It’s having no means to check for interlacing artefacts or broadcast levels on an external, calibrated broadcast monitor, and it’s doing everything in the one program – including your audio mix and your colour grade?
Call me cynical, but if that’s the new standard then I’m moving on. Apple seems to have become obsessed with the lowest common denominator – it started with the iLife suite – “My Great Movie” as if you only ever make one – and now continues with the half-baked, template driven content machine where no thinking is required and everyone is a star.
It’s pesky keeping tracks butted up together so the magnetic timeline “fixes” that, and audio is tricky so lets just keep it locked with picture – oh you can unlock it, but it’s more trouble than it’s worth so just leave it locked – besides, how will you tell if it’s out of sync when we’ve removed the indicators that let you know??
Sure, Apple has solved a whole lot of problems that only exist for amateurs – good on them for making software for those people – but passing it off as FCP is a joke.
I’d write more, but the disingenuousness of Apple’s approach to selling this program has made me too angry to be constructive. I expect the price to plummet when they realise they’re not getting the sales they expected at $299.00 – $49 seems about right.
Cheers.
Larry,
If this were correct we would have thought iMovie as Best Sellers. I do not believe that people become professional editors who uses the tool. The FCP X may have made things easy for those who do not need to spend years learning a NLE to their random needs. The FCP was a tool 24/7.
I think he’s right to an extent. I’m an ‘iMovie’ user looking to step up my game with FCPX. I can certainly empathize with the professional editors out there and the letdown that FCPX must be for them. But as an amateur one of my requests to Apple was to make the upgrade from iMovie to FCPX easier. I guess Apple ultimately thinks that the future is with people like me or at least that’s a market segment that’s more lucrative for them. To me FCPX is a godsend but then I don’t have all the legacy requirements that professional editors have. It’s not perfect but it’s a actually a nice limited set of features to start playing with and a program that will grow as I grow.
There are some valid thoughts there and I do believe the younger, up and coming editors will reap the benefits of this version and understand it quicker than FCP7 users. I believe Apple could have just done a major update to the ui and everyone would have been happy, they didn’t NEED to change it.
In my eyes Apple has completely gone off the rails with FCPX along with many other products (roar). I have been trying to use this new version and keep going back to FCP7. I guess we either have to relent and stick with Apple or move on and leave it to the younger generation and more open minded current users.
Larry,
This is a joke.
No one doubts that the future crop of editors are the current 16 year olds that started working on iMovie just as the current crop of editors were young once themselves.
And no one doubts that soon we will be using iPads as a control device for our NLEs. As a matter of fact I’m sure the new tech will be a welcome addition.
And no one has questioned Apple’s financial benefit to gear itself toward the consumer market while leaving the pro market behind.
None of us long for the days when ADOs and Character Generators were part of the edit suite. None of us want to go back to A/B roll editing. I’m still waiting for the official death of the Beta machine!!! Even the DVCPro50 deck I bought just 6+ years ago for $7500 is pretty much useless at this point.
We get it. Technology needs to be moved forward. Sometimes at a quicker pace. Sometimes for our own good.
But Apple’s move here was ignorant at best and arrogant at worst. You can change the paradigm of editing with some great new software but that software is not going to change the paradigm of how productions are done. Productions are done by a group of people.
Producers generate ideas.
Script writers tell stories.
Cameramen capture images.
Editors make sense of it all.
Animators and Graphic Artists create the fantasy.
Colorists pull emotions.
Audio Engineers peak our interest.
Out of the box FCPX is intended for the teenager with a camera and an iMac. It was never intended to be part of a production team. To continue to pretend it was ever intended as anything else is disingenuous at best.
Yes, edit suites have gotten more streamlined in the last 10 years. Largely because of Non-linear editing in general not just Final Cut. I’ve trained many old school tape editors the ways of non-linear. Teaching them there was no need to pan their audio hard left and hard right to separate their tracks. Showing them there was no need for pre-roll. Yes, I can’t wait for tape to finally die. I have an AJSD93 and a BVW75 that have been used maybe twice in the last 2 years. Yes, all of the footage I am handed is on SD card or Firestore at this point. And yes I do enjoy taking my laptop and sitting at the coffee shop and working on small productions for my corporate clients. But my broadcast clients are built around the team environment. Everyone has a role and everyone is equally important. Whether it is “Extreme ____Makeover” or “The Today Show” or “Killing Osama bin Laden” on the Discovery Channel, the team is still in place (to varying degrees).
A few weeks ago you triumphantly wrote “Ain’t Nothing Like It In The World.” You have confirmed in previous statements that you warned Apple about the backlash during the run-up to the launch. You told us about all the big wigs at the FCPS demo telling us how Apple really cares about this product. Well I’m sure they do care about it. And maybe the thousands of FCP users that feel so betrayed are incorrect to bet against Apple but we know now that we were never their target audience. Its obvious that the teenager with an iPad is their target now.
We’ve moved on. Maybe out of spite or stubbornness or anger. Maybe incorrectly. But either way. We’ve moved on.
Lets not forget that what “broadcast” means today is not what it will mean going forward. An example is a young friend of mine who scaled his cable TV back to basic, and gets everything else online. Everything. Remember ABC canceled their decades old Soaps only to decide to move them lock stock and barrel to the web. NTSC Broadcast monitor ? Use is if you have it. Future wise, the only tools required will be whats needed to calibrate your content for the web. Oh and “interlacing artifacts” really? Today perhaps, but soon enough the new generation won’t even know what the term interlacing means it will have been long gone by then. “FCP” is only a name of course, its all just software tools and Apple is about where visual content is going period. We have not yet seen the last of what technology is capable of doing. People are just not thinking out of the box here.
Oh and one more thing, the folks at Apple barely have enough time to watch TV….. get it. 😉
Larry-
I have followed your thoughts and posts on FCPX for months now and I can definitely see your back and forth with the issue as you, and as most of us, struggle to figure out what to do next. I continue to foster the wait and see approach, but in the end I agree FCPX is going to have a major impact on future editing.
As the owner of a production company I look at things from the business perspective. FCPX is too inexpensive to not have an impact on our industry. Production companies, and I know several of them, who turn their backs on FCPX now will regret it in the not too distant future. I have no doubt about this.
Almost every PR agency, non-profit, and corporate client who we work for uses FCP. Many are still on FCP 6. We keep a MacBook Pro with FCP 6 just for those clients. If you offer clients an editing tool for less money they will jump on it. Budgets are not getting any larger. If you doubt this, just look at several of the large production/post companies that have folded in our market (Washington, DC) in the past 2 years.
We will continue to support FCP 7. All of our edit suites already have Adobe, so it’s there if a client asks. We have FCPX on one testing machine right now so our staff can learn the software. We even picked up an Avid license just so we have it. With all of that said, I see most of our projects being edited in FCPX in a year or two. (This is if Apple comes through with its promises to fix what’s missing and some of the third party tools fall into place.)
Also, I’d like to comment on the people who believe FCPX is iMovie or software for teenagers. I don’t believe this to be true at all. If you actually dig into the software and see how it works you will realize you need to have an understanding of how editing works. The codec support is fantastic. (Minus RED) Our summer interns started in June with no clue about codecs. The software does some funky stuff, but I see where Apple is going with it. I do agree Apple fumbled this release like none other, but in the end they will recover.
The mysteriously anonymous author of that e-mail is absolutely right – and I am an editor who started out cutting 35mm film and does remember those $250,000.00 edit suites very well…
There is a lot to like in FCP X. However, right now, its capabilities really don’t go beyond a simple short web video (which is perfect for the intended demographic). X right now is both extremely elegant and incredibly clunky.
It’s more like a concept car that got released to the public way too early, lacking serious features every current car has, which makes it totally unfit to go on that big road trip across the country.
But these new young and restless users may be fine with quick trips around town now, but eventually they will want to go on that big trip too. And I am thinking that time will come rather sooner than later. (Everything today happens so much faster than10 years ago…)
I am just hoping Apple will be able to make their new car fit for the road rather sooner than later, or even X’s intended core users will have to switch to a more serious roadster.
Look at people glorifying a pixelated image taken with a cell phone, clientes are becoming more quality disoriented.