Some interesting news this morning.
FIRST
Apple has quietly notified developers that it is preparing to offer volume purchases for business customers via the App Store.
MacNN has more about this.
The significance of this is that volume purchases of Final Cut Pro will no longer be tied to individual iTunes accounts. This might also presage the arrival of volume pricing and distribution for educational customers.
SECOND
I’ve had emails or phone calls from three different resellers telling me that Apple has notified resellers that it is offering them a one-time, two-day opportunity to buy as many copies of Final Cut Studio (3) as they want.
While this is not the same as putting FCS (3) on the open market, it does mean that the product will be available from selected retailers for a while longer. If you need licenses, contact your favorite, non-Apple store reseller.
THIRD
A large number of Final Cut Pro editors are thinking about switching platforms. Last week, my podcast – the Digital Production Buzz – had a series of discussions on switching to Avid. (Details here.)
This week, we have the product manager for Premiere Pro on the show, along with a recent Final Cut Pro post house that switched to Premiere. (Details here.) If you are thinking about switching, listen to this show first.
Larry
22 Responses to Three items of note
← Older Comments Newer Comments →-
Keith Wright says:
July 15, 2011 at 1:58 pm
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Larry says:
July 15, 2011 at 2:02 pm
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Craig Seeman says:
July 15, 2011 at 3:25 pm
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Gasper says:
July 15, 2011 at 5:15 pm
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Nivardo Cavalcante says:
July 16, 2011 at 11:02 am
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Leo Hans says:
July 16, 2011 at 9:29 pm
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Floris says:
July 17, 2011 at 6:54 am
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Nivardo Cavalcante says:
July 17, 2011 at 9:31 am
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Craig Seeman says:
July 17, 2011 at 1:00 pm
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Leo Hans says:
July 17, 2011 at 9:38 pm
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Larry,
All this talk of switching platforms is very interesting, and your podcast was excellent, but I’ve seen no mention yet of a NLE system that still refuses to die… Lightworks.
They’ve just gone open source with a free public beta and they are looking for feedback from users (in my mind the best way to develop software, none of this closed doors business). I suggest people take a quick look at their website to see just what their plans are
http://www.lightworksbeta.com/
It’s not for Mac heads yet (PC only) but support for OSX is coming later in the year, could be another option further down the road.
Keith
Thanks for the reminder.
Larry
Hi Larry,
I went to the Tekserve event in NYC presented by Evan Schechtman of OutPost Digital (founder) and Radical.media (CTO).
http://www.tekserve.com/learning-events/detail.php?id=12442
He has 50 seats of FCS, 30 also have FCPX. He said Apple has volume licensing now and he was also able to add 7 more FCS seats apparently confirming that he can now get them through VAR (which was probably Tekserve). I hope I’m not misquoting him. These were responses to questions I asked him directly after the event so he did not announce this to the audience.
BTW Tekserve said they had about 500 people register and it was the largest event they had ever held (this apparently including Apple product launches).
He also thought people jumping ship were a bit rash. He said they would be waiting a year before making that decision.
I am still switching to Avid.
If does not FCP X will output video broadcast, why is a pro?
@Nivardo Cavalcante
It doesn’t yet. That’s the reason: yet
I’m going multi platform for now. Doing a large project in Final Cut Pro X… very nervous about it because if you hit a road block, you’re stuck on an island with nowhere else to go. I do hope the Lion update will be here soon with versioning (auto save versioning) support as well as some major bugfixes and hopefully some small improvements based on the feedback they have received from numerous editors.
@Leo
Three years of development and only after launch will take care of the video I / O? Someone left the phone off the hook in the development of FCP X. Why? For all that the Pro will come in a few weeks? This to me demonstrates a failure to provide the resources.
@Floris
Please keep us(me?) updated and feel free to reach out for help if you’re in a quandary. The scary part about FCPX is that it’s so different that many issue one can run into might be entirely unanticipated.
@Nivardo
Unfortunately we don’t know whether FCPX is in a feature incomplete state because there was a lack of allocated resources or what Apple/Ubilos is attempting was very difficult . . . or some combination of the two.
There’s the other issue regarding why Apple did not seem to be more open with third party developers. You’d think that they’d want a well supported App when released. This I simply can’t fathom as a business decision. Was there a concern that a the typical legal NDA was not sufficient and whether the consequences would be worse than releasing an App that is incompatible with everything that came before it.
FCPX as a program I can appreciate and I like the direction it can take although I have no idea if it’ll actually take that direction.
Apple’s decisions defy my understanding of business practices. Either there was a serious and prolonged management failure or they have some as of yet unseen moves that are concealed for the moment, which will bring this app to the market front.
Given the rumored “Jobs reaction” I have a hunch some portion of management was not being watched and guided from higher up the chain. That in itself concerns me.
@Nivardo
We don’t know how close it has to be with Lion APIs and the 3rd parties plans from Apple.
Apple has build up a very good video engine, a very good interface and new editing paradigm. Then FCPX is open enough waiting for 3rd parties collaboration.
Take a look at the effects with the Motion 5 engine integrated in FCPX. A lot of custom effects are being developed by users (I made a few and posted in my blog).
It was necessary to release the software to be tested in real projects. I am still working with FPC7 and Avid MC, but I am mirroring projects in FCPX (when I have time left for that).
Let me say that I am impressed about the simplicity and the speed working and the fast and precise editing I can achieve in FCPX despite being new for me (not to mention the impressive software speed itself).
Three years of developing that instead of an I/O driver? Yes, drivers can wait. We should wait too before taking an action like switching to another NLE.
Building FCPX is way more complicated than OMF, EDL, XML and I/O. Yes, there are a lot of things to add in the near future, but they are nothing compared with the things they already has done for FCPX.
If we don’t like the editing paradigm we can jump to another NLE. Regarding of that little important things we can wait for a few months because we may know well our professions, but Apple engineers know how to build up an application and how to add things in the correct order. I have no doubts on that.