The Real Question...

I think we can (almost) all agree that Final Cut is dead. Maybe in 5 years it'll be usable again, but what's the point?

SO... the BIG question...

Moving forward, which way do I go, Premiere or Avid?

I know Avid, but an old Media Composer version, way before 5.5. I know NOTHING of Premiere, except the fact that the Mercury Engine is fantastic for realtime playback. But all in all, here's how I see the playing field...

AVID: With 5.5, the most mature, flexible user interface, and the best pro market presence, BUT... built on a very old performance engine. Render hell.

PREMIERE: Crazy fast performance, excellent After Effects/Photoshop interplay... BUT... almost zero pro market presence, and a kind of immature user interface.

SONY VEGAS: At this point, it's suddenly a possibility. But I know zip about it...

Hmm...


Any suggestions, or more info I'm missing? What's your gameplan for the future?

I see a lot of folks already talking about moving on, can't tell if it's a matter of spite and disappointment or legitimate concerns over the future of the software. I was shocked to see Walter Bascardi, a long-time FCP evangelist, dump it publicly over on the Cow.

But... is there any major compelling reason to quit FCP right now?

Certainly FCP 7 is going to be usable for a while, especially with it's support for all of our major investments like graphics cards and external storage. And even though it's EOL, I know plenty of editors and shops that hold onto the previous versions for as long as possible rather than upset a system that's in place and reliable. I can't imagine it will be cheap or easy to replace 20 FCP seats with something like Premiere, at least not overnight.

So long as 3rd-party drivers and plugins don't become solely compatible with X, or some major new camera format comes out, I don't see any compelling need to upgrade or switch for a while. Yes, I would like have more speed, yes I would like a 64-bit native app and yes, I want the shiny-shiny new toy. But I'm willing to give it time before I chuck out a major investment like this, and I want to see how Apple responds to all this.

JVK

Well, I posted this in another thread. But this is my answer. (By the way, I'm an editor at one of the four big TV networks, whose entire trailer/tv spot dept. moved to FCP 2 years ago. I've also cut on FCP for movie trailer houses for many years, after initially learning on Avid...)

Why am I leaving? The app is not written for me.

The final straw for me was finding out you can't assemble a palette of clips at the end of your timeline. It'll all "magnetically" snap into my sequence. This utterly destroys my whole way of working.

Would that functionality come back later, along with the ability to copy/paste certain attributes, and the ability to assign audio tracks, and every one of a billion things the new software won't do? Will that be brought back? Maybe, in a few years. But who cares, everyone will have moved on.

So it's all fine with me, because I already know Avid. It hurts, because I loved FCP, and LOVE how it democratized editing from the Bad Old Days of $100,000 Avid seats. But the bottom line is no company in Hollywood, with crazy deadlines and creative expectations is ever going to move to FCPX. And they shouldn't, because it's not written for them. So why learn it? May as well learn Lightworks and Media 100... just for fun.

I honestly don't know which direction my network, and the industry at large, will move. Premiere, or just back to Avid? I'm guessing Avid, but we'll see.

Oh, and more to your question...

The reason to move now is one simple word: Rendering.

I waste probably 30-35% of my time in FCP7 rendering. But as the admittedly crazy-awesome engine beneath FCPX shows, and Premiere's Mercury Engine show, there's no reason nowadays to be wasting such a huge amount of creative time waiting.

Until we all move from 1080 to 4K, that is

Have been thinking about this and reaching out to some folks since "The Drop". Why? Because to me it's unfathomable that they would release X in its current state and hope that we'll wait around for them to get it back to where it needs to be before jumping ship. It's abundantly clear that we've been forsaken for a larger market. That's ok, I guess, if you're driven by profits like a behemoth such as Apple clearly is.

If I need to add a bay within the next year, what am I supposed to do? Turn down jobs because X still isn't where it needs to be and a 7 license is $4000 because it's in the hands of some crazy reseller who's been holding onto it like it's the last piece of dog meat during the apocalypse? Of course not. How can I be sure that Apple is even poised to take X there? So it's at this point, right now, without any indication from Apple of what's in store for X, or any sort of road map/timeline/lifting of the veil (I started a thread at apple.com sort of rallying the troops to demand an indication of where they're taking X and it was deleted almost immediately), that I need to start transitioning to something that I can feel confident is committed to us for the long term.

Just finished the new CS5.5 features video and it truly knocked my socks off. It's what X should have been. The Premiere pro market presence will be there if we are. And if not, we'll riot.

That being said, I have no idea where I'm headed. It's a lonely, strange, isolated feeling. Kind of like my first day at university all over again.

That's a good point about adding a new license, I forgot that Apple was no longer selling the FCS3 boxes anymore; here's hoping that resellers don't start hoarding the remaining copies and selling them at outrageous prices (glad I upgraded when I did instead of waiting it out for X).

BTW, here is Phil Hodgetts take on X:



He does indicate that Apple realizes features like multicam and XML are important and are going to roll them into future updates. While the wisdom of releasing v1.0 without them is debatable, at least there's a glimmer of hope that Apple will be working on X going forward. Whether the improvements come too late to save all the seats that are switching to Premiere and Avid remains to be seen...

JVK

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SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

My next project will be on FCP 7 because it's not broken yet, but the one after that will be on whatever best meets my needs at the time. I have a feeling that may be Avid Media Composer 6, but I'm reserving judgment until I need to make a decision. Avid has said that MC 6 will be 64-bit so that would imply a significant and much-needed overhaul of the code.

My software:
Pro Maintenance Tools - Tools to keep Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro X, Avid Media Composer and Adobe Premiere Pro running smoothly and fix problems when they arise
Pro Media Tools - Edit QuickTime chapters and metadata, detect gamma shifts, edit markers, watch renders and more
More tools...

For those that used Discreet Edit: Does this bring back memories? Discreet had THE BEST editing software I had ever seen and right when it got better....BAM!!! pulled the lever! WTF is wrong with these companies man.
I remember Discreet (autodesk) marketing people at the time saying: "Discreet Edit was steeling sales from our higher end softwares like Smoke and Fire.

Flabasha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So it's all fine with me, because I already know
> Avid. It hurts, because I loved FCP, and LOVE how
> it democratized editing from the Bad Old Days of
> $100,000 Avid seats.

>But the bottom line is no
> company in Hollywood, with crazy deadlines and
> creative expectations is ever going to move to
> FCPX. >

I'm with you 100%.
I also work in Hollywood in a major studio.
NO WAY FCP X will be adopted.