Interesting thoughts on FCPX from a former AVID employee

good news is, it's not a rant or hate-piece:

[techvessel.tv]


nick

Interesting read. Good evaluation.

Personally I still can't help but think something "blew up" inside of Apple to have no transition. I have no idea what but can only speculate that there were some technology legal licensing contractual issues that they couldn't resolve or gave up on shortly before release.

Regarding iMovie, it was shortly after iMovie '08 came out with its radical change that Apple made iMovie '06 available for about another two years or so.

There is something about FCPX release and FCS removal that is uncharacteristic of Apple. It just doesn't make sense as a planed move nor does it follow any other pattern in their recent past.

Apple is doing some sloooow and quiet corrections (and may be limited) so it seems. Allowing the purchase of additional seats of FCS for example (see my Tekserve post).

Well, I don't want to defend FCP X. Not after waiting years for a good solid response from Apple. The entire FAQ on FCP X was poorly worded. FCP X may become good someday, but there will be a lot of changes before it happens, and we're talking more than adding a few features.



www.strypesinpost.com

First update, which I suspect will be minor will happen this "summer" (translates to September 23rd). I'm going to guess another one will happen between December and spring and that might be major. We'll have a better picture by then.

I think Apple's number one priority right now should be fixing the bugs that are causing people to lose work. Crashing is annoying but at least it's obvious that something has gone wrong. I have heard stories of people coming back on Monday morning to find work they did last week completely gone with no warning whatsoever. It's put me off delving further into the app.

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...

Lion could address that, although I think when you put two and two together, it will cause more problems. Look at classic FCP- when you delete a project on the desktop, you can still continue working, after which you can save anywhere you want. While running a project in classic FCP, everything is loaded into RAM. Not sure how Lion will address that.



www.strypesinpost.com

It should work in Snow Leopard. The fact that it fails doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence in Lion's implementation.

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...

I agree with Craig, the whole thing seems VERY odd.

The Apple "Pro Apps" heads came by the studio on Thursday to "have a dialogue" and convince people that they "are listening". Which is strange, because the prevailing wisdom is that Apple just didn't care what the professional community thought. I wasn't in the meeting, but apparently the Pro Apps people seemed genuinely open to criticism, which was in abundance.

My thinking is that Apple prepared for a bad initial response, but thought it would blow over quickly. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to realize that the people they were pissing off were professional media makers... who vented their frustration through the mass media.

So strange that a company famous for understanding markets so wildly misread theirs in this situation.