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TV and film industry aren't happy about Final Cut Pro?

iBug2 said:
FCP is great at the moment, it does everything I need and more, but I'm not a Hollywood editor. But iMovie certainly is not enough unless you are doing very basic edits.
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I guess that depends on what one calls basic, and this indeed is an issue with FCP. What defines a 'pro' piece of software? In Apple's case, they clearly believe that just having more features than iMovie alone is enough. Instead they should be doing what they did with their hardware division, which is linking with actual end-users to figure out what the product needs.

But I do believe iMovie is very capable, and at the very least supports 4K. It's ideal for assembly.
 
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Apple needs to set the standard and allow other people to use its standards and go away with its switch to Apple mentality. if not Apple will fall behind with the standards since they may have something similar but not the standard everyone is used to.

It seems more people want the standards and their input over what Apple thinks.
 
Strange discussion. I believe the reason this open letter exists is because those who have signed strongly feel that Final Cut Pro (X) is already a fantastic tool and can become a truly great tool with some TLC from the development team. I personally signed and submitted suggestions. I’ve edited Netflix and Discovery episodes and long form documentaries on Final Cut Pro X and strongly feel that Apple has created an incredibly powerful and innovative piece of software. Over the years I’ve edited on Avid, Premiere and FCP 7 and X and the one I am fastest on and enjoy the most is Final Cut Pro X. Unfortunately we are creatures of habit and change freaks many of us out. The production company I spent 6 years editing on FCPX with decided to switch to Premiere this year because of a lack of editors familiar with the software and a dire weakness in collaboration and audio mix and export tools. It’s a shame because the program has so much potential.
 
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Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
Great story. Maybe it's rose glasses, but I just feel Apple was making more of an effort to market and connect with professionals years ago. The hardware now is fantastic obviously and they've made great strides, it's just the software and the unwillingness to invest in competing.
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Agree. Remember back then, Apple used to demo their pro apps on their keynotes, including their iWork suite. It was cool to watch those.

But in the past few years, they never do it anymore. They only talk about hardware. Heck, they never even mentioned iWork ever in the past few years, let alone FCP anymore.
 
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wilberforce said:
The appropriate people at Apple know perfectly well what features are missing. The purpose of the open letter is not to explain to DPReview members or MacRumors members (or anyone else irrelevant) what these missing features are, or convince them of their merits.
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w5jck said:
I agree, the Apple decision makers are the target audience, not us, and certainly not fan club members who defend Apple no matter what. The letter is for the upper level managers in Apple’s development team.
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“Open letters” by their nature are not for the persons/organizations they’re ostensibly directed towards, they’re “for” the public. In particular, this one is not much different than a petition (mainly because it literally IS a petition) or a blog or a tweet that’s upvoted in that it’s to attract others in the public to their cause. That’s why it would have helped their cause to provide a more polished artifact for folks to attach their names to. There could be several thousands that agree in general but would never sign or support something so poorly presented.

The purpose? Perhaps, since misery loves company, those who have issue but haven’t complained will use this venue to add their voice. And, as it’s on social media, one can never rule out the self promotion opportunity :)
 
Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
Apple doesn't help itself - they literally market this thing with projects featuring the compulsory group of young people out in the woods biking/hiking, with corny title overlays and snazzy music. Yes folks, this is about as 'pro' as you're gonna get. Forget some real case studies and examples of movies actually being made. Cool young people, woods.
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Yes, they market at young people, primarily because young people are in the position to buy 6 or 7… maybe more… systems over the rest of their life. When the older folks on this board were young, they were who Apple was marketing to. And, when the young people out in the woods biking/hiking today get older, they’ll very likely take issue with Apple’s marketing being for whatever the next generation of young people are doing. :)

In the end, it’s a good strategy.
 
If they do not like FCP why don't they use something else ?
I hear AVID is the king of video editing
 
Unregistered 4U said:
Yes, they market at young people, primarily because young people are in the position to buy 6 or 7… maybe more… systems over the rest of their life. When the older folks on this board were young, they were who Apple was marketing to. And, when the young people out in the woods biking/hiking today get older, they’ll very likely take issue with Apple’s marketing being for whatever the next generation of young people are doing. :)

In the end, it’s a good strategy.
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My point was, it’s entirely unambitious to use things like camping trips, hikes and ‘hanging out’ (This is indeed the title of a project that you can play with at Apple stores) to market incredibly advanced hardware that’s intended for the most demanding workflows.
 
Apple Knowledge Navigator said:
My point was, it’s entirely unambitious to use things like camping trips, hikes and ‘hanging out’ (This is indeed the title of a project that you can play with at Apple stores) to market incredibly advanced hardware that’s intended for the most demanding workflows.
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FCPX is intended to sell Macs, though. While not everyone buying a Mac will necessarily buy FCPX, everyone buying FCPX is buying a Mac. And, when targeting a group to design for and market FCP to, young people filming themselves hanging out is still a larger group than “tv and film industry users”.

That’s why this open letter isn’t meant for Apple. They must realize that Apple does not necessarily want to get back into a situation where a relatively small number of people defines FCPX’s feature roadmap.

www.engadget.com

Steve Jobs once considered abandoning the Pro market

When Apple released Final Cut Pro X, a debate raged concerning whether or not Apple was devoting enough resources towards its pro users. While Final Cut Pro X has improved in many ways since it first launched, many video professionals felt that the original offering was a step backwards in...
www.engadget.com www.engadget.com
 
UBS28 said:
Why would you pay for Final Cut Pro really when there are free alternatives that is just as good, if not better?

I thought about buying Final Cut Pro, but based on what I have been reading, I'm good with the software that I am currently using.
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Well, the user they're talking about in this letter is a professional editing team collaborating on a tight deadline to cut together multi-million dollar projects. Not really the same target audience as you are in, I'm guessing.
 
Final Cut Pro in it's early iterations ( Pre FCP X) was a kind of linear-non-linear editor ( the paradigm being drop clips into a timeline of tracks, then change and adjust) that rapidly became 2nd only to Avid that already had a huge industry user base. FCP X completely changed FCP's editing paradigm in 2011 which is the point where many of those early users, not just indies, TV companies, broadcasters but the whole range, simply hated the change and fled in droves.

Take a look at this, I was pleased to see it still up on the net - it sums up editors feelings and how they were slowly won back by Apple https://offthetracksmovie.com

What changed? I was editing and teaching using some of the early NLE systems, FCP, Avid, Media 100 etc at the time. In the X the system components, functions, controls, methods etc were all renamed and changed, many fundamentally. For example, the familiar FCP, Avid etc media management terms " reels, clips & bins" so named to follow the traditional film terms were replaced with a complex & very powerful metadata keyword system- everything had to be relearnt, muscle memory, shortcuts etc became useless, in fact it was a serious problem to overcome. The old FCP drop clips and slide around became a very much more complex & powerful paradigm with magnetic timelines and so on ... The list of such examples is very long.

Many hung onto the FCP final version, keeping older Macs and OS as long as they could. Finally most pros fled, this meant Apple had to find a new user base. FCP was I believe nearly abandoned at the time, it struggled. But eventually the Pros returned, the suite of Motion, Compressor and FCP and it's vast number of creative plugins became a powerful force in the industry.

Now you can integrate FCP ( the X was ofc dropped) with frame.io a cloud based system where edits, cuts and the editing process itself can be shared with teams with a net connection, with IOS,Mac OS, anywhere. Share rough cuts with the client, anywhere, anytime. Mark them up, make notes, change them- whatever. Integrated chat ....

Now it's fast becoming the industry leader in some sectors again. The younger user marketing is merely a tack on these days.
 
Way back in the days of old I bought FCP 1.25 for $1000 and DVD Studio Pro for another $1000, and a capture card too for analog formats. It was a game changer for my business especially with Firewire equipped Macs and DV cameras.

I kept using FC 3 Suite (FCP 7 etc) until Resolve v15. Resolve Studio is where I live now. It's what FCPX (FCP8... lol) could have been.
 
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Radiomarko said:
But eventually the Pros returned, the suite of Motion, Compressor and FCP and it's vast number of creative plugins became a powerful force in the industry.
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I think that might be giving too much credit to the Pros, though. :) The $299 price likely brought in the entirely new market that Apple was aiming for. I know that, as of a few years ago, there were more licenses for FCPX than there EVER was for FCP7. Pros may have found it lacking, but it was never nearly abandoned because folks NOT in TV and Movies (which number in the millions) were using it for their projects and I’m sure it sold a number of Macs, which “driving hardware sales with cool software” as always been a focus of theirs.

Pros may have returned numbering in the thousands and found a FCP that had grown and matured, but even now Apple’s selling more far more Macs and FCP licenses to those outside of that small group of editors. I do find it interesting that their focus on these editors is, essentially, in the areas of Training/Certification, Consultation, and Workshops. Feature requests were mentioned as a “we’re doing some things”. MAYBE those features are what this group is looking for, maybe not. We know part of the disconnect with FCPX was the users wanted to go in one direction, Apple wanted to go in another and there was a meeting where Apple made their direction clear. Apple’s likely happy to help them go in the direction Apple’s headed, but I doubt Apple put them in the driver’s seat again. Especially since, as a percentage of their users, it’s a far smaller group than it was back with FCP7 was a thing.
 
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