Thanks for your article which I found very interesting.
I am a Motion Design and VFX professional working in London for over a decade, in broadcast, video and film.

I agree with you that the target audience has changed but I do not think it is as simple as saying it is for Photographers. I think it is for a new type of professional emerging due to technological developments where a Canon 5D can shoot better looking footage than a tape based ‘professional’ camera thousands of pounds dearer. I think as you see more and more of these technologies mature, the FCP features a lot users are missing, will simply not be as important. We still need EDLs and I don’t like having to duplicate a 5GB project to do a sort of force-save but FCPX is superior in many other ways to FCP7 if your workflow involves digital footage. I think a lot of the terminology in handling colour and metatags in footage is a direct response to technological advancements. If professional editors start adopting photographic cameras to shoot videos then their software needs to reflect this.

I think Apple, as always, is looking very far forward and developing software in direct relation to hardware.

Shari.

Good post.

Thanksfor commenting Brad. I wanted to address your point about meta data and non-destructive media management. FCP7 is non-destructive. If I add an effect and render it, the original media is not changed in anyway. A new rendered file is created. And as far as media management, it would not have been difficult for Apple to add a similar metadata management model to the current paradigm of editors. Give the editor a choice. I for one like to drop all my clips in a bin and visually use the browser to see which clip I need. I don’t want to be forced to add keywords to everything if I feel the project doesn’t need it.

Anyway, only tell will tell if this move on Apple’s part will make sense long term.

I’ve been happy with FCP1 thru FCP7. But I prefer FCPX because it’s obviously much better designed that FCP Classic, much as OS X is obviously better designed than OS 9.

I agree FCPX is very much like Aperture. Perhaps FCPX is like Aperture because the photo app provided a model for working with digital media in a more intelligent way, using databases and metadata and working non-destructively. Something had to replace the legacy video model. This is important because current workflows, which duplicate clips erase metadata at every stage. FCPX works at the level of data. The value of non-destructive editing is that it’s very easy to attach data to the file instead of rewriting a dumb file. So, for example, I could theoretically create a Look in Color.app, and share my Look template to any FCPX user in the world. And I can keep my own library. The thing is, I don’t need Color.app to use the Looks. They are available in FCPX because it and Color would be integrated at the level of data. It’s just numbers. (The other cool thing is I can choose what settings are available to end-users of my Look template.)

I wouldn’t be surprised to jump 7 years in the future and find FCPX, like the iPhone/iPad and iTunes, has a store built into it. What’s the content? All the elements you need to make your movie. You have decent search, so you can look through thousands of title templates made by your peers, ie. pro motion graphics designers, and find a title sequence template to buy, along with music, sound effects, and so on. There is live auditioning, just like existing filters in FCPX, so trying looks and templates and stock shots, etc is fast. Some templates you buy, some are shared freely. All the collaborators involved in moving image production can be integrated for the first time, in a powerful new way that no one else is in a position to deliver. Apple is the storekeeper. In fact, in this scenario, Apple is at the centre of a giant creative marketplace. All the collaborators involved in moving image production can be integrated for the first time, in a powerful new way that no one else is in a position to deliver. That’s the kind of thing we have come to expect from Apple.

And that’s what FCPX seems designed to do. Integrate the components of production so well that it can function as a marketplace. Could Apple really be doing that? Who knows. I do know from dealing with them for a long time, that things that don’t make any sense now, often make so much sense later you wonder how you didn’t notice.

At the very least, that represents the scale at which I would expect Apple to be working: looking way into the future, wanting to change the world (and make lots of money doing it). Adobe could be working on the same thing. Who knows?

“They must believe that in the long run, a $299 mid-level program will make way more money than a $1,000 high-level suite.”

I wonder if this is significant. I assumed Apple have simply chopped up the suite into apps because, as they tell developers in the App Store, with a digital product, you will make way more money selling to more people for a lower price.