Apple’s Abandonement of the Pro Market

Apple’s abandonment of Professionals is obvious to me.

If they were planning on supporting professionals they could have done what they did with OS X. Release FCP X as a beta, while also continuing to support FCP 7 for a time, and especially keep it available. And keep adding features to X until it was at par with 7 and then kill 7, with a definite timetable. They did it with OSX, so they could have done it here, but they are aiming for Prosumers and have abandoned the pro market completely.

All the people saying how great FCP X is, well I am glad you like it, but it is not, and will never be a professional app. Sure you can edit amazing things with it, and use it’s new very powerful features to make an incredible product or movie or whatever you are editing, but you can do that with any tool, it is just not a professional editing program and from what I see, never will be.

Kensington has awesome customer service

So while my trackball at home is a discontinued Microsoft Trackball Explorer (actually have 2 in case one breaks, but both are pretty used), I carry a Kensington Expert Mouse trackball with me from job to job.

Microsoft
My discontinued Microsoft Trackball.

Kensington
The Excellent Kensington Expert Mouse.

In fact before the Microsoft Mouse I always had a Kensington similar to this, even back to my Mac Classic I had an ADB model. The current model is a powerhouse with 4 buttons and an excellent scroll wheel.

Well under the ball, there are 3 little red plastic balls that the ball sits on, and one of mine came out when I was trying to clean it, and I lost it. And the ball just doesn’t track right, so I contact Kensington, and they don’t have the part, but are sending me a new trackball. And I just need to dispose of my old one! How awesome is that? THANK YOU KENSINGTON! YOU GUYS TOTALLY ROCK!

And I do love your trackball!

Macgasm article on FCP X

The web site Macgasm has an article on two editors take on FCP X, and why they are not going to be using it. It is a good read on the subject and goes along allot with how I feel about FCP X.

From Eugene Ho:

By releasing a program that ought to have been a step forward from the existing app, but instead was missing many features that used to be there, Apple made it so that FCP X doesn’t “just work” for many professionals. By changing the video editing paradigm, FCP X now “gets in the way” of many pros, who will now have to spend the time to learn the “new way” of video editing.


From Paul Skidmore:

People keep asking me what I think of the new Final Cut Pro. My answer has been consistent: “It’s hands down the best editing program I’ve ever used, and when it comes time to edit my short film this fall, I won’t be using it.”


Though Paul seems to think FCP X will get there, which I don’t. I think it has some very basic flaws that will preclude it from ever being a viable pro editing program, and that is why I will be getting Media Composer for $999 before the deal runs out, and I already have Premier Pro CS5.5 and have been spending a lot of time learning it.

Premiere Pro with Client in the Room Article

The great Pro Video Coalition and Scott Simmons has a must read article on using Premiere Pro with a client in the room. ppro-real-world-edit-main

It is a must read for an Final Cut Pro 7 switcher. And has some great stuff on using it with an external monitor with either a Kona or a Matrox (seems Kona works better, but still has issues, especially with a long sequence).

Check it out if you get a chance. I am already making the switch to Premiere Pro CS5.5, though I am having issues with Lion, and this points out some issues I had not realized that you have to think about.

I hadn’t realized Premier Pro doesn’t have any sort of Auto Media Relinking, that each clip must be manually found. Of course with how slow Final Cut Pro 7’s could be, this might actually be faster.

No timecode window, which is a must, though was not added all that long ago to FInal Cut Pro.

Reveal in Project from Source Window! A no brainer since you can do it from the sequence!

Check out the whole article. It is worth checking out.

Adobe just blew me away! Wow!

So I have been learning Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and liking it a lot as an alternative to Final Cut Pro, but there are some things I think are missing, and have been adding Feature Requests.

Well for my request to add a duplicate clip showing in the timeline, I got a response! And one that points out all the features in the program that are similar. I am so impressed by this!

Hi Jonah,


Thanks for your request and feedback. I’ll add your name to the list of requestors for this feature request.


Premiere has clip usage indicators, which isn’t quite what you’re looking for (indicators in the Timeline), but can be very useful and is a feature that neither FCP nor Avid have.


You can turn on the Video Usage and Audio Usage data columns in the Project panel (list view mode). In the flyout menu (accessed via the widget in the upper right of each panel), choose Metadata Preferences. Then either do a search for “usage”, or twirl open the Premiere Pro Project Metadata section and put a check in the Video and Audio Usage properties so they’ll show up in the List View of the Project panel. You can rearrange the data columns in the Project panel so you can see these usage indicator columns while you’re editing. Now each time a clip is used, the usage count indicates the number of uses across all sequences in the project. For example, this is great for monitoring which clips have been used in cutaways already and which clips are unused and available.


If you need more specific usage information, here’s another tip: in the Preview Area (the top of the Project panel with the thumbnail previewer and clip info), when a clip is used in any sequence, “video used x times” or “audio used x times” appears next to the video and audio type description. And if you click on the small drop-down arrow next to the usage info, a popup menu reveals a list of the sequences the selected clip is used in, with its timecode location in each sequence usage. PLUS, if you select one of these locations in the usage popup menu, that sequence is opened and the playhead is parked at the timecode where the clip is actually used. This is one of Premiere’s “best kept secrets” and we’re working on making the feature much more discoverable.


David Kuspa | Adobe | Sr. Experience Designer, Dynamic Media

AWESOME! Adobe you are doing something right and winning a convert. My only complaint is your level 1 tech support in India is not good at all, and doesn’t really help until you get to tier 2 for the most part.

Premiere Pro in Lion Update 2

  1. OK, so NVIDIA has been able to re-create the problem, and there is a workaround. You must force the Mac into 64 Bit mode (If it can handle it). This Apple Tech Support Document gives how you can do it permanently or for a single boot.

If your Mac uses the 32-bit kernel by default, but supports the 64-bit kernel, you can start up using the 64-bit kernel by holding the 6 and 4 keys during startup.



To select the 64-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:

sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture x86_64

To select the 32-bit kernel for the current startup disk, use the following command in Terminal:
sudo systemsetup -setkernelbootarchitecture i386

Studio Daily has an article in Defence of FCP X

  1. The article talks to people who are using FCP X and seem to think it is great, and at the very least the future of editing, but I completely don’t agree, and have to say these people are pretty insetting.

Schechtman is a little more blunt, especially when it comes to editors who have already declared their intention to abandon FCP for the competition. “If you’re making a rash decision based on a product that isn’t complete, you’re an idiot,” he says. “We all live a technical life. We all can look back at the not-so-distant past and see that we’ve been through this before. Don’t jump ship, permanently, while someone else is rethinking the NLE for your benefit.”

Insulting and ignoring much of the big picture. Like me having a 5 month job starting where we need a new Final Cut Pro editing bay because our client is a Final Cut Pro house. Well we need to buy a new system and duplicate our Black Magic setup, which is useless for AVID (at least for now) and at this point we have to buy another copy of Final Cut Studio 3 on Ebay for more than $1000, because it currently isn’t available anywhere.

And it is idiotic to say that FCP X is going to be all this and that, if it is as you say an unfinished program! What if when Adobe moved to 64 bit they made their entire suite incompatible with the previous version, and cut out most of the features people needed. People would be up in arms, as they are about Final Cut Pro X! They did not need to release an unfinished product, they had years, and could have waited to release their supposedly finished product. They released it, so it is finished, sure they may add some more features, but it is a finished product.

I spent a week learning FCP X and did not find it any faster than FCP 7 for my editing, in fact I found many features backwards, and felt I had to spend more time organizing because of the lack of ability to use tabs for folders, and organize quickly that way for easy access.

If you want to make the old paradigm better, then add to it, add the new features on top of the old, and if people like it, it will take over, but just to make their way that only way, and to require more steps to do many of the essentials features of the previous version is unacceptable!

Premiere Pro Feature Requests

So after going through and learning about the features in Premiere Pro CS5.5, I have some feature requests, all of which I have put in with Adobe at their Feature Request web site. I will continue to expand this list as I think of more things that are frustrating me, and will always submit them to Adobe first.

  1. Clip Dupe Detection in the Timeline. Both AVID and Final Cut Pro 7 have this. As it is often important to not repeat shots in Commercials, the ability to see a visual representation which shows which clips are repeated is an essential feature.
  2. MIDI interface. With Final Cut Pro I uses a Behringer BFC-2000 to be able to do a good audio mix within Final Cut Pro using it’s automation controls. This would be a perfect pairing with the Audio Mixer in Premiere, and it is frustrating that only Audition has the ability to interface with MIDI controls as I would prefer to be able to mix directly within Premiere Pro.
  3. In the Title Overlays Final Cut Pro includes markers for 4:3 center cut within a 16:9 project, which I am often using (HD project for SD 4:3 delivery).
  4. A re-sizeable, movable Timecode window, like the added to Final Cut in FCP 7.
  5. Reveal in project from Source monitor and not just from the sequence.

Premiere in Lion Update

Well my issue with Premiere and Lion is certainly a CUDA issue. NVIDIA released a new CUDA driver, 4.0.21, but it does not solve the issue. The only way to get Premiere Pro to boot is to remove the CUDA.framework from my Library, and then Premiere boots, but with software only acceleration making my GeForce completely useless. Lets hope they get on this quick!