I’d like to look at Audition. What areas does it excel over Soundtrack?

DVD burning was huge at that time, and here is where I ran into my first interesting run-in with apple’s support. Until that point, Apple support had been amazing for me. I usually purchased applecare plans and always got great service. But by 2005 Apple was shifting big time to being an entertainment company – the ipod was huge. Anyway the DVD player taht came with my G5 was capable of burning and reading both DVD+R and DVD-R discs, though the specs only mentioned DVD-R. Since DVD+R was much easier to find at good prices (Sam’s Club) I used mostly those and had hundreds of them burned.

One day there was a firmware update for my dvd burner, so as I usually do I upgraded (it was “recommended” by Apple after all in Software Update). So after the firmware update, my drive can no longer read or write the hundreds of DVD+R disks I have (no this was not mentioned in the update notes)! A call to Applecare and the guy tells me “well the specs never mentioned DVD+R so this update just brought it back to spec and therefore we can’t help you.” I went on a bit of a tirade at that point about how much money I spent and how I was a PRO customer and needed PRO service especially if I paid for applecare, and how does it make ANY sense for an UPDATE to take features away – regardless of the specs, the thing worked, and now it doesn’t!

I tried one more call a week later after cooling off (a little) but got nowhere and figured I was SOL. Until about 2 weeks later when I got a call from a tier 2 or 3 tech person who assured me it was all a big mistake and they actually did replace the drive… but not until I made a stink and had to wait. And that initial response STILL pisses me off.

ANyway a few more calls over the next few years and lots of useless “help” and I actually gave up on Applecare.

Then, a few years ago, the NLE world was itching for some new stuff. Premiere now in CS4 or so was no longer a joke, Avid was reasonably affordable… and Apple… killed Shake. And then released Final Cut Studio 3 with FCP 7 which was at best a .5 update in full upgrade disguise – oh and it was 2 years late!

So last year -2010, at NAB, I was convinced to switch BACK to premiere. 64 bit, native DSLR, native RED… AND the easiest round trip to/from After Effects yet. No brainer. This was over a year ago – I’ve been using Premiere ever since.

So to me, this whole thing is old news, even though it’s new again. I wish I could say I was surprised, and I will admit to holding out some hope (HOW could they POSSIBLY kill XML support and backward compatibility – nah it will be there even if they didn’t say so – Larry Jordan agrees!) after this year’s NAB, but man…. this may be my last straw with Apple actually. If no Final Cut, I don’t see the need for a Mac Pro – my dollar will go further building my own system, and Windows doesn’t really bother me like it does others… Mac doesn’t care about PROs anymore. It’s too much work, and to be a “good” pro vendor, you have to be FAR more open than Apple has EVER been, and they seem to get more secretive as time goes on, not less so. This is referring to “Pro” in the sense I always took it to mean – people at the top of the field getting paid for their work – making a living from their computer and software… Apple still cares about putting the WORD “Pro” on things to jack up prices and hit the right marketing points, of course.

All that said, I get the recent anger and noise – if Apple was going to do what they did here, they should have been more straightforward about their timeline and game plan. Why not ANSWER those questions we all had after NAB? Would have softened the blow at least if we’d known “there isn’t time to have multi-cam and backward compatibility in there for launch, but we promise it will be there.” Thing is, the stuff they left out is HUGE — if they really are working on it, why be so secretive?? It does feel kinda like a scam.

Ok, this is too long. I need my own blog. Short version – Yes FCPX is a letdown… but IMO the writing’s been on the wall… I’m surprised people are so surprised. Move to Premiere and be happy. I really don’t understand why the brand name matters that much…

As you know I bought It straight way and have enjoyed playing with it everyday since. I’ve never been a FCP guy I used it for a 20 minute short film once, but have been a premiere guy before and after that. I use premiere primarily in work, I edit blue screen footage a lot, ship it over to after effects for the keying and all the usual stuff including rendering. For the most part it works well as a workflow. But filming with dslr footage with separate audio on short-form projects there’s always annoyance there – having to capture elsewhere, having to sync footage with the new secondary audio both of which has now been alleviated in fcpx. A lot of people have been saying they don’t care about the editor, but I think a lot of they’re updates have really spoken to me, ‘yes that’s an issue that I have’, ‘I have that too’ and have come up with solutions for those and many others. I appreciate the fact that they are trying a different approach to the handling/ organisation of files and editing in the new timeline which is very different and almost thoughtful to the way you edit. It is fast too, one of the main reasons I could never use 7.0 was that it was so slow, I tried it again a couple of months back and after an hour I went back to premiere.

In my mind though all editing products are all the same, there’s really not that much depth to them or difference between them, but upon seeing the demo of fcpx i though wow, that’s new, exciting and I want that. It definitely has it’s concerns regarding it’s limited outputs, particularly the broadcast ones, which I really hope will come and would be dumbfounded if they didn’t as they’ve often had videos of the Coen’s, Fincher championing Final Cut for a while and cutting them clean off would come as a shock (and yet not totally unbelievably). I think a lot of apple’s thinking is directed towards the iTunes store. I originally hoped the iPad (from rumors) would have a little dvd player to enjoy films on the road – but of course why would they do that?, it would make no sense, they want you to buy and watch films from the iTunes store, DVDs = no money for apple.

I feel bad for the outcasting of DVDStudio Pro I had to use it in work recently for a commercial dvd project when Encore couldn’t do it – Encore has issues with playing on each and every dvd player, especially with buttons not being visible on certain ones. DVDSP is (was) much more dense with features and compatibility.

All in all I think it’s good of them to stir the pot a bit as editing software updates are usually just an addition of file compatibility or an addition of outputs with one or two little features here and there but fundamentally it’s still the same day-in-day out editor as before which is the same as the others. FCPX is different, both good and bad. For me at least it seems like it’s come too early, I’m sure in apple-land there is no tv, cinemas, dvds there’s just itunes. It seems like a software that is 5-10 years to early for us when perhaps there are no dvd’s but I’m not going to even go there.

At the end of the day it’s cheap, fast and a new approach and I definitely think a step forward. I, as with most, will be eagerly anticipation to see what exactly they do for the first update – or even comment about it. But damn even motion is dare I say, decent nowadays.

I’m hoping to edit my film using it, which will take a few years and probably v11 will be out by then so will see how it develops.

As you know I bought It straight way and have enjoyed playing with it everyday since. I’ve never been a FCP guy I used it in uni during the first year (as that what was being taught for one project) and edited one 20 minute short film in it. I’ve always preferred premiere and use that (mainly in work) for editing. CS4