
Why Apple built Final Cut Pro X - mynameisraj
http://sachin.posterous.com/why-apple-built-final-cut-pro-x
======
glhaynes
My guess is that they don't really _want_ to be in the pro apps business.
Their pro apps were built or acquired for platform-strategic reasons during a
time that the company's future was a fraction as stable as it is now and they
don't really fit with the focus of the company.

But it'd be tough on a number of levels to outright cancel such a successful
product as Final Cut Pro. And it's beneficial for them to have a stable of
very capable media app developers that help drive design of and exercise
system frameworks like AVFoundation and GCD and provide code/expertise that
trickles down into media apps that are more aligned with the company's focus
and main customers.

And I think they _do_ think there's more profit to be made from a much larger
audience of prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors. Bet they're
right, too.

~~~
inkaudio
You don't get the "prosumer/pro-but-non-top-10-blockbuster-movie-editors"
without being in the pro apps business. Moreover their pro apps fit the focus
of the company, a high end creative company. It's hard to market pro apps to
aspiring professionals and prosumers if pros are not using it. Part of Apple's
marketing campaign for their pro apps is to show how pros are using their
software.

~~~
cageface
Apple is no longer a "high end creative company". Their business now is making
pretty, easy-to-use devices for non-techie consumers. They just happen to
still have this vestigial organ hanging off the side.

~~~
daeken
I don't quite understand why they don't spin their pro apps off into their own
company.

~~~
aschwo
Exactly! If they had done this before killing off Shake, I bet we'd still have
a half decent competitor to Nuke in the high end compositing space, instead of
nothing.

Instead, Apple killed Shake and let big studios buy the source code from them
so they could continue to use it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_(software)#History>

~~~
a4agarwal
Apple used the Shake team to build Motion, an application which a much larger
user base.

~~~
mathnode
What? Shake was THE node based compositing app!

There is a massive difference to Motion and the highend compositing apps like
Shake, Nuke, Fusion, Softimage(Illusion+Matador=FXTree), Houdini(COPS), Flame,
Toxik(Autodesk Composite). After Effects and Combustion are time-line based
like Motion, but Motion doesn't begin to compare to them. Even Blender has
fantastic compositing tools.

Shake was serious business. It's last well known big project was 'The Dark
Knight' which Framestore CFC mangled a 64bit wrapper around it to better
manage the 8k-frame workload. Shake was ported to Intel, then killed off, with
no intention to take it to 64bit. I don't think you can buy the source code
anymore.

~~~
aschwo
The Foundry is absolutely kicking everyone else's ass with Nuke. They have an
interesting business model as well: don't do much research in house, instead
work with studios with big R&D budgets and license their tools when they're
mature, bringing it to a wider audience.

They've done it with Digital Domain and Nuke (compositing), Weta and Mari (3d
paint), and now Sony and Katana (lighting).

------
kenjackson
If this is Apple's thinking, I think they're in serious trouble. It sounds to
me they're taking how they build the iPhone and iPad and applying it to FCP,
and it doesn't work.

There are two types of people: People who pay for video editing software and
those that don't. I actually paid for Adobe Elements a few years back. It was
painful, but I needed it for a specific reason. But I seriously doubt I will
ever pay again (unless it's $2.99 or something). Most people will be fine with
iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker. It does 99% of what you need and braindead
simple.

My wife (and her friends) regularly record GBs of video each week. The problem
is that nothing in FCPX fixes their core issues -- most revolve around video
management, and not actual editing.

There are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing
market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think
the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to
buy this product.

~~~
rdouble
_there are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing
market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think
the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to
buy this product._

This is quite possibly the most wrong comment I've ever read on hacker news.
every kid on earth with a skateboard or snowboard or BMX bike will be buying
this software as soon as they can afford it.

~~~
kenjackson
Funny you say that because my neighbor has a half-pipe (apparently, that's how
it's spelled) in his backyard and I've never heard his son talk about editing
video with FCP. And he actually does have a fair bit of video, as he uses a
helmet cam.

But again, for him its usually management (I actually recommended something I
saw called Project Odessa to him -- not sure if he's using it though). He does
super simple titling, and on occassion a soundtrack. But he doesn't need
something like FCPX. And if he did use it, he wouldn't buy it. Give him a
copy, and I'm sure he'd use it (if he had a Mac), but free does everything he
needs.

This isn't to say that some won't buy it (clearly the singular of anecdote
isn't data), but I think its like non-free and non-pro music mixing software.
Sure there is a market for it, but its just not huge.

~~~
rdouble
It's a half-PIPE, gramps.

~~~
kenjackson
Thanks. The way the kids talk nowadays, you can't really tell what they're
saying. :-)

~~~
rdouble
No problem. I don't see how you can think amateur video editing is not a
growing market. Vimeo/Youtube seem to contain a lot of evidence to the
contrary...

~~~
kenjackson
That last sentence of mine wasn't clear. There are tons of people who will
edit video and put it on YouTube. That I don't doubt. And most will use free
or nearly free software to do so (in a huge number of cases, no SW at all,
beyond editing on the actual capture device itself).

$300 is a lot of money to spend on any piece of SW, much less something as
niche as video editing. Especially if you were to ask people what feature they
want -- all of them are available in free programs.

------
radley
My problem with the change in FCP is that it's following an unpleasant
downgrade pattern on their platform. QT 7 was far more useful than QTX. 10.6 &
earlier Mail is far more robust than 10.7 will be. And it goes on.

Apple's really pushing a premium consumer biz model, leaving professionals in
the uncomfortable position of not having a professional platform.

~~~
ugh
What’s your problem with QTX and Mail? The new Mail is awesomely awesome (the
old is rubbish in comparison) and QTX is a player like QT7 was. Not much to do
wrong.

~~~
yuhong
And more importantly QT7 is still available in 10.6 and QTKit automatically
invokes QT7 instead of QTX when necessary.

~~~
radley
QT7 is available if you know about it and either download it or install it
from disk.

QTX / QTKit don't provide a way to:

\- save in formats other than H.264 for iPhone or computer

\- select datarates other than 2x for iPhone or 1x computer

\- export just the audio

\- export a still / image from your video

\- do simple in/out copy/paste editing

------
ISeemToBeAVerb
I used to work in the post-production industry here in Chicago, specifically
as an editor. I can't think of any well known commercial post-houses that
abandoned Avid for Final Cut Pro completely. I know plenty of shops that USE
FCP along with Avid, but the risk was always too great to fully abandon a
platform that was proven to work (most of the time).

I can't speak for feature film editors, but virtually all of the commercial
film editors I know still, to this day, use Avid for most of their projects.
Editors are a finicky bunch, and I can certainly see Apple realizing that to
truly compete in that market, it's all or nothing. The problem with FCP was
always the uncertainty of it, hence the reason Avid is still in use at most
shops, despite the fact that editors love to bash it.

As time marches on, I can see where FCP might, yet again, be at the forefront
of innovation. The problem is, busy editors don't REALLY want innovation. They
want proven systems that work. I think Apple made the right choice.

------
floppydisk
The article doesn't say much beyond the speculation already running rampant in
the blogosphere. "Apple doesn't care about the pros", "They are a hardware
company so they just want to sell boxes" and so forth.

What I think the article did miss is the recent FAQ announcement by Apple
detailing where they intend to take the software from here. I'm not a video
editor, nor do I play one on TV, so I can't speak to how that addresses the
wants of the pro audience, but they are at least making an attempt to explain
how they will be incorporating pro needs into future patches. How that turns
out, is a completely different question.

~~~
mtw
you miss the overall trend: Apple phased out the XSAN hardware, XServe, they
terminated Shake, one of the most advanced fx creator in the industry. That's
consistent over the years. What's obvious is that Apple cares about creatives
(design consultants, video freelancers etc.) but do not care about corporate
video producers.

------
virtica
I have to ask. When a newbie goes to the Appstore looking for video editing
software and they see the bad rating, who is actually going to buy the
software. Plain and simple, I think that Apple just blew this one.

------
hmottestad
It makes sense. With all the great competitors why would Apple throw money
after aging software.

With Adobe you can work in any of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and
Premiere. With FCP it's just that little bit harder. So if you can't match the
features of your competitors, make one that will outperform everyone.

Essentially: Speed, simplicity, beauty, and most importantly the illusion that
the software is doing your work for you.

------
happywolf
The author left Apple in 2008 while the FCP X project just started, I don't
think he is the best person to know 'Why Apple built FCP X'.

------
zppx
Can someone write about what's going on? Is it the same type of stuff that
happened to the XServe line?

~~~
dagw
The latest version of Final Cut dropped a bunch of features that are vital to
pros and focused more on features that are useful advanced amateurs. Basically
if you used Final Cut to edit home movies and amateur film productions then
the new version is vastly improved. If on the other hand you used Final Cut to
earn a living editing feature length movies and television productions, then
the new version is a bit of a complete disaster. I guess Apple figured that
there wasn't enough money in the pro market, and decided to double down on the
enthusiast and advanced amateur market.

~~~
jmelloy
Also, they've been working on FCPX for two years, and needed to ship. Even if
it wasn't quite ready for pro usage.

~~~
sciurus
Why ship a product that doesn't meet the needs of your customers?

~~~
whatusername
Isn't that the general philosophy of HN? Fail fast and iterate until you hit
customer fit.

------
scelerat
It seems to me that the ascendancy of the Mac in the last ten years has a lot
to do with them being in the "pro space" -- specifically software and web
development pro space -- and being one of the best.

The geeks, that is, the mavens and influencers, folks whom others when to for
advice about what computer to buy, were buying Macs because it really was such
a nice environment. It still is.

Their strategy for ipod too reflects this as well: target the well-heeled,
early adopters, people who like to chatter about their toys. Make the brand
desirable through organic PR -- that is, build a truly desirable product even
if it's not quite at a mass-consumer price point, and let the pent up desire
sell the lower end, targeting various price points with well-vetted technology
and UI.

I don't use Final Cut Pro, but it sounds like they're taking a different tack
than usual. I don't understand it. This article didn't help.

------
asnyder
Interesting, looks just like Cyberlink's PowerDirector.

------
leandrod
Seem to be ðe same idea behind Gnome.

------
bonch
Makes me wonder about the future of Logic Pro. Most of the Logic team has been
occupied working on Garageband for iOS.

------
gcb
That post is very obnoxious. it mentions why apple won't do several things,
and make it seems cool while not doing it, but fail to tell one thing it
bothers to actually do.

At the end of the read all i know is it doesn't have features, it doesn't
support any format... but it does it well so because of that I should buy
apple.

I don't buy it.

