The 'X' Factor

This is interesting

I've always had a suspicision that Apple was going to merge Colour and Aperture. Makes sense to me.
Why have two powerful Apps that basically do the same thing apart from working on stills or the moving image?

The other thing I've always wondered about was the 'X' factor. Could it be that we will eventually get Motion X and Compressor X? These two programs didn't get the total re-write that Final Cut Pro received so it wouldn't surprise me to see totally new versions. Though I suspect that Compressor will be axed in favour of a program that not only does Compression but also adds in presentation features that will hook into the long rumored Apple TV.

One thing I'm hoping for is that the Events and Project Libraries will be common to all X'd programs as it was Aperture that gave us this paradigm in the first place.

Really? I find it hard to believe that colour and aperture would merge, they are vastly different apps. Going from 3 to X is quite a big step as well, I'm guessing that V4 for aperture is around the corner. From what I can tell from FCP X, apple wants you to stay in FCP X to do your colour grades. DaVinci resolve works really well but doesn't transfer as much as it should from FCP X.

What was really interesting to me in the article to me is that it looks like apple is working hard on Logic X. Spending their time on it so that it has all the features it should have on launch, unlike FCP X.

Lets face it. While the Colour Correction tools in FCP X are better than what we had in FCP 7 they are not a patch on what we had with Color.

If Aperture has all the tools like lift and stamp advanced masking, cloning tools etc, as well as the ability to see all Events and Projects then wouldn't it make sense to use it on video? Lightroom has been killing Aperture lately and I think the reason why Apple hasn't fought back with Aperture 4 is because they were doing this complete re-write to 'X' the program.

Sorry, I don't see the connecting between Color and Aperture. The article makes no mention of that.

Is Lightroom "killing" Aperture? Really? Interesting, I've not seen any data about that.

I'm sure the "X" branded software will be great. Or else... I hate to think about "or else".

No this is purely wild speculation on my part. As I said its been something I've been thinking about.
To me it makes sense. Aperture already works with video to a limited extent.
Aperture was the pioneer of the Event/Project Paradigm.

Don't you think it would be cool if ALL X apps could see and work with Events and Projects?
The need to "send to Motion" would be made obsolete. Just open the project in Motion X. Do your work.
Open in Aperture X. Touch it up. Open in Logic Pro X and finalise your mix. All changes reflected in every X app. What could be more perfect?

Sounds like a dream to me. I'd like the idea and would hope it'd come to that somewhen.

Not so sure if Color really'd be integrated in Aperture. My hypotheses on that is that Apple would leave that up to Resolve or Smoke.

Actually, Final Cut Server started the paradigm you're talking about. And it did all of what you are wishing for already. But, Apple killed it off. Major successful product. Made half my living off of it, and a pretty good one at that. Final Cut Pro is running on that exact same engine, ya know.

All I can guess at is that since the PostGres database engine is now built into Mountain Lion, we will see all the pro apps use it (crossing fingers and toes). If they all use it, then they could all be linked together like you describe, much more integrated.

But remember that Final Cut Server did all of this already, cataloged any format of file you could throw at it. It would be great to see a version built into the OS finally.

Then again, you would build up one hell of a huge database, and buying RAIDS may not be a luxury any longer. HA! :woohoo:

Final Cut Server certainly sounded impressive but I never encountered it in the real world sadly.
The companies I freelance for said it was more trouble than what it was worth. I guess they were right with Apple killing it inside 3 years.

More trouble than it was worth? Really? Not by a long shot. It was widely successful. I have dozens of installations across the US and they all love it. It is not any trouble, unless you don't have a clue how XSAN works. XSAN was the most difficult part of it, and anyone properly trained has no major issues with XSAN. FCSvr was super easy to install, use, maintain, and was pretty much bullet proof. Anyone saying otherwise really had no clue what they were talking about. I know that first hand.

It originally was ArtBox and was used more than any other solution around the globe. Apple made it easier to use.

Did Apple kill it for not being successful? No. That's like saying Shake and Color were killed for not being successful. But amazingly successful products.

I think they were a mixed PC Mac environment. They were the only ones I ever encountered who gave it a go. In the end they went with Inscribe which seems to be what everybody uses here in Oz.

Hateful program.

FYI, FCSvr was cross platform, too. Oh well, it's gone.