FCPX v Adobe Premiere Pro v Avid Release History

Oliver wrote:

The shift to libraries also removed some of the functionality that was in projects before. I simply find it hard to believe that something that causes such a drastic change in how an application works was something that was planned all along. If it was, then that's incredibly bad planning for an application so early in its development path. I prefer to believe that Apple was in fact responding to customer push-back, but I could be wrong.

Nope, you are absolutely correct. Actually the shift to Libraries has caused a lot of grief in the beginning, especially for larger companies who had already set up solid collaborative workflows around the Event/Project concept. The Library model completely broke these workflows, plus 10.1 was the buggiest version ever. I have been deeply involved in solving the transition pains for a couple of major setups and all I can say is that Apple has been more than extremely helpful with all this. So no, this was not planned all along. It was indeed a drastic change that has proved to be a very intelligent one in the end. The only sidenote I would like to add is that I don't consider this as a push-back. The Library model is way more evolved than the single project file structure of other NLEs. And it offers far more flexibility, especially in complex collaborative workflows. I think we will still see some further enhancements to it in the future.

- Ronny

All very valid arguments and interesting observations!

Oliver Peters wrote: The reason I discount these early updates is because FCP X development started at least a couple of years prior to the release and it's my belief that most of these features were already on the roadmap. It's simply that they couldn't be included at the time of the initial release, because the weren't "ready for prime time". So for example, adding multicam has often been characterized as Apple responding to the customer feedback. From what I know about software development, that's a pure fantasy. It simply takes longer than that, so I feel this was always planned, just not ready yet. For all intents and purposes, I consider the first year after FCP X was first released was really just a public beta period, though obviously unofficial.

I agree, Oliver. I don't think Apple added multicam or AV out just to fulfill user requests. All these things were planned long before but the release of FCPX was premature and they weren't ready.

Also the 10.0 version number lines up with this impression we all have that Apple released a "public beta". That's exactly what people said about OSX 10.0 Cheetah. A fair comparison considering that FCPX is named after the OS.

I thought that the same thing applied with Libraries, that they were planned from the beginning, like multicam and all the other features. But you made me doubt :dry: and Ronny almost confirmed that it was a change of direction, not part of the original plan.

I guess now that the new foundation is there, we can expect some amazing improvements in other areas of the software? :whistle:

Anyway, I guess there is no denial on Apple's commitment to take this software to the highest level. It would be great if the FCPX dev team had a public voice, but for me this is the best statement they could make. We just have to read between the lines:





Quite an amazing journey, and I think this is just the beginning. They are not gonna stop now!

Happy #timelinetuesday!

Jesús
@jesus_edits

Bear in mind that Aperture and Logic were using Library Bundles before FCPX did. It has become standard in the pro apps. Seems like an OS X thing to me, not a knee-jerk reaction to anything. I think there's plenty of reason to believe Libraries were planned all along. Making them stable and work took some time. So I guess I'm disagreeing, but I want to make the point of, "who cares?" Who really cares if a feature was pre-planned 5 years ago, or was the result of change and growth only 1 year ago? They happen, they came out in public releases, they work fine. So who really cares "when" the idea for a feature first came about?

Bottom line is, it doesn't really matter one bit. Development of any application works this way. Some is planned, some is the result of evolutionary events. The only thing that matters is that the FCPX dev team is doing great work, working hard, and listens to users. Nothing else matters.