FCP v Premiere v Resolve v iMovie

All,

I thought this would be interesting - I did a bit of digging on Google to see the popularity of the NLEs over time. Avid is a bit hard to include as the search term is too wide. The graphs below go back to 2004.

So this graph shows the big spike in FCP(X) in June 2011 when it was released. FCP is ahead of the other three with iMovie in second place, Premiere is third and Resolve is bumping along the bottom. Remember at this time, Premiere was still that horrible light grey and Blackmagic hadn't bought Resolve.

Then at the backend of 2014, Premiere Pro overtook FCP, iMovie also overtook it in the next few months.

Then it gets bad for Apple. Both FCP and iMovie decline in popularity compared to the other two.

In March of this year, all the NLEs got a huge boost when lockdown started.

However, as we stand Premiere Pro leads the searches by a comfortable margin. iMovie follows, then there is a large gap to Resolve. The saddest news is that Final Cut Pro is now in the last position.

I understand that Final Cut Pro is popular amongst creators/YouTubers etc, but the slow decline slope against the other NLEs isn't comforting.

Click for larger image

Would be interesting to know what the actual number of seats are, though that's very hard to tell with Premiere the way it's bundled by Adobe. 

Might apply to searches done by Apple staff too.

😕

I think the Mac OS teams and Mac hardware teams think its an application used by Apple to explain OS and hardware transitions. Oh, and by some editors maybe. Editors who want use storytelling to leave the world better than they found it.

Tom,

Yes of course seat numbers would be interesting, but I think this method is a good comparison of interest between the NLEs.

A more positive way of looking at this is that those who want to know about or need help with iMovie and Final Cut Pro don't need to use Google as much as those trying to understand other NLEs.

?

Is this reflecting searches by name only or any search including the name? If the latter then it’s perhaps reflecting more what a muddled mess Premiere is. Surprised Resolve hasn’t lifted higher off the floor by now. 

In my opinion there's a lot less enthusiasm about fcpx due to the lack of big feature updates over the last few years. Apple is not caring too much about the app, now less then before. Maybe the users are still the same as in 2016, but there are no big reasons to search about it.

Tom,

You can set for exact search match - but I believe the topic I better as includes all searches for that term bundled together. So a topic will show the results for FCPX, Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Pro X etc.

Tom Wolsky wrote: Is this reflecting searches by name only or any search including the name? If the latter then it’s perhaps reflecting more what a muddled mess Premiere is...

Good point. You search on things when encountering a problem, or if the product is difficult to use and you can't figure it out.

OTOH, there's a point about slow updates to FCP features. The proxy improvements in 10.4.9 were nice but Resolve got more improvements between ver. 16 and 17 than FCP has had in several years:  www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/whatsnew

I'm sure a lot of work under the covers happened to optimize FCP, first for Metal then for Apple Silicon. That doesn't show up as a user-facing feature. 

It was probably a lot of work to revamp FxPlug 4, but that should improve the reliability and performance of plugins. 

I personally would like to see a "consolidate with trim" feature that allowed a user-specified number of head/tail frames. In an era of forced remote collaboration, that would help a lot on projects that include sound bites from long multicam interviews.

I agree about the stagnation. Updates really stalled in the mid-10.4s. You’re probably right it was because work was being done on silicon and effects, work that other applications are now having to do since the release of M1.

Proper consolidate for archiving is long overdue. And of course audio needs work. I wonder if there’s a new 10 year plan.

I’m sure the team have been at least as hard working as any at Apple. It doesn’t mean Susan Prescott is assigning them the correct priorities.

Who's the product manager these days? I've lost track. 

If I read between the lines that 'I fear FCP will die' because less people are interested, then I do not understand why? I don't understand why we're still on this 'have to have a new feature every 6-12 month and they better be big' train.

For me the most striking difference between current NLE is simplicity. Avid is still complicated because they never could start again but are just constantly bolting on stuff. The amount of tools they have to work the timeline work is staggering. Resolve is the monster of complexity due to the initial deep grading toolset combined now with a full fledged compositor and audio mixer. Plus they started a new editor section and still finding their feet to what Cut vs Edit is. Premiere has actually slowed down lot with new features but Adobe still knows how to make it look big

Now FCP does add or modify things but never by adding complexity but by making things easier. So for me FCP is in the tradition of Apple apps which are all build on powerful simplicity. To do more they allow plugins or XML interchange for people to create their custom made stuff.
I'm a geek like the rest of us hanging out on forums and reading posts like this. So I too get exciting about every update and get a little disappointed when no 'super new' feature comes along. But when I actually work there is nothing that FCP doesn't allow me to do and do it in a simple and elegant way today.

Simplicity doesn't have a button or menu item and it takes a lot to make it invisible. 

I think FCP is here to stay and will not be dropped or EOL. It is a perfect Apple app and true to the tradition of all their other apps. And the good think is Apple doesn't need revenue from FCP to survive. They need FCP to allow people with creative ambitions to stay on the Mac and find an offering in that segment when looking at Apples ecosystem.

Anyway my 2 cents

I focus on features because that’s the only way Apple communicate anything about Final Cut. Given the choice between new features and public engagement with any Final Cut market, I choose public engagement.

Premiere, Media Composer and Resolve have mindshare and Adobe, Avid and Blackmagic have the trust of many kinds of editors. It seems that Apple doesn’t care about either.

I think products do better when potential customers trust the people who bring them that product. Why should anyone trust Apple?

Thank you for this info Peter. It's definitely been an uphill battle with FCP X since its terrible rollout. I certainly hope that Apple has another 10-year plan and continues to innovate in ways we hadn't thought about pre-FCP X such as roles instead of tracks and the magnetic timeline. I certainly do not want to go back to tracks if I don't have to. I loathe tracks at this point, though sometimes I have to use them depending on the project. This last update perhaps also didn't go over well for morale for the user base who really love FCP as their primary NLE. That's not Apple's fault necessarily, but rather our expectations in attempting to anticipate what Apple may do. I still think there's still some worthwhile advancements coming, but I will admit that it gets exhausting at times trying to articulate the benefits of FCP to editors who (for whatever reasons) still view it as not adept for professional work. This same exhaustion goes for Motion as well. Never the less and with it's quarks and shortcomings, I still feel like I am using something special that others can't seem to see; something that let's me work unencumbered (mostly) by archaic interfaces or incessant bugs. Whenever I use another NLE, even ones with features I'd like to have, I am constantly reminded just how liberating FCP (X) is.

The last update was a real downer. With FCP's large YouTube user base, there was a ton of griping about the disappearing of direct uploads to YT. 

I don't see why it should be such a concern that people aren't googling Final Cut Pro. It's a Mac OS only application vs the others which are available on multiple platforms. iMovie being on both the iPhone and on the iPad, and searching an app could be done for a number of reasons.

"That's not Apple's fault necessarily, but rather our expectations in attempting to anticipate what Apple may do."
Well, consider we've been waiting for very important professional tools that have been missing all along. It's not us, it is Apple absolutely!

"...there was a ton of griping about the disappearing of direct uploads to YT."
Actually all the social media companies are complying with new laws (especially in Europe) so it wasn't Apple, it was YT and FB and the like.

I have been using FCPX since it's inception. I love the interface and it's the fastest system I have worked on. But I have started using Blackmagic RAW and despite being able to send timelines either way by using xml I found that cumbersome and I was forced to start using and learning Resolve. I still prefer FCPX as an editor but Fusion for me is a revelation, but with a steep initial learning curve. For me it is so much more accessible than Motion and it interfaces with the editor much more seamlessly. This is a big issue as I deal a lot with graphics such as Title overlays and I have found Fusion great for templating and then making fine adjustments to the template for use in different situations. One of the biggest problems with FCP templates is that other than importing the underlying clips into motion there is no way of conveniently fine tuning templates to particular clips.
Come on Apple surely there is a better way of interfacing Motion to FCPX without buying an expensive plug in. 

peteramwiggins wrote: ...I understand that Final Cut Pro is popular amongst creators/YouTubers etc, but the slow decline slope against the other NLEs isn't comforting...

Apple did a great job on FCPX and their test team has done a superb job of putting out reliable products.

But in a company whose corporate culture is (1) rooted in UI and user-facing elements and (2) focused on mobile devices, there is an inherent conflict in upgrading, testing and supporting a professional application which needs less-visible system-facing improvements and which only runs on desktop/laptop machines.

Sometimes that can be reinforced by the internal employee review process. I don't know how it works at Apple, but imagine when the manager of engineer "A" reviews their work the previous six months or year. If they produced a glitzy user-facing item like VR 360, that tends to be ranked highly.

OTOH imagine if engineer "B" worked hard on thankless, dirty jobs like fixing render cache bugs, or fixing multicam quirks or making relink work faster. Those things tend to not get the same internal acclaim during an employee review - especially if the corporate culture prioritizes UI-facing items. That engineer might receive a lower bonus or fewer stock options. Maybe that explains why those items still don't work right in FCP.

It's also impossible to do sustaining engineering of the current product and concurrently make major improvements using only a shoe-string staff. The "mythical man month" notwithstanding, it takes a big, sustained staffing commitment to develop (and test and support) major improvements. That in turn requires continuous support by executives who understand the importance of the product and who vigorously back a focused, driven product manager.

However it's definitely possible for a small NLE development team to rapidly crank out useful improvements. Blackmagic is a small company -- annual revenue of the entire company is only about $500 million and total headcount is probably less than 1,000. The entire Resolve software development/test teams cannot be very big. Despite this, see the attached list of new updates in version 17. This makes you wonder what's going on with Apple Pro Video Apps Development.