IS FCPX dead?

cseeman wrote:

That we've had this discussion before is a testament to how many years Apple has been behind other NLEs in implementing features.

Do you remember the letter that creators sent to Apple to tell them to get back on the ball with FCP and Apple responded that they would.

9to5mac.com/2022/05/19/apple-final-cut-open-letter/

That was a year ago. I wonder if anything has been done behind the scenes in this regard and we'll be hearing about it soon.

cseeman wrote:

Features such as speech-to-text which are now in every major NLEs...

That'w why I use MacWhisper & find it invaluable. No matter the project I'll run the audio and generate a SRT or a text file even if captions aren't planned.

You remember someone mentioning Harold Summinger but don't recall just where? Do a search and not only you'll get the number of mentions but what hr/min/sec it happened on which camera shot by whom and when. Most helpful when you have 20 hours of 6 separate audio or video interviews to scrub through of 8 different people mentioning Harold. Email transcript and any collaborator can cull it for content without having to watch hours of video.
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Do you remember the letter that creators sent to Apple to tell them to get back on the ball with FCP and Apple responded that they would.

Like waiting for a rich bachelor uncle to die after he mentioned he was leaving everything to you in his will. At some point you have to decide either to kill him before he finds a girlfriend to leave it to or finally go get yourself a job.

Here is a reality check!
Yes Apple Software has been lacking the past years in general.
But let’s not forget Apple is about completing the transition from Intel to there Apple Silicon.

Yes Blackmagic is looking nice but also lacking allot to get FCP and Premiere Pro users. (After Effects, Easy Workflow)

Premiere Pro is adding some cool features using the marketing term AI.
I guess FCPX had AI on release since it was able to analyze clips to identify their contents!
But again most of time the features don’t work.

Final Cut Pro well its fast pretty stable and just lacking in creative tools.
But let’s compare with Avid Howe innovated have they been?

I have to admit I have been losing internierst in all major NLE.
Someone needs to give us an Interface like Final Cut Pro , with DaVinci Resolve tool set and Premiere Pro collaboration!
Oh yeah and make Motion like Shake was a competitor!

Its possible that Apple is waiting for all this AR/VR stuff they've been rumoured to be working on, and will roll functionality into FCP and Motion for creating that sort of content... as well as the M based Mac Pro which seems to be forever in arriving...

PostLab say collaboration support by sharing events between editors is coming soon. Instead of locked libraries, other editors see read-only events.

Not Avid bin-locking or the new Premiere Sequence locking announced this week.

Event-locking.

alex4d.com/notes/item/coming-soon-from-p...ng-for-collaboration

Event locking would be great. I used Postlab on a feature doc and it was just too slow backing up the library all the time and became a burden rather than a help. Events should be much smaller, and faster to back up / sync. 

alex4D wrote:

PostLab say collaboration support by sharing events between editors is coming soon. Instead of locked libraries, other editors see read-only events.

Not Avid bin-locking or the new Premiere Sequence locking announced this week.

Event-locking.

alex4d.com/notes/item/coming-soon-from-p...ng-for-collaboration

Sounds good. But if Apple don't show any signs of supporting FCP, while should third parties continue to support it? Eventually plug-in developers will also ignore FCP. A thriving FCP ecosystem can't exist if Apple continue to ignore it and its user base.

I'm working on a feature doc and just called up my lead Editor this morning to discuss FCPx and the new Premiere and Resolve functionalities announced this week...

It pains me to say it - I gave my editor the green light to switch our film away from FCPx and to Premiere. I fought him and the two assistants off many times over the past year on this decision, but as I saw the Resolve/Premiere NAB announcements it was clear to me I need to stop being stubborn. We had been holding onto FCPx because of me, but the new transcript functionality just makes sense in Premiere/FCPx for documentary films. We've been using SImonSays but it's not the same as a native transcript tool.

I'm bummed.

I share in the frustration of being in the dark about the future of FCP--it's such a great platform and I'd love more communication for the security of its future--but these threads inevitably pop up in the longer interims between updates. Usually preceding a new version that mollifies the user base.Apple is competitive, and I'd bet they have a strong roadmap for their flagship NLE in an increasingly video literate world."Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain 🤪

I don't think Hedge/PostLab wouldn't risk all this if they weren't being supported by guidance from the Final Cut development team.

I'm still cranking on FCP. It sizzles on my M1. I don't mind paying for plug-ins because I'm not paying month after month as with Premiere. The plug-ins, IMHO, ARE the updates periodically. As for AI, I don't mind doing a la carte work with Descript and other terrific programs, using them and paying only when I do so. Looking forward to the stuff under the hood that speeds up outputs.

drewboyd wrote:

"Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain 🤪

Mark Twain...dead. 

I must admit that apple has become a little spit on its software. And surprisingly even mobile. Compare the same Imovie which is just embarrassing to open, nothing can be done there, compare it with the same CapCut or VN, I'm not talking about lumaFusion. We are far behind in all aspects. Previously, all innovations and cool solutions appeared before everyone else at Apple, now this is not even close. I would like to see new magic masks in FCPX, like in Davinci, and more tools with AI

I asked a nice neutral question on Office Hours today (a daily media technology show streamed on YouTube)…

"As much as I appreciate the updates coming to Resolve, Premiere and Lumafusion, has anyone got the impression that any NLE makers have a vision beyond 'add cloud' and 'add ML assistance'?"

…and Chris Fenwick, Alex Lindsay and big Bill Davis ended up talking about the future of Final Cut Pro for 10 minutes.

In case the timestamp doesn't work, it should jump to 1 hour 17 minutes and 41 seconds.

I think Alex hit it right on the nose: if we don't see a serious update by October, then editors looking for more features should look elsewhere.  And his point about the VR goggles being the reason why FCP seems stalled, makes perfect sense to me.  They are focused on this big announcement and we won't see those changes until this rumored announcement.

I'll give it until the end of the year, but I am one of those people peering over the Resolve fence going, "Hmmm, it does look pretty nice over here!"

It does, it's exactly the same behavior shown before Aperture was dead. Please notice that Apple showcased the new M1 ultra and M2 machines using, not Final Cut, but Davinci Resolve.  Also, I don't know how much money if any is Apple doing from FCP. We know, clearly, that hostility towards Apple is growing from governments to YouTubers, and FCP halo produces massive sales and many YouTubers on the ecosystem but does Apple knows? I hope they at least release it as Open Source instead of killing it. 

That's a very good point. On the other hand, it doesn't explain the lack of optimization, nor use DaVinci Resolve to show the performance of the new machine, ignoring FCP. I am not sure Apple remembers the Halo effect. They did nothing to respond to Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Linux. It seems to me that they just ask "What percent of our sales go to devs? " and the number was not favorable. Same with FCP.  I suggest we start to learn other stuff if they don't react quickly because the behavior is identical to Aperture. 

Gudgefilm wrote:

I'm working on a feature doc and just called up my lead Editor this morning to discuss FCPx and the new Premiere and Resolve functionalities announced this week...

It pains me to say it - I gave my editor the green light to switch our film away from FCPx and to Premiere. I fought him and the two assistants off many times over the past year on this decision, but as I saw the Resolve/Premiere NAB announcements it was clear to me I need to stop being stubborn. We had been holding onto FCPx because of me, but the new transcript functionality just makes sense in Premiere/FCPx for documentary films. We've been using SImonSays but it's not the same as a native transcript tool.

I'm bummed.

I agree. The fact that Apple can't see that FCP is the reason many YouTubers use Mac and that this drives customers to the Mac is amazing.  It's not just the lack of new features, but less than idea optimization, no talking (on the M2 MacBook presentation they showed Davincy) The writing seems to be on the wall. 

Best regards, 

I agree with him 100% thanks for sharing.  What he did not mention is that once the YouTubers leave FCP they will leave the Mac.  Apple Silicon is good but not more powerful than high-end Intel  /Nvidia  /AMD all combined and ARM is coming to other platforms. Many  YouTubers are showing frustration with Apple.  I frankly will not wait till October to start training. Finding oneself in the middle of a project with a dead platform can be traumatizing and in the middle of a crisis career ending.   One option will be for Apple to move to a subscription model. It's a shame but it's the only way to compete if they demand profitability.