The Current Final Cut Pro X Market

The Current Final Cut Pro X Market
Here's a blog posting by Philip Hodgetts about the only factual market data concerning Final Cut Pro X. Very interesting information. I'll add to this article that my FCP X classes are selling well and at least half of the students are seasoned professionals anxious to switch, and I have several professional facilities I am consulting for at the moment helping them transition from Final Cut Studio to a Final Cut Pro X based workflow. It is in fact catching on faster and with more professionals than "hearsay" would indicate.
www.philiphodgetts.com/2012/04/some-fina...t-pro-x-data-points/

It's a great read, and it's wonderful watching people twisting themselves in knots trying to dispute the findings.

I don't think there's ANYONE sane who would claim that this evidence means that FCPX is the predominant platform in specific markets like film and broacast tv. FCPX's growth will largely be from the bottom up for now. With one-man or small shops being the biggest supporters. Larger shops will have installs and may use it for specific purposes within their workflows or on specific kinds of jobs. And of course there will be some companies like those profiled by Apple and the one's you're consulting, which will take the plunge out of line with the rest of the industry.

Lots of people are saying right now that they'll "never" go to FCPX after the last year. Well, I can tell you first-hand that these same statements were levelled at both Premier and AVID at various points over the last 10 years, and lots of people ARE moving back to them. So even if Apple did themselves some short-term damage with the release of FCPX last year, Apple's competitors history shows that for editors too, the old adage "never say never" applies.

It will be very interesting to see what happens over the next year. I do plan to attend NAB next year (for the first time, actually), and I'm betting at or around then we'll see the release of 10.1. There's a lot of time and development between now and then. Should be exciting.

Well, I do know a friend who works for Apple has many higher ed and commercial clients, most of whom threatened to leave Apple when FCP X was first released. Almost none of them have left. Most have embraced FCP X, he tells me.

Again, I have several major sized clients who are transferring from FCP 7 to FCP X for very large project production. So I don't know about large facilities only using it sparingly. Most of those folks use one product and one workflow. I'm seeing flat out switches.

Look at the "In Action" section of Apple's FCP X web site.

Another interesting tid bit of information is that when FCP 1.0 was released, 99% of the professional market was film and broadcast TV, corporate/event videographers were few and far between. Web video was basically such a PITA it was unheard of, mostly. Today film and broadcast TV are a drop in the bucket of the total market. Web video is the norm. Corp/event videography is a major segment of the industry.

So when you say smaller facilities will use it first, you're actually saying the majority of the industry (professional market) will adopt it first.

As far as "lots of them" are moving to PPRo and Avid, where's the data to back that up? PPro has increased it's market share, by their own PR, only 47%. Consider they only had about 8% of the professional market to start with, they only increased that 8% by 47% which brings them up to... something, I'm not a mathematician, but something not very big. Avid is still on the verge of bankruptcy and hasn't really shown much promise. They're actually about to undergo another upper management change, too.

So there is "hearsay" about these millions of users flat our leaving FCP X, but, no one has ever shown the data to prove it to be a fact. It's all just "hearsay". This report from Apple seems to show FCP X is being adopted much faster and much more wide spread in the professional market than anyone cares to admit.

Yes, professional production facilities are embracing it, which is something many nay-Sayers don't want to admit. There's the data that backs that statement up in my original post.

I agree with everything you say.

I said "LOTS", but really I should have said "some". With all the supposed defections, I have yet to hear about any significant post facilities moving to Premier as their primarily NLE. Even Walter Biscardi, who seemed VERY hot on CS5.5 at last year's NAB, ultimately decided that AVID was the better way to go. Regardless of their financials, AVID does have a very entrenched position in the top 2% of the editorial market, so I'm more apt to believe that FCP7 installs ceded that way, if at all.

Truth be told, I wouldn't have been surprised if most people who took advantage of the CS5.5 50% off cross grade did it for apps other than Premier. Everyone uses Photoshop, and most use AE or Illustrator in some fashion. So a half off bargain on those product would have been a no-brainer, even if they never opened Premier Pro.

I bought FCPX day 1, but I'll be completely honest- I only started using it in earnest about a month ago. Stable broadcast monitoring had to be there first, and now it is, so I'm pretty happy.