As you may have heard on the internet, the recent update of Apple’s popular video-editing software Final Cut Pro has left many professional users very upset. Today, there’s news that Apple will offer refunds to customers who are unhappy with Final Cut Pro X, or as some are calling it, “Final Cut Fail.”
But as some working video editors have noted, this alone doesn’t solve the problem for those who’ve built their businesses and creative lives around a product and company they now feel has abandoned them.
I found one positive review by a former working non-linear video editor, here at Macworld.
Here’s a thoughtful review from Larry Jordan.
“This launch has been compared to Coca-Cola launching New Coke – resulting in a humiliating loss of market share,” he writes.”With Final Cut Pro X, however, the situation is worse — with New Coke, only our ability to sip soda was affected. With Final Cut Pro X, we are talking losing livelihoods.”
Longtime FCP user Aaron-Stewart Ahn, who, among other things, directed this music video we featured on Boing Boing from Death Cab for Cutie, ranted to me on Twitter this morning:
Bottom line for me is: I literally could not use FCPX to produce my work.
That last Decemberists video shot on RED for various tech / workflow reasons would not have been possible using FCPX. Now it is literally impossible to edit a studio motion picture in FCPX.I wish a journalist would get in touch with Walter Murch. He was the first to edit a movie, ‘Cold Mountain
‘ on Final Cut Pro. He could not, with FCPX (no EDL support). It’s dead simple: Apple should’ve released it as, say, Final Cut X. A reworked FCP Express / iMovie with glimpse to come for Pros.Every professional editor I know who makes film for broadcast / film agrees (if you’re in the web-only ecosystem, you’re kinda ok).
But basically, I believe it’s part of the road to Apple abandoning the pro market. It’s too small a market. A huge shift happening, there.
I switched to Mac over a decade ago expressly for Final Cut Pro. And a decade of work wouldn’t have been possible without.
That said, everyone seems to forget that editors adapt to tech constantly. A good editor is technology-agnostic and has innate skills.
As Boing Boing commenter james4765 noted in a previous FCPX thread here, there is at least one upside to the apparent exodus by disgruntled FCP editors to Avid or Adobe Premiere.
The nice thing is there’s a lot of good standard-definition Final Cut-specific gear coming up on eBay from people rage-quitting Final Cut. I’ll be using FCP Studio 3 for a while yet, since I’m not working with RED footage, but Avid is going to be my next upgrade. And likely not on a Mac.