Apple/FCP6/4K workflow at NAB?

[Corrado Silveri]

http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0702finalcutpro6.html

It's a strange sensation... One year ago I was crushed in the red.com website because I was following a rumor from Think Secret...

See you at Vegas, guys.

[Thom Steinhoff]

Final Cut "Extreme" at $10K. Ouch. Love the 4K, though. I hope this rumor got everything right except the price tag!

[ChristopherKenworthy]

I doubt "Extreme" will weigh in at $10K. This may be wishful thinking, but the whole Apple-video thing has always been about doing it so cheap and easily, that it's a pleasant surprise. I could be miles out here, but I imagine they want to make a product so appealing, that all 4K people will be drawn to them. There's a lot of 2K and 4K stuff happening, making the HDV revolution seem very old, and Apple need to take advantage of the latest revolution. The fact that Final Cut Pro 6 is so long overdue, means it has to be a major update. Fingers crossed.

[PaulClements]

It'd be nice to think that Apple was adopting a similar strategy to Red, afterall the ammount of computers they would shift to colleges/universities alone with a package vastly undercutting and bettering Avid would be a winner for them, and help them to push Avid out a bit.

[Mark Mannschreck]

If FCP EXTREME integrated a rock solid FCP hardware/software solution that guaranteed certain (bullet proof) realtime performance like Avid for 10k and supports the whole hardware/software system, I would jump on it.

Especially if it included hardware support for 4K, a brand new Media Manager and "Unity" like collaboration on X-raid without the use of 3rd party software, realtime animated alpha, could mix resolutions on the timeline (with realtime scaling and conversion), was truly frame accurate, AND had a big beautiful APPLE branded breakout box with every connection known to man...

[ChristopherKenworthy]

With Premiere coming back to the Mac, and Avid being an excellent option for 4K, and 4K being the future, Apple must have a solution ready for us. Even if an Extreme version costs more than Pro, and even if it's $10K, it would be a bargain compared to other 4K solutions. But my hope is that they'll offer one version of Final Cut Pro which does everything, for a price comparable to previous releases. It's been said elsewhere that Red are a Mac-friendly company, so I'm not too worried. I think a cheap 4K Mac solution will show up at NAB.

[Brook Willard]

I believe Think Secret estimated RED's price in the $200,000 range last year...

[Don Woods]

Well look at it this way. Maybe it is 10,000 for hard ware and software. My new mac pro was almost 10,000.. So that could be a steel

[Manfred Lopez]

I really really hope that they'll include Final Touch in the regular version. Maybe Final Touch 4K will be part of the bundle for 10 grand... now that would be something.

[ChristopherKenworthy]

Final Touch 4K for under $10,000 is a wonderful idea, but I'd be amazed if they could pull that off...

With that said, Final Cut Pro must improve on Colour Correction. It's not worth using at present, and would just mash lovely Red footage in its current form. If they integrate quality colour correction into Final Cut Pro 6, I'd happily pay a lot more than $10,000.

[Chris Kenny]

I don't have any inside information, but personally I think the notion of a $10K version of FCP with custom hardware is a little nuts. Why would Apple invest the resources to do custom video processing hardware, when everything they're doing today in terms of graphics processing is designed around leveraging commodity GPUs? I suppose it's possible we might see some sort of bundle including a Mac Pro and a (very slightly) customized high-end graphics card, but I doubt we'll see even that, and I'd say there's almost no chance at all we'll see anything as exotic as real custom hardware.

The notion of a $10K software-only FCP also doesn't make a lot of sense. This is a very competitive market, and we're in a period of transition. If they can make a product that kills the competition, they're going to price for volume, not per-unit profits, because these features are going to end up in low-cost packages eventually anyway, and they can build a (bigger) following if they get there first.

Apple's approach to post production is not that dissimilar to RED's whole approach, actually, and for the same basic reason. Neither company has existing high-margin products to protect, so both are free to implement what the technology actually allows, instead of starting from an existing notion of selling at certain price points to certain customers the way some other companies seem to.

Apple also has an additional incentive to make stuff work on commonly deployed desktop hardware because that's what they sell. Making that hardware more attractive, while also improving margins by selling after-market products like Final Cut Pro, is a much more sound business decision for them than investing lots of money in products (e.g. high-priced industry-specific specialized hardware) that don't leverage what the company is already doing.

[Tom Lowe]

I believe the guys at Cineform are talking about 4K on Premiere Pro for closer to $2,000.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I believe Think Secret estimated RED's price in the $200,000 range last year...

They did. And in the very same article that they predicted FC Extreme at $10K.

I seriously doubt the FC Extreme edition... Makes absolutely no sense. A companion accelerator card does make sense, but I don't see it coming from Apple. More than likely, even if Apple offers it as a config option, it will come from an established vendor like AJA or DeckLink. I wouldn't even be surprised to see something from NewTek. I know that NewTek is trying to bring the VideoToaster [back] to the Mac platform. Although, the VT is in dire need of a hardware update and that hasn't happened yet, so...

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Since Chris brought up commodity GPUs, I think 4K editing can be entirely possible on an upcoming 8-core (even a 4-core) Mac Pro system. Between the possiilities of Core Animation and other GPU acceleration abilities, there's no reason a new system can't cope with playback and edit of 4K material. I can handle 2 streams of 1080p on my G5 quad and 3+ on newer dual/quad PC systems. At least one stream of 4K should be do-able on my current hardware. The missing piece of the puzzle on this end is a way to display all those pixels. And no, I'm not buying a Sony 4K projector... ;)

Also, I don't see a $10K offering from Apple... Not when they have Adobe (and potentially CineForm along with them) stepping up to compete. Not only that, but Apple already slashed prices on Final Cut Studio and Shake this past year... Why go and price yourself out of the market? They need to come in cheap and blow Avid out of the water... Avid continues to dominate where they do because in many situations they're still the big name. They're the go-to provider. MC Adrenaline and other higher end Avid offerings do have their advantages, but IMO they're not worth the excessive price. ...I suppose I wouldn't mind so much if I had a Hollywood size budget and getting the job done on time and pleasing investors was more important than the price of the tools.

[Stephen Gentle]

Final Touch 4K for under $10,000 is a wonderful idea, but I'd be amazed if they could pull that off...

With that said, Final Cut Pro must improve on Colour Correction. It's not worth using at present, and would just mash lovely Red footage in its current form. If they integrate quality colour correction into Final Cut Pro 6, I'd happily pay a lot more than $10,000.

I doubt anyone will be doing any serious colour correction of RED footage in an NLE.


I seriously doubt the FC Extreme edition... Makes absolutely no sense. A companion accelerator card does make sense, but I don't see it coming from Apple...

I agree. They already have three video editing packages, and I doubt they need a fourth. They have one for the consumer (iMovie), one for semi-pro and students (Final Cut Express), and the Professional package.

-Stephen

[Chris Kenny]

I doubt anyone will be doing any serious colour correction of RED footage in an NLE.


It sure would be a lot more convenient in terms of workflow. I think it's inevitable that we'll ultimately see first-rate grading features right in NLE environments, or at least grading products from NLE vendors that tightly integrate with them.

I'm not sure if Apple has really had enough time to integrate the FinalTouch stuff for this upcoming version of Final Cut Studio, but their purchase of FinalTouch does seem to put them in a position to get there first.

[Chris Kenny]

Also, for anyone who doesn't know... Apple recently purchased Proximity (http://www.proximitygroup.com/), a company that develops a media asset management system that works with Final Cut Pro. It's pretty clear they're gearing up to go after Avid in more ways than one, but I think they're going to do it with a commodity-based platform and pricing consistent with their current products.

[Simon Blackledge]

I'm trying our Magic Bullet Colorista at the mo and so far really darn impressed..

10k isn't far off, it all adds up

macpro with 6 gig and nvidia about 5k
4TB esata raid capable of 400Mbs 2k
(though they will want you to use x-raid)
monitors 1.5k
fcp 2k ?
Kona3 2k

speakers, leads etc..

hardware is there, software is where the concern is.

s

[Martin Drew]

Final Touch 4K for under $10,000 is a wonderful idea, but I'd be amazed if they could pull that off...

Look at the current price of Shake!

M

[Martin Drew]

I don't believe in Final Cut extreme software. I think it is disinformation, could even be coming from Apple themselves, they are past masters at that. I reckon they will Shock and Awe with amazing new capabilities at the same old price point

[Mark L. Pederson]

Think Secret is WAY, WAY off. That's all I can say without getting sued.

[Hrvoje Simic]

I sincerely doubt Apple is going to change it's buisness strategy.
$10K ? No way.

[Corrado Silveri]

Think Secret is WAY, WAY off. That's all I can say without getting sued.



Think secret is way off, ok...

I've to stay :biggrin: or :angry2: ?

[Mark L. Pederson]

I've to stay :biggrin: or :angry2: ?

You WILL be :devil:

[Corrado Silveri]

oh, :matrix:

[Hrvoje Simic]

mmm :calm: :umm: ?

[Thomas Mathai]

For someone with a $100K + Smoke system, $10k isn't much.

If Apple interested in a true 4k Extreme FCP, it would most likely target those who do and/or need 2k/4k online finishing.

This means they need to work with industry standards like DPX, Cineon, SGI-RGB, TIFF, TGA, 8bit, 10bit, 16bit, floating point. It makes no sense to do online finishing with Quicktimes, extremely unpractical.

Sure you can go with commodity GPU cards, but reliability is key, so I wouldn't be surprised if Apple wants to create an integrated system that's bulletproof.

I was told by a motion graphics artist, that depending on the graphics card, the anti-aliasing on text in Motion looks different.

Even Silicon Graphics made specific recommendations on what graphics card to use with Final Touch.

To me anyways, a 4k Extreme FCP wouldn't be a mass product, but an industry specific high end product. This would make sense if Apple is really interested in wooing high end post houses and the studios.

This is like when Apple decided to get into the enterprise market with Xserves and Xraids.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

If Apple decides to jump into the dedicated / turn-key 2K/4K editing market, let's hope they do a lot better job than they did with Xserve and XsRAID. From a design point of view, the Xserve and XsRAID are very well built - works of art compared to most other offerings on the market. But they're a bit overpriced and fall short of a lot of those other less elegant offerings in terms of performance. Apple still has no server entry beyond the 1U, quad-core Xserve. They're still leaving the high end server market completely to PC makers, SUN and a few oddballs like SGI with their latest Itanic based junk.

[Blaine Golden]

Apple has denied on several occasions that they are coming out with Final Cut Extreme. It's a rumor.

[Poi Boy]

I'm with offholly, at the risk of being sued; Thinksecret is not thinking clearly.
Aloha
-A

[Alexander Black]

Why? They bought Nothing Real. The seat license cost for shake was $10k from nothing real, I just looked and saw it's now a whopping $499. (I thought it was $999).

I wouldn't be surprised _at_all_ if Apple takes the the seat price down from $25k to something laughable like $1k, or hey... $499.

A bundled final cut extreme could be more like $10k, though, hardware is expensive and you have to manufacture each box you sell :P

[Simon Blackledge]

The more software they sell the more hardware goes with it. They make everything. Others don't.

[Mark L. Pederson]

Just remember - their "business model" is to sell HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of things - NOT hundreds.

I LOVE Apple - but this is a company ALL EXCITED about selling RINGTONES at the moment.

[Emmanuel Cambier]

Just remember - their "business model" is to sell HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of things - NOT hundreds.

I LOVE Apple - but this is a company ALL EXCITED about selling RINGTONES at the moment.

Do you mean they sold hundreds of thousands of Final Cut Pro licences??
Or hundred of thousands of Xserve or Xserve Raid ??

Let's not get carried away:shifty:

Yours "by the hundreds of thousands" Emmanuel

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well, their Macbook sales can now be counted in millions. Their Macbook Pro and iMac sales can be counted in the several hundreds of thousands for each individual model. Final Cut Express is selling crazy, so is Aperture. Nothing can touch iPod sales...

[Mark Mannschreck]

It may be a rumor, bit I WISH that it wasn't. I dislike the Avid interface, but Final Cut isn't and will never be a viable option to an Avid in a high volume/tight deadline post environment unless Apple were to produce a tightly integrated hardware solution. I'm sure Apple would love to take any of Avid's dominating market share in the Post heavy, multi-user broadcast and film environments just for some real bragging rights and the eventual trickle down sales. Anyone who is serious about becoming an editor eventually comes to the realization that they will have to learn the Avid if they want to work in these environments. Doesn't Apple make software to sell their hardware? I don't think it is too ridiculous to think that an "Extreme" option may be under consideration by Apple. Every year at NAB, Apple and Avid sit across 20 feet of carpet from one another. Apple knows what it has to do to really compete with hardware Avids...

[Poi Boy]

fcp is pretty much handing avid their lunch; the only frontier left is the high end so I'm sure they have designs on it, just not this NAB.
Aloha
-A

[Lucas Wilson]

fcp is pretty much handing avid their lunch; the only frontier left is the high end so I'm sure they have designs on it, just not this NAB.

While FCP is certainly a very strong competitor, and has made incredible inroads in the past few years, Avid is still the market leader. Doesn't mean they will be forever, but they are now.

You see the Academy Awards tonight? How many of the major nominations were cut on FCP?

Broadcast for Episodic. How many are cut on Avid vs. FCP? (hint: it's a really lopsided ratio)

Broadcast for ENG/EFP. This is all Avid, and a little bit of Quantel. Apple does not have a viable production-to-playout solution.

Independent film. For all the talk, in *my* (and just my experience) - most of the feature editors I know that are doing consistent independent feature work are still on Avid. The numbers are certainly shifting here. A few years ago, they were *all* on Avid. Now, there are a lot of FCP shows.

But just look around at the 'boards... Creative Cow, FCP-L, Avid-L, etc. The biggest single consistent gripe about FCP is media management and metadata management. Avid had that nailed almost 10 years ago, and their media and metadata management schemes for longform feature post-production is still the gold standard.

Major educational institutions. Apple has always had incredible penetration into the edu market. But for teaching editorial - *everybody* has Avid rooms. More and more are getting FCP rooms, but everybody has Avid rooms.

There is no doubt that FCP represents the single biggest threat to Avid since the Media Composer started taking over the market. Avid painfully underestimated Apple's commitment to this market a few years ago when FCP was launched, and that has been a huge blow to them. But Avid's numbers are up year over year - not just a little but a lot. Avid purchases have not stopped or even slowed down... they've increased dramatically.

Separate fact from hype when comparing the two companies and their products. The "high end" is certainly not the only frontier left.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Poi Boy]

I don't think it is hype, it is a trend and avid is slipping. Like I said, they own the high end and I think Apple will go after it.
Aloha
-A

[PaulClements]

Will the new FCP and Shake support Quad cores? Correct me if I'm wrong but nearly all programs (PC and Mac) currently do not support them and as such are not making the most of the hardware. Effectively meaning Duo's are still just as fast (Maybe not for doing multiple tasks).

[Teague Kennedy]

AVID needs to get their head in the game. They are pissing people off, and Apple is doing the opposite. I know in Atlanta two of the big dogs are switching most suites that were AVID to FCP -- Turner Broadcasting and CNN.

[Nick Shaw]

It has been suggested that FCP 6 may require Leopard, and as I understand it part of the improvements in Leopard are for multi-core optimisation.

I think it would be pretty daft for Apple to introduce a new version of Final Cut at the same time(ish) as the 8-core Mac Pros, and not allow it to take advantage of those extra cores.

[Mark L. Pederson]

The biggest single consistent gripe about FCP is media management and metadata management. Avid had that nailed almost 10 years ago, and their media and metadata management schemes for longform feature post-production is still the gold standard.


Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
Los Angeles

Amen.

[Rob Lohman]

Will the new FCP and Shake support Quad cores? Correct me if I'm wrong but nearly all programs (PC and Mac) currently do not support them and as such are not making the most of the hardware. Effectively meaning Duo's are still just as fast (Maybe not for doing multiple tasks).

It's not a matter of support but more how efficient will it use the available CPU's. It's a matter of proper multi-threaded design. If you do that right it should scale well up to say 8 or 16 CPU's.

So the software will definitely "support" (ie., work on it) the quad-cores. Question is then how will it utilize the available resources. That will be a wait and see.

[dalen johnson]

Price...its all relative.
We believe something has to cost an exuberant amount of money - that is until someone comes along and shows us different, and we go "wow".

Its all perspective.

Shake is a good example...from 10k, to not being made anymore. lol

I clearly remember around 2000 when my boss bough Maya for about 25k (complete, unlimited was about 50k) He also bought a PC for about 10k to go with it. (Z, or something like that) About 3 months after his purchase, and a 2nd mortgage on his house...the price went to 7k for maya complete...thats when I won a copy for NT. They gave him unlimited to comfort him, but it wasn't much longer till 7k was the price for unlimited. And Maya complete is at like 1 or 2k. (apple should have bought them...silly, silly apple...)

Also, in 2000 a DVD burner cost 18k...then it dropped to 5k (for mastering dvds for mass production) Now look at the DVD market. (I have not produced DVDs for 2 years now.)

I remember 1998, or thereabout...a company I freelanced for was proud of their 9Gig, very expensive Avid system - compared to after effects, I didn't see the point. (yes, I was coming from print to multimedia to video...still doesn't mean price was justified. lol)

So really...what is the worth of anything.
Apple proved they can make software fro $500 -1k.
Why get greedy. Im sure its possible, but we will see.

Peace

dAlen

[Mark Mannschreck]

Here's an example of what I am talking about. I recently finished cutting three shows for Spike TV's "Inside the UFC". The post house where it is cut had adopted FCP on all 10 or so seats. The hardware was all IO and Kona. NONE of the bays operated well. Some had minor problems, some had major problems. Now, I'm not saying it is because of the AJA equipment... Although I have had 4 or 5 IO's replaced in my own system. The EP of the show told me that they were going to move to Newscutters because of all the problems. Also the media management was frustrating... using spotlight, x-serves, and fibrejet.

[Nick Shaw]

I agree that the IO has always been a bit flaky, although it's much better now than at launch. I built my first Final Cut Pro system (after abandoning my Media 100 – so I'll admit to an anti Avid bias!) using an IO, and very quickly decided to ditch it for a Decklink card.

That said, I do think Final Cut Pro gets an unjustified bad rep from people in Avid facilities. My experience of using Final Cut Pro systems in big facilities is that they are treated as second class citizens, and therefore not well installed or maintained. The engineering staff have usually (understandably) got far more Avid experience, and the Final Cut Pro systems suffer as a consequence.

Also many Final Cut systems are installed in the corner of production offices, or back bedrooms, as an in-house system because it's cheap, and therefore again not necessarily well configured or maintained. Media 100's reputation also suffered because of this kind of user base.

A well maintained dedicated Final Cut facility (like mine!) can run very smoothly. And if it is the way the editor is used to working, so they go about things in the 'Final Cut way' rather than worrying about the fact that a particular workflow they use on Avid doesn't work the same in Final Cut, the business of cutting a film can be done without worrying about the details of one tool vs another.

At the end of the day Final Cut and Avid are just two different tools that do the same basic job. Each has advantages and disadvantages. There is no best tool, it's just a matter of what you're used to.

END OF RANT

[Simon Blackledge]

100% agree Nick.

[Mark Mannschreck]

You're right. The post house here didn't spend alot of time maintaining the systems. I'm sure it could have been running alot more smoothly. I also came from a Media 100 background moving to FCP only a coule years ago. There were great things my M100 could do that I still can't do in my IO based FCP. That's why I wish for at least an Apple "branded" hardware solution that Apple would support themselves. It's one thing to be "working closely" with a company like AJA and another thing to be 100% responsible for the hardware. But that said I use FCP exclusively now and will continue to do so (unless they don't update the media manager)

END OF RANT

[Rocco Schult]

For someone with a $100K + Smoke system, $10k isn't much.

If Apple interested in a true 4k Extreme FCP, it would most likely target those who do and/or need 2k/4k online finishing.

This means they need to work with industry standards like DPX, Cineon, SGI-RGB, TIFF, TGA, 8bit, 10bit, 16bit, floating point. It makes no sense to do online finishing with Quicktimes, extremely unpractical.

Sure you can go with commodity GPU cards, but reliability is key, so I wouldn't be surprised if Apple wants to create an integrated system that's bulletproof.

I was told by a motion graphics artist, that depending on the graphics card, the anti-aliasing on text in Motion looks different.

Even Silicon Graphics made specific recommendations on what graphics card to use with Final Touch.

To me anyways, a 4k Extreme FCP wouldn't be a mass product, but an industry specific high end product. This would make sense if Apple is really interested in wooing high end post houses and the studios.

This is like when Apple decided to get into the enterprise market with Xserves and Xraids.

You're my man. My prayers all the time.


Do you mean they sold hundreds of thousands of Final Cut Pro licences??
Or hundred of thousands of Xserve or Xserve Raid ??


Maybe not hundreds of thousands , )
But more than a 100.000 for FCP ? Wouldn't be too surprised.


..I dislike the Avid interface, but Final Cut isn't and will never be a viable option to an Avid in a high volume/tight deadline post environment unless Apple were to produce a tightly integrated hardware solution. .. Anyone who is serious about becoming an editor eventually comes to the realization that they will have to learn the Avid if they want to work in these environments. ..Apple knows what it has to do to really compete with hardware Avids...

Yep, Avid is still the dominator. But not only because they make a overall system where an integration seems more with an Avid (they shifted cleverly from the Editors manufaturer to a complete systems manufacturer!) but still because the system is more stable !
We had one Avid and 2 FCPs in an HD config, but still I have to stick to my preferences. You don't have that annoying format bugs (e.g. editing 16:9 with 4:3 stock) etc.
They didn't do much innovation in the last years, no question. But they still knows how it works. And the integrated media-storage has its advantages and disadvantages.

[Corrado Silveri]

A well maintained dedicated Final Cut facility (like mine!) can run very smoothly.

Completely agree, Nick.
In my post house there are 8 FCP suites, 2 Ingest suites (Blackmagic Multibridge Extreme), 2 Motion/Shake Suites, 1 Server Room (Xserve+Xraids).

We shot on set with 2 Macbook Pro (Scopebox HD).

All run REALLY smoothly.

Just my two cents.