How long has FCPx been in development?

So one the eve of a new and "jaw dropping", "awesome" and "prepare to be stunned" release of Final Cut Pro/Studio what can we expect?

A sensible way of guessing would be to have a stab at trying to work out how long the new application has been in development. Let's look at the history,

Final Cut Studio 2 made a big splash at NAB 2007 primarily because Apple had the balls to release the suite with Color a full grading application formerly costing $25,000. I think this release was the last release where the majority of the Pro Apps team worked on the application suite. The inclusion of Color really drew the eyes away from an average release. Take away Color and FCS2 wouldn't have appeared so great.

In 2009 we had the FCS3 release which was well received mainly due to the knock down price of the upgrade but it has to be said it was a lack lustre release and included non of the performance that many of us were expecting. I fully expected OpenCL and many of the Snow Leopard technologies to be used but they were not.

Looking back at the releases since NAB 05 only really Final Cut Pro and Motion have seen substantial features added. SoundTrack Pro has been given a bit of love to stop it crashing so too Crapressor but poor old DVD Studio Pro has been dead in the water. Even as far back as NAB 05 Apple may have already been shifting the direction of FCS. Apple after all is well known for developing the next version of OS X while maintaining updates of the current version so it's not entirely implausible that they have taken this approach with the new version of FCS.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the new version will be have been in development as long as iMovie 08 probably meaning the 2006 time. So 2006 gives us 4.5 to 5 years of development and the last two years since FCS3 would've seen the full compliment of Pro Apps team working on this release.

4.5 years of development is certainly long enough to bring a new fully featured suite together so I am expecting "jaw dropping."

What have the developers of DVD Studio Pro been doing since NAB2005? Apart from minor bug fixes not a lot it seems. Despite the many and deafening calls for Bluray Studio Pro, Jobs has held firm with his distain for the format in particular the licensing buggeration factor. I am convinced the real surprise at the Supermeet demo will be in what replaces DVDSP. Whatever it is has potentially had 5 years of development and it could be huge. It absolutely won't include BR though! The puck has already passed BR and we're skating towards post disc based media delivery so set full steam ahead for a massive change in post production.

I'll be awake at 3am Wednesday morning here in the UK watching twitter for updates from the Supermeet.

Blog Plagiarism

The weirdest thing happened today, I've just been accused by @philiphodgetts on twitter that my blog post on the new FCP Suite has plagiarised his blog. Apparently he and only he was the person to break that the new FCP would be based on AV Foundation. Of course that means no one else could possibly have an original thought on the matter so let's end the discussion there. Well actually, no.

I lifted the AV Foundation reference right from Apple's developer website for what's new in OS X Lion. It was a complete guess but an educated guess based on iOS and OS X moving forward together. That's what Lion is all about after all, here's what Apple say:

AV Foundation

AV Foundation framework provides essential services for working with time-based audiovisual media. Through an Objective-C interface, you can easily play, examine and compose audiovisual media in your app. An array of powerful classes also make it simple to edit and encode media files. You can even capture audio and video from external devices and manipulate them in realtime.

It's fair to assume that Apple would produce their next gen creative suite on the latest technology at their disposal. Maybe not.

It's rather disturbing that a blog that literally nobody reads and serves primarily for my own amusement would have ridiculous allegations thrust upon it. Fuck me that's sad. You have to LOL.

The mistake I made was to copy a link to @walterbiscardi as he had just posted a link to a blog (http://blogs.computerworld.com/18095/apples_final_cut_will_end_the_flash_wars) about the imminent death of Flash. I absolutely agree with the article and have almost identical views although the computerworld post was much better written. Hodgetts obviously saw this put 2 + 2 together got 10 and went mental.

It's weird what the internet does to people, @philiphodgetts obviously takes himself far too seriously. He has tweeted me several times now seemingly increasingly desperate to say he broke the story about AV Foundation. When someone breaks a story in the real world it means someone has got a scoop and released a known fact before anyone else. @philiphodgetts doesn't appear to know what breaking a story is as the AV Foundation basis for the new FCP Suite is pure guess work by all parties. This is not breaking a story. This is guess work. He guessed before me but has falsely accused me of ripping him off which is just not the case.

Apart from being a suggested follow on twitter I've never come across @philiphodgetts before and never read an article by him before I wrote about the new FCP Suite.

It makes you wonder what the motivation is for all this is, perhaps he feels the need to acknowledged in someway. Quite sad.

The trouble with social media is that it gives idiots and cranks direct access to your brain without filtration. The vast majority of Twitterites seem to be okay but the odd one ruins an otherwise good experience.

The Shame of Pixel Farm

I have just had the biggest surprise of my VFX career when trying to move my license for PFMatchit from my old 2,1 Mac Pro (with an aged on its last legs graphics card) to my new machine.

I contacted Pixel Farm technical support to ask if they would create a new license for me as the new machine obviously has a different Ethernet address which is used to lock the license to a particular machine. I received the following reply:

Hi Guy,

Thank you for contacting the Pixel Farm Ltd, please fill out the attached license declaration form and send it back to me. We will require the new PFHostID of the system you will be transferring the PFMatchit license to. There is an administration fee of £200 for transferring the license - I can send you an invoice for this charge as soon as I get the green light from yourself.

Kindest Regards

Jena Scott

Operations Administrator

The Pixel Farm Ltd

Unit 1 Pattenden Business Park

Pattenden Lane

Marden

Tonbridge

Kent

TN12 9QS

T: +44(0)1622 808670

M: +44(0)7795 843371

F: +44(0)1622 833019

E: jena@thepixelfarm.co.uk

£200!!!

Yes, £200 (or $320 US) administration fee. That's exactly 33% of the price of the software alone just for moving the license from one machine to another.

Frankly this is a shameful attempt to make money at the expense of a customer who has entered into a contract in good faith bearing in mind there was absolutely no mention of this charge when I purchased this software. I've rechecked the Pixel Farm website and Escape Studios to see if I missed any mention of an administration fee, well I can't see it anywhere if it exists at all.

I have to say that the resellers Escape Studios have been very supportive and not to mention surprised by the size of the fee too. I really don't know what to do and how to resolve this for the best. I am in no position to throw £200 after bad money but I feel I want to fight this out of principle. I am going to seek legal advice and get in contact with consumer protection groups.

I own every piece of software on my Mac and spend a fortune each year upgrading it and I would never advocate piracy. But what message does this send to the customer? Does it send the message that we value your custom? No it doesn't at all. What benefit do I have for being a customer of the Pixel Farm over a scumbag pirate? Clearly I'm not valued at all and just seen as someone to exploit.

I've given Pixel Farm an opportunity to respond and earlier today I have informed them I intend to take this matter further. Perhaps this is an honest mistake, a typo and will be a storm in a tea cup soon to blow over. If not I can only reasonably come to the conclusion Pixel Farm are shysters and this a naked money making scam.

By way of comparison last year my Macbook Pro's HDD died and I was forced to move my Imagineer's software (Mocha and Mokey) to the Mac Pro. Imagineers use a similar licensing system, they sent me a download link and new license files by return of email and charged me not a single penny £0.00!! Not to mention £200 is almost three times what I paid for the Syntheyes 2011 update!

I can absolutely say that they may well have got the money for PFMatchit out of me but they will not get another penny in ridiculous administration fees and I'll never buy another product from them again.

If you feel similarly to me about these charges please let your colleagues know before they purchase anything from Pixel Farm.

Buyer beware...

_________________________________

Update:

I have been emailed by The Pixel Farm to say it has been a misunderstanding and they "overlooked" that I had a current maintenance agreement! Strange, because I've been logging into support and downloading updates to PFMatchit all this time. I have been given my new license file an PFMatchit now runs fine on my new machine.

But, and it's a big BUT, if you don't have a current maintenance agreement with the Pixel Farm for your product they'll quite happily charge you £200. The maintenance for PFMatchit only costs £100/yr!

Why should you need maintenance to move the software from one computer to another without incurring a massive charge? Why does it cost so much when simply running a keygen takes no more than 30 seconds? It simply must be naked profiteering there is no logical explanation for the cost.

I simply must find out who to write to at Pixel Farm and explain, from a customers point of view, how obscene this charge is. In the long run it will be counterproductive, honest customers will simply turn their backs on a company that treats them like this and they'll either go elsewhere or they'll simply download a crack.

I am all in favour of piracy protection but not to the point where it impinges on my consumer rights and enables me to be exploited and scammed. A nodelocked license, as far as I'm concerned, is meant to stop you running the machine on multiple computers at the same time. Fine. But absolutely not meant to punish you when, for many, legal and completely honest reasons you might want to move the license to a different machine.

If there are any people out there reading this post who have pirated PFMatchit I'm sure it makes them feel somewhat vindicated.

Dear Pixel Farm treat your customers like decent human beings as they are the ones that support you long term. I sincerely hope this has been a massive mistake and you'll get around to sorting out a system that doesn't treat your customers so shabbily.

I'll never walk into another software purchase without know exactly what it is going to cost to move the license, will you?

The New Final Cut Studio

I started this post some weeks ago but never got round to completing it as I thought I'd have much longer to write it...

So there's been news that a selected group of industry heavy weights have been invited to Apple HQ to see the next version of Final Cut Pro. Apparently it's "jawdropping."

Good. Hopefully the loooong silence and wait have been worthwhile...

You only have too look at iMovie 11 and the iPad version and you'd guess that something cracking is coming for more professional users. The moment I saw iMovie 08 I said to colleagues that I thought we might just've seen the direction that FCP would be taking. Of course that was derided. I generally am so I'm used to it.

Core Everything.

You can bet that this release with be a showcase for all the core technologies in OS X that have appeared in OS X and iOS releases, OpenCL, AV Foundation and Grand Central etc etc

Face Detection

The Trailer generator that has recently arrived in iMovie 11 is probably just a subset of a much grander set of tools for rapid pre-viz and assembly editing to appear in the new FCP Suite.

MultiTouch

Having seen the iPad2 demo of iMovie I think touch will be an important factor in the new release utilising the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad or even an iPad. It just looked so natural. I can see using a Wacom for fine control and a Magic Trackpad for gestural navigation an interesting proposition, nah, a much better proposition than anything that has gone before!

Media Management

Think Aperture...The new FCP will almost certainly be the video version of Aperture for media management. I expect that tape based workflows will not be catered for and perhaps FCP7 will be used in a "Classic" role just to help get "obsolete" media into the new system.

HTML5

I have a feeling that HTML5 output will be included, Apple has bet on HTML5 and H264 in all of its delivery platforms but they haven't yet provided an application to deliver a finished project. Think interactive Keynote presentations neatly wrapped in HTML5 that takes the place of the current DVD Studio Pro application. Think of all those interactive podcasts, product demos, iAds and the ilk that you could spit out and probably deliver straight to iTunes. Disc based media delivery is not going to be catered for (it doesn't make money for Apple), DVDSP hasn't seen an update for years so a modern replacement based around HTML5 is due. Let's call it HTML5 Studio Pro or iTunes Studio Pro. :)

I almost never buy CDs anymore and I'll never buy another DVD or Blu-ray but even though I enjoy renting film downloads from iTunes I miss the DVD additional content. I finally think we'll be getting that and an application to generate those additional features which will spit out a neat download "package."

FCP is currently getting all the speculative attention but I think the successor to DVD Studio Pro is going to be an astonishing development and after the presentation all the discussion will be on the content delivery.

Motion & Color & Phenomenon

I think these applications will be absorbed into the main application, so we're not really looking at a suite more of an interactive media composing über application for want of a better description, a "Phenomenon."

Apple have often been accused of arrogance, what's the betting the whole application/suite was known as Phenomenon rather than just the replacement of Shake? "Jaw Dropping!" remember. Anyway I'd expect a fully fledged compositor in a serious modern media composing application and a RT Shake would fit the bill.

I fully believe the new Final Cut Studio, if that's what it is even called, will be a revolutionary product probably too revolutionary for many right at this moment in time. Remember when the iPad 1.0 was released how quite a few seasoned pundits absolutely did not get it? Think that revolutionary x10. I hate the phrase but a "paradigm shift" away from traditional media delivery catered for by Avid and Adobe.

Think online delivery (iTunes packaging types), think tapeless, think thoroughly optimised RT everything and most importantly Think Different. Think Flash is DEAD.

I hope Apple does deliver the above because that's what I want and need. These are my hopes for the future of digital media creation and more importantly it's what my clients want.

I have been kicking around a business idea for a couple of years but I haven't been able to join all the dots together from production, post-production, delivery and reception. I'm think the answer is coming in the form of the new FCP Suite combined with HTML5, iTunes and iDevices.

Not too long to wait...

Edit:

Having watched the Editors' Lounge casts (http://vimeo.com/channels/editorslounge) I think my predictions above are inline with what others (more learned) are expecting. I definitely agree that Apple is "skating to where the puck will be," I mean, they are in a wonderful position of being able to determine where the puck will be as they, after all, are setting the agenda with post PC devices, in fact, they are the puck.

They have changed my media consumption in a very short space of time. My 1st gen Apple TV has completely changed how much satellite TV I watch and the number of DVDs I hire from Blockbusters. The new version is designed to connect the iPad and iPhones to the TV. Instead of the Apple TV containing all the media you're going to watch the iDevices carry that around and are then relayed to the TV. You can see why Apple want to develop software to specifically target broadcasting....on their own terms.

Steve Jobs has said that standard model of broadcasting is a barrier to entry and it has been difficult for them to break into that market (with the AppleTV) as they don't control the content nor the wires. In this new model they control the content via iTunes and the wires are cut in favour of iTunes to iPad to AppleTV delivery. You can bet a whole new broadcasting paradigm is truly within our grasp. The shear popularity of the iPhone and iPads means there are the audience numbers to make it possible for companies like mine to think seriously about IP delivery.

Flash is DEAD... Can you see why Flash was never going to get onto the iPad or iPhones?

I'm sure the experience with the App Store (Mac and iOS) will play some part int he plans. Imagine being able to have an in-podcast purchase, every time a viewer purchases a product sponsored through a podcast Apple get a slice which is very similar to how the in-App purchases work. The beauty of this system is that the player knows where you are for example, you watch a Trailer a window pops up asking you if you want to be reminded when the film arrives at your local cinema or even book the tickets for you. The benefits of being able to drive business accurately this way far out performs standard broadcast TV's ability to do the same.

There has to be a reason for the huge new Apple data-centre! Apple will also be able to control the media generation for the network if the so desire and at the very least the new FCP Suite will give their customers a head start in providing highly engaging interactive content that drives business.

So the new FCP Suite is just another cog in the iTunes and iDevice broadcasting network.

Flash is DEAD...

ZX81 to 12 Core Mac Pro

I was reminded by an article in The Register that it was the anniversary of the ZX81 at the weekend. I have just purchased a new 12 core Mac Pro and it's sitting across the room from me while the ZX81 sits in a drawer on the other side of the room. In the space of 30 years we've gone from 3.25 MHz z80As, 1KB RAM, C90 Tape storage to the 2.93 GHz 12 core/24 thread 20 GB RAM and 5870 GPU and 5TBs of storage.

It is astonishing, to me at least, the progress in just 3 decades an it begs the question how long will it take for the Mac Pro to be as insignificant as the ZX81 is today? For certain it won't be 30 years.

Happy days.