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.