The NEW Final Cut Studio announced today!

[William Hohauser]

It's all speculation right now. One place says it was part of the Motion team, here we see it might have been a few from the Color team, somewhere else it was FCS help desk staff. Who knows what is going on. It could just as well have been that Apple decided to let go of people who weren't pulling their weight anymore as much as Apple focusing on iPad applications. If you look at their job offers these days, many seem to be directed at the iPad/iPhone mobile applications. Or maybe Steve Jobs has gone a little balmy again.

Does anyone know how many people are employed solely on the FCS applications?

[Shaughan Flynn]

I do know for a fact that none of the Austin team was affected by this.

[Matt Davis]

I got ever so slightly smacked on a panel recently for daring to poke FCP in its tawdriness in getting a new version out (if we accept that 7.0 was really a 6.5).

I wasn't petulantly demanding new toys and features, just want the FCS suite to

- Use more than 1.5 GB RAM
- Use the expensive multiprocessor systems we have efficiently
- Fix 'those' bugs
- Overhaul Color so it becomes usable by a non-specialist

FCP was groomed to make high end Apple hardware the must-buy for an industry that reaches from videographers to broadcast networks. We bought into it because Apple told us that they were committed to it. Well, they're having a ball with the iPhone...

I've stuck with FCS in the hope that soon it will be nicer to work on long form edits where we bump into that RAM barrier, and various export bugs get fixed, and round trips improve. But there's been not-a-lot happening for a long time now.

Two scenarios:

- They're rewriting it from the ground up in Cocoa, a mammoth task, major commitment, taking longer than they'd hoped, but the result will be worth it, AND they get multi-touch and an iPad helper app at the same time. Whatever.

- They've lost enthusiasm, costs too high, returns too low, supported for the medium term, but consumer hardware generates more cash and buzz.

The one strongest thing that makes me teeter towards option 1 (and it is only by the slenderest of margins) was some activity not so long ago to recruit a Video Editor Product Designer. The job description had some interesting twists in it IIRC.

[Andrew Kimery]

While there are a number of workflow problems w/Color that need to get fixed I think it would be a shame if the whole app got dumbed down into a 'light' version. Personally, I didn't think Color was difficult to get into at all once I watched a tutorial that explained what all the rooms, options, etc., were for.


-Andrew

[Matt Davis]

It's the round-tripping with Color that got to me. Things break, things need workarounds, so I just use Colorista. On the other end of the scale, colleagues swear by adding expensive control surfaces. Maybe some wriggle-room between these scales?

[Heath McKnight]

I was hoping for a version of Color that was similar in UI to FCP, SoundTrack, and DVD Studio Pro (remember how DVDSP 1.0/1.5 were difficult to use??).

Heath

[William Hohauser]

I don't use Color or Motion at all. Something about the workflow and interface just doesn't work for me. Other people love them so it's my problem.

Meanwhile Apple is in a position with FCS. It a middle of the road set of highly versatile applications with some very pro applications (Color) uncomfortably wedged in. Where can Apple take it that's worth the development? Making a program that high-end pros are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase but Apple can only expect to sell a few dozen a year? At some point someone made a decision to leave the specialty programs in the hands of specialty software companies who could focus better on the needs of a limited set of clients. Just as Apple opened the door for filter and effect programmers to create an unlimited number of options for us to use within FCP. Believe me, I wish Apple would get into video server and master control operations, the PC options are maddening to work with, but it's really unlikely.

What I would like in FCP:

- Fixing the Qmaster inconsistencies.
- Better tape mastering capabilities such as global audio filters (just for output, no creating new sequences), better slate & countdown options.
- more options when starting a new project or sequence. I hate the mess when switching from PAL to NTSC or 16:9 to 4:3.
- fixing Media Manager, it still gets confused.
- get those processors all working in rendering as an User option.
- get some of the Color processes available as filters.