What’s Happening With Final Cut Pro?
In case you missed the roll out of Apple’s “evolutionary” version of Final Cut Pro X in June – it rocked the professional world, but not for the reason’s Apple expected. While many in the editing world loved its new interface and $299 price, most of the professional world saw its short comings as show stoppers and cried foul! Educational institutions were blind-sided as well by the timing and questionable future for FCP students.
Why not just go with the new “X” version? FCP X lacks support for many professional features including no multicam editing, no support for shared storage and a complete disconnect from the previous versions. These are just a few reasons for many professional users to consider moving off of Apple editing products entirely and look for a more future-proof product suite.
Avid and Adobe were quick to see the opportunity and offered attractive “cross-grades” for existing FCP users, slashing prices by 50% got a lot of immediate attention. Existing FCP users can use their FCP license (Avid) to get a huge discount to switch to other manufactures software. Adobe just heavily discounted CS5.5 temporarily (ask an EAR product specialist for details).
Both Adobe and Avid have extended their popular FCP trade-in programs through October. Hopefully the $1,495 – $895 price point established by these offers will continue. I suspect we may even see some “Lite” versions of software appear soon to keep entry level price affordable for new users. EAR also offers special pricing for education and government orders.
LAST BATCH OF FINAL CUT PRO SUITES
Before we close the book on Final Cut Pro there are a couple parting overtures Apple has tossed their pre-FCPX users. Due to tremendous pressure by scores of loyal FCP professional users, Apple shipped “one last batch” of Final Cut Pro Suite software in September (Ver 7). With ebay copies of FCP selling for above retail, EAR has a few copies at the old price of $995 each. Even less if ordered with a computer. Apple has also reinstated the download of software updates for FCP version 7 to insure everyone has the last final fresh version of Final Cut.
INTO THE FUTURE
Last month Apple released FCP X with some features enhancements. For many this was seen as too little too late. Apple hardware still is seen as the best editing platform by many – however with Apple’s mobile and consumer focus it appears doubtful they will be making a strong effort to cater to the smaller professional user’s needs in the future.
Apple still makes great products. I wouldn’t count them out to roll out some game changers in the near future. The new transition to Thunderbolt hardware and it’s dramatic improvement in speed may offer Apple the chance to discontinue the last Mac Pro computer in the coming months or years as laptops and small footprint Macs ship with more CPU horsepower. Imagine – no more PCIe cards! Everything connects outside the computer via a small thin cable, storage, monitors, media recorders, everything. Laptops, Mac minis and iMac desktops
The days of feature comparisons between editing software have quietly come to point of personal preference. The choices between Avid and Adobe are very easy. Both are affordable, work on Mac or PC and while there are still some features to differentiate the two companies products, those too are becoming less important to the majority of editors.
The battle seems to be over for now, and we’re all the winners.
EAR has been an Apple reseller since 1989. We specialize in professional audio and video products for broadcast, post production and music recording. Contact one of our product specialist today for great advice and professional pricing.
