A Tale of Two Softwares

I was there at NAB when Apple unveiled FCPX.  I was downloading it the second the first tweet broke and I have been dabbling with it now and again since.  But I am not an editor, I am just someone who edits.  In fact I am slap bang in Mr Jobs’ target market if the initial functionality is anything to go by.  I can afford a certain degree of detachment because its not my day job.

LAFCPUG Supermeet NAB 2011

My day job is as a Business Intelligence Consultant.  However, it just so happens that the main software I rely on is also going through a generational change.  In its way it is the same level of paradigm shift that FCP is enduring.  The software in question is called Business Objects, now part of SAP.  In truth, its really a vast suite of interconnected products but, for short, it has become known as BI4.

The outgoing version is called XIR3 and has been around about 3 years.  It was a mature product but one that was carrying a lot of baggage due to acquisitions.  The basic idea in the centre had been around since the early 90s and had been very successful but was showing its age.  Some of the acquired modules were based on a different premise and functionality overlapped between them.  SAP made the difficult call to rewrite that central idea within the product.  Is any of this sounding familiar?  One thing BI4 does not share with FCPX is that it is not consumer oriented - one of the organisations that I work with has 11000 licences.

SAP ASUG Sapphire Conference Orlando 2011

So, like FCPX, BI4 is 64bit.  One of its most popular tools has been canned despite there still being a huge legacy of projects using it.  The central way of working has been completely changed and existing developers will have a lot to learn but all the remaining tools now integrate much better.

So how does SAP deal with its customers and its release compared to Apple?

Roadmap

A software roadmap is an expectation for Enterprise software.  Big businesses are like supertankers - it takes a huge amount of energy to change their course.  If you need to make a course correction you are going to need to know in good time. Most enterprise software consists of multiple platform layers and each of these has its own life cycle.  SAP share their roadmap with customers and major customers may be involved at a very early stage in the development.  SAP like to talk to there customers and you will be bombarded with material once they know your name.

Legacy Support

SAP will normally try and support about 2 versions back for migration at a platform level.  Where things won’t migrate, they provide conversion tools.  However, its not unknown for some functionality to go entirely.  Support for old releases dies off over time, the first stage is that updates and patches will stop followed later by telephone support.  However, this is years after the release of the new version.  If SAP think it may be controversial they will normally extend this period.

Soft Release

This has come in only during SAP ownership of Business Objects.  I have been going to launch events since February but technically BI4 is not for sale.  It is currently in “Ramp Up”.  This is like a limbo between beta and release.  Only selected customers have the software, the rest of us are waiting for SAP to declare general availability.  This date has been creeping backwards.

Completeness

Despite “Ramp up” the software will be missing some functionality at general availability.  Some functionality is promised for BI4.1 and the roadmap puts that before the end of the year.

So in summary:

• SAP likes to engage its customers and keep them informed of new developments whereas Apple has a cult of secrecy.  
• Apple is used to having customers who are not significant in their overall volume where as SAP customers tend to be a more significant proportion of revenue.  SAP has maintenance whereas Apple has upgrades.  If you are paying for upgrades up front you would feel more entitled to know what you were going to get.
• SAP gives customers plenty of help to migrate where Apple has made hardly any concessions
• Apple is pretty good at hitting dates once it divulges them, SAP not so much.
• Both Companies are prepared to make the tough calls when they think architectural changes are required.
• SAP are prepared to put out software that is functionally incomplete but they limit who it is available to whereas Apple have fully released FCPX.  There are several orders of magnitude difference in price though.
• Despite mutterings about the lateness of BI4 to general availability, I have not heard the term "debacle" used at all about BI4.

So whilst there are some similarities in the situation surrounding FCPX and BI4, the vendors could hardly be more different in approach to their launch. I don’t want to just Apple-bash because I am a huge fan.  I love their clarity of vision but I think they need to temper their own corporate culture when they are dealing with people livelihoods rather than just their lifestyles. 

Aperture and FCPX

One of the things which struck me as odd is that despite the media browser section having access to Aperture’s library, there was no sign of any video clips in the browser.  This seemed to me like a massive missed opportunity from Apple but it seems I may have been a bit harsh.  This looks like it is a bug not a missing feature as video is mentioned in the FCPX help.  As such, I hope it gets fixed soon.

You can find the knowledge base article here 

The help is a little unclear so here is what my experiments have shown:

• You have to drag the image, multi-selection or Aperture project and drop it on the FCPX’s Event title in the Event Library not into the panel that where the assets or import options are.  You should see a + or a file count where it is valid.
• If you have done a version copy in Aperture it will see that as a different  the file in Aperture then FCPX will only see the trimmed portion.
• It won’t let you use drag in smart albums but you can still use them to preselect what you want to copy.
• Can’t see any evidence of Aperture key words being carried over.

... and your point is?

If you are someone who shoots mixed stills and video on DSLRs like I do then Aperture is often your first point of call for capture.  I have already written about my workflow here.  If you are using Aperture then both stills and video are ingested and you are already making decisions about organisation.  Whilst Aperture can’t currently modify video images the way it can with stills, you still have the ability to trim, grade (stars and flags) and key word.  It also has a robust library with the vault backup option.  With no log and capture anymore, Aperture can fill some of the gap.

Even when Apple fixes the bugs, I still think they could go further with the integration.  It would be nice not to have to duplicate the primary assets and it seems a shame to lose any effort you may have put into key wording in Aperture.

Initial take on Final Cut Pro X

Its been a crazy time since the launch of FCPX last week - a regular supernova in the twitterverse.  I hit go on the App Store the moment it popped up in the UK.  I was there for the debut at NAB, I remember the buzz by the end of that fateful Supermeet.  The very first impression was not a functional one but a financial one.  The days of cut $ and replace £ seemed to have ended with the App Store.  So the price that got the Supermeet crowd on their feet was still present for a UK audience.  As expected the price wasn't quite like for like with FCP7 due to the unbundling, but the ancillary apps were less than I expected both in terms of number and cost.

Unfortunately, the excitement of the launch soon turned to howls of protests.  Have the iMovie Pro protagonists been vindicated?  Have the Pro community been left out in the cold?  I haven’t deep dived into the software myself.  I did enough playing to decide that I needed to pull back and have a good look at this new paradigm and decide how best to engage in it or whether to engage at all!

I have read a lot of the comments and listened to the arguments for and against and I think I am finally in a position to have a draft opinion.  Not a final one, because that is going to need me to have a lot more direct use of using the software myself.

Is it Pro?

“No, it isn’t” is the most obvious answer but you have to be very careful how you define “Pro”.  FCPX is a Non Linear Editing tool and so the profession or craft you would associate that with is Editors - be that for films or television.  As a collaborative tool it is severely limited.  A situation compounded by Apple both failing to provide a transitional route and killing off FCP7 with almost indecent haste.  Although I don’t fit in this user category myself, I understand their frustration.

However, within the admittedly high walls that limit its functionality, the software is certainly capable of producing professional results.  The ground-up rebuild does mean that the software is capable of professional output in a shorter space of time with less recourse to additional programs or plugins than its predecessor.  With so few plug-ins available thats just as well but that was always going to be the case when 64bit arrived.  I’ll concede that some of that new functionality maybe a bit too “black box” for the purist but there are some exciting things both in FCPX and in Motion 5.

Is it the NLE for the rest of us?

Well, Apple will tell you that is iMovie still.  FCPX is still a step up from there but an easier step than FCP7 used to be.  For someone like myself who is an enthusiast who aspires to professional results then its a very good fit functionally and financially.  I can also see it suiting creative professionals who are not dedicated editors.  

The demand for video content is growing almost exponentially but much of this growth lies outside the realms of traditional post houses.  I think this is the market Apple is gunning for and, if it exceeds, could be very lucrative.  Would Apple forsake the high-end customers for this market.  I think they would...I think they have.  I think they will gamble that the high-end will move or someone else will fill the gap even if they don’t.  I do expect to see FCPX change quite quickly though.  Its the App Store way of doing things.

Choosing a different path

Why bother learning a new paradigm, isn’t it easier just to jump ship and go to Premiere?  I have been using Premiere more over the last year than FCP7.  There have been a couple of reasons for this.  The first is I have been shooting nearly everything on DSLR and Premiere handles DSLR footage much better than FCP7.  I have a Mac Pro with 8 cores, 12GB RAM and a Quadro 4000 and FCP7 runs pretty much the same as it does on the older iMac it replaced.  Only in Premiere did my Mac Pro really fly.  I have been trying to learn After Effects and the integration via Dynamic Link is really cool.  If you are a big user of Photoshop and After Effects then its sort a no brainer.  The major downside is cost.  Most people will buy the Production Premium pack and that is a big chunk of change.  The full version is an order of magnitude more expensive and even the upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 is dearer.  Even the month-by-month subscription cost is close to the outright cost of FCPX.