“Love it or hate it, Apple’s Final Cut Pro X is here to stay,” Rounik Sethi reports for MacProVideo. “It is a radical departure from the Final Cut 7 software that came before it, and is perhaps a sign that Apple intends to usher in a brave new world of video editing. I was fortunate enough to catch up with Michael Wohl, one of the primary designers of the original Final Cut Pro, writer of Apple’s Courseware and Star Trainer here at macProVideo.com to discuss Final Cut Pro X in more detail.”
Some snippets from Wohl’s interview with Sethi:
• Final Cut Pro X is not a new version of Final Cut. To call it that is to misunderstand everything about it. It is a brand new piece of software. So much so that in my humble opinion, I think Apple would’ve had a better time of this if they just named it something completely new. And I think the audience reaction would be more uniformly great. Right now we’re seeing a very mixed reaction.
• Make no doubt about it, Final Cut Pro X is an amazing piece of software. There are tons of really cool features… I think that there is an expectation problem where people want to pick up right where Final Cut 7 left off and you’ve got to realize that was a 10-year-old piece of software that was never going to survive another 10 years. It needed to be reinvented. And I think they did a bold and difficult thing to do this complete reinvention.
• FCP X is going to be incredibly useful and is going to be everything you would want for a good 70% of the users out there. For people migrating from iMovie, people new to video editing, people working on simple projects where they need to quickly and easily get their editing done, this is going to be an amazing tool from Day One… There are shortcomings, sure. My gut feeling is that identifying those shortcomings doesn’t necessarily mean we shouldn’t use FCP X, but it means we need to be aware that there are currently some limitations.
• I don’t think [that, due to FCP X’s power and low price,] professional video editors are going to go away, but I do think that the big bulk of the market is going to be that mid-range space where people are creating high quality (video) but they’re not doing it in a professional environment. As the technology gets simpler and more accessible—literally every iPhone has an HD video camera in it—so everyone is going to be dealing with video which will in turn require a certain amount of editing. You need to organize it and in order to present it there’s work that you need to do. So having a tool which is accessible to this wide range of people, and yet gives enough of the professional tools that can give great results, is a really brilliant idea on Apple’s behalf.
Much, much more in the full interview, including links to Wohl’s Free 1-hour long Overview and many more FCP X tutorials, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Matthew H.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Final Cut Pro X ‘backlash’ coming from competitors scared to death over Apple’s $299 price tag? – June 24, 2011
Conan blasts Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X (with video) – June 24, 2011
Answers to the unanswered questions about Apple’s new Final Cut Pro X – June 23, 2011
‘Professional’ video editors freak out over Final Cut Pro X – June 23, 2011
Apple revolutionizes video editing with Final Cut Pro X – June 21, 2011