Editblog on PVC by Scott Simmons

Add in Thunderbolt and Lion and it’s been a promising day for the Mac professional.

By now everyone who’s ever edited a frame of video and has a web connection knows that Apple recently held an small, secret, invitation-only meeting at their headquarters in Cupertino where they previewed the next version of Final Cut Pro. This was an extremely unusual move as Apple rarely ever demos any of their products before they ship. The only real word that has come across from this meeting was a blurb on TechCrunch and a blog post from Larry Jordan. I think it’s safe to say that those who were in attendance probably aren’t overly critical of FCP and it’s current shortcomings. But it’s also safe to say that this bodes well for all of us using a Macintosh in post-production.

What Larry Jordan said in his blog post is basically that he can’t really say anything about this new version. Not surprising given how tight-lipped Apple is about future products. What Apple has done here in letting the cat out of the bag that this new version is in the pipe (and maybe ready for a spring release) was not really for the good of the post-production community but rather a clever marketing move designed to keep those current FCP fence-sitters holding on a little longer before they jump ship to Avid Media Composer or Adobe Premiere Pro.

First there’s the new FCP.

Apple may be silent about future products but you can bet they keep an eye and an ear toward internet message boards and discussions like Twitter. They know the dissatisfaction that has been rumbling for quite some time as editors are presented great choices other than FCP. We’ve had a steady stream of updates from Avid that’s making Media Composer better and introducing tools that make it more open, kind of like FCP. We’ve seen Adobe aggressively marketing Premiere Pro for FCP users with an application that’s very fast and surprisingly FCP-like when you sit down and use it. If EVER there was another good choice for the diehard FCP user it is right now. read more...