By now most of you have heard that Apple has re-introduced Final Cut Studio 3 for sale after a lukewarm reception to Final Cut Pro X. Well, they sort of have re-introduced it. As stated in this MacRumors article, you must call the order directly in to Apple. It is not available through any standard retail or VAR channel.
Before I go any further, if you are really serious about wanting another copy of FCS 3 stop reading this blog and call that phone number immediately. My feeling is the product is not being re-produced at all. What’s for sale is merely the leftover stock from when Studio 3 was pulled from the market. I was told that Apple required that all of their stores and all retailers return the un-opened stock as soon as it was discontinued. So once these leftover packages are gone, they’re most likely gone for good.
Now the real disappointing thing for me is Apple is still demanding the $999 price tag for Studio 3. I know, I know….. “Now Walt, that’s what the price has been all along, why would it change?” Three letters. E O L End Of Life. For those who have never heard the term, it means the product has reached the end of its production life and will not be produced any longer. Generally that means that support will either be very limited moving forward or will be non-existent. Personally I feel the price should have been dropped to $599 or $499 since you are essentially buying obsolete software that has already been removed from the marketplace once.
Think about all those discount bins when you walk into something like a Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy and such. Software titles you saw for $100 or more last year are now clearance for $19.99. That’s essentially what Studio 3 is now, a clearance item. Instead of trashing all the extra copies, Apple put them back out for sale so the folks who really want it can have it. But why would you want it? Seriously.
Why would you want to spend $1,000 on software that is over 2 years old and not the most efficient thing on the block in terms of digital formats? To work with P2, XDCAM and others, you are required to use the Log and Transfer Tool to convert the footage to ProRes just so you can edit. With Avid and Adobe you can edit immediately with the native footage with or without the proper folder structure from those formats. If you truly want to convert the footage to ProRes you can do that AFTER you complete the edit, so you’re just converting the footage you actually used and not ALL of your raw media.
So in my opinion, take that $1,000 and put it towards Avid, Adobe, Autodesk Smoke or even Final Cut Pro X (saving yourself about $700) and move on. In other words, step forward, not backwards. It’s uncomfortable, it’s maddening, it’s annoying, it’s all those things and more having to move to a new software platform. But if you’ve been cutting on Final Cut Pro for the past few years (10 in my case) you’re going to have to learn a new software platform at some point very soon anyway, even if you stay with the FCP product line, so why not make the clean break now and get started?
I’ve been down this road multiple times before and once you get past the idea of “ok I have to change” then the change comes naturally. I was on Media 100 for 6 years before making the switch to FCP. At that time it took about 2 weeks to become familiar with FCP and in about 2 months I was working faster and more efficiently in FCP than I ever did in those 6 years with M100. And remember, this was before the incredible resources like CreativeCow.net really got into the mainstream with millions of users sharing information. I was just one guy cutting in the bedroom of my house trying to learn this thing with the help of ProMax. Today we have thousands of tutorials, dozens of books and of course the incredible resources of sites like Creative Cow to make the transition to any software quite painless.
Currently with Premiere Pro it’s a much easier switch since the application behaves very similarly to FCP and even includes the keyboard shortcuts to make it super easy. But there are still a LOT of things I need to learn about the workflow and it’s completely maddening at times. Now Avid I haven’t worked on since 1994 at CNN so that will take even more work to get up to speed on, but that’s ok. Both software packages have already moved to native digital workflows in the past. Both workflows will make me more efficient today than FCP 7 will.
So take that first step away from your comfort factor and invest that $1,000 (0r $300 for FCPX) and move on. In about 2 months you’ll be glad you did.
I’m thinking the only one that would be glad he moved to FCPX after 2 months would be the lone guy cutting in a bedroom of his house. Even those guys might be happier with an Adobe Creative Suite and developing a skill set and project archive that is more widely compatible across the market. Then again, I like Sony Vegas Pro better than anything else out there. Perhaps FCPX has the potential to become that kind of NLE.
Man I’ll tell you, I have not met a Sony Vegas editor who does not LOVE that software. It’s funny, nobody I work with in the industry uses it, yet I meet people all the time at NAB who use it and flat out love it. For the most part, they seem to be either a total independent or they work in a corporate type of in-house environment. But Vegas editors are a loyal lot. I have honestly never used it, but it’s obviously doing something right!
As for the independent editor today, I would personally recommend they start out with the CS 5.5 package. Photoshop and After Effects skills are always in demand. Premiere Pro CS 5.5 works so similarly to FCP 7 that it’s an easy switch over if you needed to work in an FCP 7 shop. Of course there’s nothing wrong with learning Avid as well. Depends on where you are, you need to look at the local market. LA / Hollywood is gravitating back to Avid because that is still a very dominant editing tool out there. Down here in Atlanta, based on our Atlanta Cutters meetings, folks are looking very heavily at Premiere Pro. One of the things about PPro is most of us have it already with the Production Premium package so it’s already there. It also works with our AJA and BMD hardware so it’s got that head jump on Avid.