No. $299.00. Period. Not upgrade. And there are a lot of similarities to Vegas, as I expected. Vegas has always been very forward-looking, and now its competitors are catching up, and surpassing it, in some ways.

Editing native formats will be welcome so that we don't have to encode everything to .mov for FCP folk. I hope that includes HDV and not just "AVCHD, DSLR, GoPro".

I kind of choked today when my local Macolite was showing me such cutting edge advances as being able to see an audio waveform on the timeline.
On the other hand it does have PluralEyes built in.

Bob.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/12/apple-announces-final-cut-pro-x-at-nab/

Mike

As I have said before... Vegas doesn't have to try and be MC or FCP.... because they're busy right now trying to be more like Vegas.

Here's another blog with more details:

http://www.photographybay.com/2011/04/12/final-cut-pro-user-group-supermeet-liveblog/

2 million installed Final Cut users. Final Cut growing at twice the overall rate of NLE growth.

"The software demoed was currently in beta, but it’ll be available on June 9th for… $299. That’s really cheap, although it replaces the cheaper Final Cut Express, and Adobe should be coming out with a new version of Premiere Elements soon as well. More info to be added as soon as Apple updates."

So where is it in their product lineup, I'm missing something.
I thought FCP was their premium NLE and FCE was the equivalent of VMS and Elements. Have Apple decided they'll only have one tier to their NLE offering?

Bob.

"2 million installed Final Cut users. Final Cut growing at twice the overall rate of NLE growth. "

That's not surprising at all.... or unexpected. NLE growth is up across the board with cheaper computers and vid cams... etc. Today pretty much everybody and their grandmother has some kind of computer/vid cam/editing platform in their own living room.

Why do you think products like Avid MC are opening the doors to such things as avchd import with 5.1 surround sound?

BTW... did you happen to notice all those pretty colors on the time line? How long has vegas been able to do that?

I think that the new FCP features and pricing are great for Vegas users. Competition mandates that companies continue to add new features and try to keep prices down. I for one just transitioned over to Apple hardware so that I can run a dual system using both FCP and Vegas. As both NLE's increase features and keep prices low, the consumer is the winner as it causes all NLE developers to keep on their toes or get tossed out of the race.

The new auto color correction feature in FCP where you click an event and then click another to match it and the color correction is done? Brilliant. I hate trying to match clips. FCP including a "PluralEyes" type feature... nice. I have PluralEyes, but there's nothing like internal features without additional cost.

I honestly think that the better FCP is, the better Vegas will be.

I thought FCP was their premium NLE and FCE was the equivalent of VMS and Elements. Have Apple decided they'll only have one tier to their NLE offering?

I'm reading that they're phasing FCE out and just having iMovie and FCP.

$299 is gobsmacking. Basically they're going for the jugular and in a way it's already working, as it's got me, a typical user of the competition, thinking for the first time if I should consider a Mac next time I purchase a computer. Never would have entertained that before today.

Nick said "it's got me, a typical user of the competition, thinking for the first time if I should consider a Mac next time I purchase a computer. Never would have entertained that before today."

Not me. Still not that convinced. Still a sworn member of the "never use proprietary hardware" association. And definitely not until Apple figure out how to put a second button on their mouse. It makes things so easy - why don't they get it?

Re "proprietary hardware" comment: this may have been a valid argument against FCP before last night; at $299 for FCP, you can throw in a desktop or laptop and you're still below most of the competition except Vegas. Then setup Boot Camp and/or Parallels and you're way ahead of the game.

Re 2nd button: that was my primary opposition against a Mac 2 months ago. Then I researched this and bought a Mac. You can actually set up a Mac so a standard 2 button mouse works exactly like a PC. When I'm editing in Vegas on my Mac via Boot Camp or Parallels, my workflow with my 2 button mouse and ShuttlePro is EXACTLY the same as on my PC. If you google Mac and setting up 2 button mouse, you'll see that it only takes a few clicks to set this up.

In addition, I bought 3-4 utilities that allow me to setup my Mac workflow so it's not much different in workflow and appearance to my PC comfort zone (Divvy, Path Finder, Parallels).

For the ability to add the option of working with a $299 FCP, I can't imagine why I'd buy a PC in the future. A few clicks and I'm in Vegas and having my hand held in old comfortable PC land, a click back and I'm able to collaborate with the [very odd] Mac users in the local area.

Here we go. I've been waiting for a reason to use both Vegas and FCP for one reason: jobs.

I have a great job now and a small business. But if I lost my job and was looking for media work, guess what (almost) EVERY MEDIA position that involves video editing wants proficiency in?

FCP.

So I'm going to learn proficiency in both, God willing!

Apple hardware not needed to run OSX and FCP.
Nofilmschool

Bob.

As someone who spent weeks last spring assembling a Hackintosh, a recommendation: stock up on Rogaine. You'll lose your hair. It's maddeningly difficult, and I ended up deleting everything I assembled as it was too fragile of a setup. And I would put significant amounts of money on the fact that the June App Store release won't work with a Hackintosh.

It's got my attention. Sony better watch out with this one.

Sigh. Three years ago I switched to a Mac so I could use both Final Cut Studio and Vegas on the same machine. Final Cut was $1,200.00, then. Two months later Final Cut Studio 3 came out... $300.00 for the upgrade, but the price of the program came down to $1,000.00. So I had $1,500.00 invested in software that was now worth $1,000.00. I whined to Apple and they gave me a free Mighty Mouse. Now, to get the new FCX, I'll have to cough up another $300.00, giving me a total of $1,800.00 invested in software that's worth $300.00. What a bargain. Apple, the least you could do is use KY and kiss me from time-to-time.

And the fact still remains I use Vegas 95% of the time.

I'll have to admit: I do like my 17" MAcBook Pro, however.

So where is it in their product lineup, I'm missing something.

Notice they're calling it Final Cut Pro X. Not Studio. My guess is that there's a lot you don't get for that 299.00.

Rumors a while back were that FCP was going to be targeted more towards consumers. I think a 299 price tag puts it in that realm and Apple will use it to drive the sales of iMacs and MacBook Pros. Remember they're also putting a high speed thunderbolt port onto the MacBook Pros so they'll have a good IO option (although it'll all look pretty much like things did in Apple's SCSI days. Stacks of external drives daisy chained, a Matrox MXO adapter, and a big external monitor).

The consumer market has always been important to the NLE vendors. You can sell a lot of licenses into that market that you couldn't sell at a pro level. And you build a customer base, some of which might move up into the professional market to purchase supporting products, server software, etc.

The challenge is to hit a sweet spot that satisfies casual users as well as professional users. I'm sure Apple thinks they can do that. In many ways I trust them to do it more than I'd trust any of the other vendors. I know from conversation with developers from another "A" company that they were very focused on consumer needs but looked like they were staring into headlights on some of our professional use questions. Hopefully, Apple can do a good job of making both groups happy.

The problem of a 299 price point for FCP is that it probably drives down prices for Adobe and SCS. Not the suite prices, but standalone product prices.

So, with what I'm reading from the Photography Bay blog I see some features that Vegas has had for a while, a few of which I think Apple is conceiving a little differently, and a few features that Vegas doesn't have but should probably riff on. Their Ranges feature is a lot like marking regions in the trimmer, although I suspect that Apple is going to squeeze more use out of the feature than Vegas has been doing. The composite clips thing was what I'd initially hoped you could do with Nested Veg files. Small collections that you could create from inside the current timeline (Select Clips, Right Click, Choose "Create Nested Veg File", Done)

I'd kind of like to see SCS look at the Vegas product and really creatively reimagine some of the features that currently exist. Set a goal to make existing features "gobsmackingly" better.

Rob Mack

This is only FCP X (FCP Pro replacement) and Apple has not announced anything about a new version of the Final Cut suite:

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/04/12/apple-demos-final-cut-pro-x-at-nab-2011/

What will/will not be included with FCP X is the most important outstanding issue from last night, IMO.

Applications that had previously been bundled with Final Cut Studio (for $999):
- FCP 7
- Soundtrack Pro
- Color
- Compressor
- DVD Studio
- Motion

What http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20053364-248.htmlhas been stated[/link] as being included in FCP X:
- FCP X
- Soundtrack
- Color

My guess is that Apple has to include some component to export the editing you've done, so I'd assume that the "Compressor" component portion would have to be included somehow. It'll be interesting to see how Apple addresses the DVD and Blu-Ray issues; particularly due to their stated opposition to supporting Blu-Ray.

So the biggest question in my mind is what they will do with Motion.

"The problem of a 299 price point for FCP is that it probably drives down prices for Adobe and SCS. Not the suite prices, but standalone product prices."

For a while there you could buy Sony Vegas Pro at B&H for 129.00. The difference of course was that you didn't get DVDa Pro with it.... or in other words... you didn't get the Dolby Digital Pro Encoder, and that I believe is what makes a big difference in the price tag. Also note this is not something that FCP has either.

For $599 (or what ever it is) for Sony Vegas Pro, DVDa AND a pro level ac3 encoder.... that's a pretty good deal. I know for a fact that the pro encoder ALONE in CS5 (if you opt to purchase) will set you back an ADDITIONAL $300.

It's so much like Vegas - but Vegas the way it might be in a few years. Check out this recording of the presentation, but specifically watch at about 12 minutes, where they show adding a simple fade to an audio clip, the way Vegas has done it for YEARS... and the crowd cheers. Made me smile.



But the new FCP has taken the best of what makes Vegas so appealing to me, and set it in a modern interface, and added functionality that Vegas does NOT yet have. It looks like Sony Vegas 10 meets the Minority Report interface. It feels like Vegas - but in the future.

I have been using Windows 7 on my Mac for one reason - Vegas. FCP X may be the justification for finally abandoning Windows, and Vegas, for good. That, I will admit, makes me a little sad.