Priced at only $299 it makes Adobe Premiere Pro look greedy at $1,699
Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos introducing Apple Final Cut ProX (picture Engadget)
Apple announced the release of its 64-bit native video production software Final Cut Pro X.
Rebuilt from the ground up to deliver instant rendering in video editing, it will go head-to-head with Adobe’s CS5 Premiere Pro released last May.
The difference is Adobe charges $1,699 for the Production Pro suite and Apple is charging only $299.
To add insult to injury, Adobe will soon release a minor upgrade to CS5 at the astounding price of $599, double the cost of a new Apple Final Cut Pro license.
Video and the requisite video editing is the place to be in computers these days. People watch videos for news, music and virtually everything.
Apple is delivering video on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch plus desktop and laptop computers. Video is everywhere.
Adobe wants that video to be Flash but Apple is nixing Flash and supports H.264 video.
Prior to CS5, video editing was always bottle-necked by the rendering of video clips in editing and conversion to web compatible formats like H.264 or Flash. You could shoot a video in an hour and take days to edit the clip.
Adobe CS5 used 64 bit technology and the graphics card to make rendering almost instantaneous. However, the price of a CS5 editing suite was too high for most people – $1,700 to $2,600 per software license.
Competition is a beautiful thing and Apple’s competitive product tips the scales at an ultra-lite $300.
Will it be as good as Adobe CS5?
Of course it will – Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro have been equivalent feature for feature with Final Cut Pro being the choice of professional video editors.
Both Adobe and Apple owe their design to the same one man – Chief Architect of Video Applications Randy Ubillos.
Randy Ubillos designed the original program that became Adobe Premiere before moving to Apple. According to some, he is the genius behind all NLE video editing.
Early previews have Final Cut Pro as better and faster than Adobe Premiere Pro.
That won’t really matter.
What will mean popularity and wide acceptance for Apple is the price. At $299, Apple is pricing so everyone will buy Adobe Final Cut Pro X.
Adobe is just plain greedy, especially with their $599 minor upgrade.
Mark one for Apple. You can buy an Apple video suite (hardware and software) for the price of Adobe’s software.
For more history and opinion on why Adobe is shooting themselves in the foot, check out Apple-a-holic Jonny Evans Apple’s Final Cut will end the Flash wars
RazorX
This story is filled with bias, ignorance, and lies. Uhhh… the Adobe Production Premium Suite at $1,699 comes with 12 applications (Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, OnLocation, Flash, Encore, etc.)
A mortal blow to Flash? Wow, hardly.
Since the proliferation of Android phones and tablets Flash has grown rapidly and is now on more devices than ever.
Ok, not point in writing anymore… I think any reader quickly understands how ignorant this article and the author of it is.
O'Neill
Im surprised I didnt see the words, “innovative” and “revolutionary” in this article.
Its completely biased and full of Apple drone type errors, like comparing the full CS5 suite to a single application (FCP).
Of course the CS5 suite is going to be more.
This is one reason why I dont care to be apart of the Apple cult. Too much ignorance and blind kool-aid ingestion.
Stephen Pate
Thanks for your comments although you are totally incorrect in assuming some sort of Apple cult. I have worked on computers of both Microsoft and Apple and prefer Windows to OSX but that is purely personal.
Adobe Premiere Pro, the cheapest entry into Adobe NLE, costs $799 US versus $299 for Final Cut Pro X.
Developers and site owners must be iOS compatible so that becomes the lowest common denominator. No one in video is staying with Flash.
Zac L.
Did I miss a page? How do these price points involve Flash?
Stephen, the upgrade for Premiere Pro CS5.5 is $179. FCPX’s only announced price is $299. So perhaps you can reverse your title to say:
“Adobe Premiere Pro is a mortal blow to Apple iTouch 😉
Priced at only $179 it makes Apple Final Cut X look greedy at $299”
Stephen Pate
Can you upgrade just Premiere Pro CS5 if you have one of the suites? I doubt that.
The installed base of CS5 is very small compared to the potential install base of FCPX at $299.
The way CS5 works, you need several pieces of the puzzle to get complete functionality which is why people get the suites and not just the single module.
People will buy Final Cut Pro who never considered CS5 due to the daunting cost.
Apple is low-balling the software to drive the platform the same way they captured the mp3 business at 99 cents a tune and the iPad at $499. Time will tell
Al
Wow what a biased “article”. I especially love the line:
“Will it be as good as Adobe CS5? Of course it will”
hahaha
So far as I can tell from using both FCP7 and CS5 and reading many online forums, CS5 was a much better NLE than FCP7. Even my ardent Apple fanboy friends accepted that CS5 was superior. I suggest a new title for the article:
“Will Apple finally catch up to Adobe with FCPX? Only time will tell.”
Yeesh!
ken
We don’t know yet if it’s going to include Color, Motion, and all the other video apps that came along with Final Cut Pro Studio.
If that’s the case than Apple than it’s going to cost more than 299.00, but if Apple does include them than Apple’s going to try to cut-throat the whole industry with such a move and a cheap alternative from everything else.
They better make a better editor than anyone else, because from what I see all those auto settings should be turned off from the get go(audio, etc)!
I’m a Final Cut user as of the last 11 years since version 1 on OS 9 and I’m pretty impressed with Adobe Premiere Pro and how Adobe has kept up to date with updates, whereas Apple has lagged behind.
Listen, we should of had a Final Cut Pro Studio X a year and a half ago, but Apple has been very slow! Final Cut Pro X hasn’t stopped me from looking at Adobe Premiere which basically has been doing what X has done for the last year in terms of rendering and 64 bit processing.
I don’t think it’s right as a mac user for the last 12 years to pin Adobe against Apple. Most of us pro-users use Adobe on a daily if not hourly basis. Adobe stuck with the mac in the 1990s when everyone else was abandoning it. Apple has the technology(shake & tremor), but from my experience they need to keep up with the industry and customer needs a heck of a lot better.
OMGWM
What Flash as the most interactive medium has to do with Final Cut Pro? Are you insane giving stupid statements like that? I use both and they have nothing in common. One is used for one thing and another one for something completely different.
What an ignorant article, it is unbelievable!
Stephen Pate
video but Flash is dead for everything on iOS, which is dominating the mobile world – one estimate last week 80% market share for iOS on portable music. The ad hominem comments might help your bile level but don’t impress me much. I’d rather not be bound by a Flash-less mobile world but that doesn’t seems to be the reality.
Jerry L.
I’m late to the party on this one, but what are you smoking Stephen? I want some of that before I hop back onto Production Premium CS5 to do some stuff I need to get finished. I’m compositing an After Effects motion logo and I still haven’t decided whether I want to use Photoshop CS5 (included in the suite) or Illustrator CS5 (also included) to draft the logo initially. Do I want raster or vector? After Effects works with both files straight away and integrates easily so there really isn’t a difference. But I might be able to do some really cool closeup camera moves in AE without losing my rezies if I go with Illustrator. When it’s all said and done, and rendered to ProResHQ via AE, I can use either FCP or Premiere Pro to make the cuts since I have both suites to receive client files. In fact, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHICH CUTTING SOFTWARE I USE. They both will give me the same exact simple result. They are both programs that at their core just cut media apart. The industry has moved beyond this. Because CS5 carries AE, PS, and AI, it is a far more comprehensive tool for creating professional-looking content. The guys who will only have FCP X on their system, and care not to invest in graphic, audio, or color correction software, etc. are living in a world gone by. FCPX could be $30 instead of $300 and it still wouldn’t get the job done. To get the job done, you at least need the Adobe suite… and maybe a little of that stuff you’re smoking.
killroy
Jerry L. it’s HTML streaming not IOS. But IOS supports it, that’s
the key
Stephen Pate
I appreciate all the comments on this topic, which some have unfortunately taken as an attack on Adobe CS5. That is not the intention of the article.
For the past several years Premiere and Final Cut Pro have been essentially locked in the feature warm similar to most mature software products. When Adobe adds a feature, Apple adds it later or vice versa.
The difference this time is that Final Cut Pro X is being released at a fraction of the cost of CS5 Premiere. While this may not move professional video editors off Adobe, it is sure to convince the growing list of MAC and iOS fans to choose FCP X over the more costly Adobe products.
If Adobe has more features it will matter little to the tens of millions of people who want to edit their videos for the least amount of money and are suddenly hooked on all things Apple.
Just as there are obviously many fans of CS5, there are just as many professional videographers who swear by the features and workflow of FCP.
Let the debate continue.
JC
I late also to chime in Stephen Avid Liquid of $179.00 go to Best Buy. If you serious about editing you probably own, have or need Abode Creative Bundle. I don’t know many FCP use that don’t at least use After effect and that goes for Media Composer user too. To say that IOS has 80% of market well that’s disingenuous that sounds like a nice made up US number but, not world number it about 27% or so haven’t look lately I just don’t care. Yes, I own iphones 4 of them me and kids and some macs but, I run Avid Media Composer a professional product on them along with Bootcamp windows 7. I say a “Mortal Blow” wow when just about every mac has Adobe on it… and when did Premiere and FCP become a pro product? yep good stuff you should share don’t be stingy now.
SA
I seriously don’t get this article. Why are you comparing FCPX, a standalone product, to a full-blown creative suite that many people depend on daily.
Less hyperbole, more information!
Stephen Pate
The article doesn’t compare the full CS5 suite with FCPX. It merely points out that users who want to create mobile compatible videos with high quality editing tools can do it for much less money. In the meantime, Adobe is sticking with Flash which is dead in the water, market wise. Most commercial video sites have switched their content to H.264 for the very reason that it gives them access to all markets while Flash excludes them from a very large portion of the streaming mobile market. Personally, I use CS5 but don’t produce Flash videos. I can’t personally comment about the features war between Adobe and Apple but many professional videographers tell me they are committed to FCP, much the same way the sound editing market is committed to ProTools. Cheers.
bill
Flash is used for web advertising. Its not going anywhere. Jobs declared flash evil because it leaves apple with less control over your ios devices. Ios is number 2 mobile os is us….number 3 worldwide. Android number 1 both. Fcpx is playing catch up with ppcs5.
peteT.
I think now we know why FPCX is so cheap. Because it is CHEAP! Sorry apple you screwed it up.
Glenn
Is this article a joke?
Stephen Pate
The unhappy folks with FCPx are legion according to the NYT.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video-editors-weigh-in-on-final-cut-pro-x/
Stephen Pate
Quoting from NYT “Professional editors should (1) learn to tell what’s really missing from what’s just been moved around, (2) recognize that there’s no obligation to switch from the old program yet, (3) monitor the progress of FCP X and its ecosystem, and especially (4) be willing to consider that a radical new design may be unfamiliar, but may, in the long term, actually be better.”
John
What is this obsession with flash? Premiere doesn’t edit in flash. What it will do, and has done for quite some time is edit in H264. I’ve been editing with Adobe Premiere for 2 years and never even thought about Flash. I do have, however, an animation project that requires a flash file deliverable and I will simply convert the completed project at the end of the day. You seem kind of confused. You should probably talk to someone who does production or post production for a living. Granted, this will sell quite well to the over priced gadget crowd, but as a professional product, it just “doesn’t” work.
John
You are quoting Pogue, the NY Times mouthpiece for Apple. Again, this isn’t about people whining about change. It’s about an industry that operates, not in a vacuum, but between different companies, different formats, different hardware. This is not forward thinking, except from a marketing standpoint. If this is the future of Final Cut, then Final Cut will will quickly disappear from any post production facility that requires established work flows, or rather anyone who works outside of the home.
John
One last thing. Stephen, you are the target consumer for this product – the Apple enthusiast. I’ll bet you the next version of Final Cut “Pro” will only work on the Ipad while television and movies will continue to be delivered on Avid and Adobe and Sony and Grass Valley.
I don’t think you do yourself any favors by bashing the people who are unhappy with this product. I’ve worked in film and television for nearly 25 years and I’ve never seen a product released in production or post production that did significantly less than its previous version, or in this case, defiantly refuses to work in the infrastructure it promised to be, and bragged about being, a major part of.
Stephen Pate
Thanks for all your comments. As usual it’s best to avoid the personal attacks since they are usually not based on facts but an attempt to attack the man.
Some reports say Apple has stumbled. But the product is barely out of the door so time will tell.
As for the “Apple enthusiast” label that’s just plain silly. Other than iPhone/iPad I don’t own an Apple computer and work on one of three Intel i7 computers daily, two of which I built. I have owned Macs and Powerbooks but prefer the technical freedom of Windows/Intel. Stick to the facts.
Stephen Pate
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/faster-forward/post/apple-final-cut-pro-x-600-filmmakers-say-nothing-pro-about-it/2011/06/27/AGMWfunH_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_tech
Ben Ellingson
Wow, this is the worst article ever. Nice to compare the prices of a whole suite of PRO software to iMovie Pro…