Apple is clearly no longer interested in the Film and Broadcast community. They'll make more profit positioning the price of FCPX, as they have, for the broader community who are shooting video on everything from iPhones, iPads compact digital still cameras, DSLRS, handycams etc. They've leveraged to Final Cut Pro name because they can and it helps sell it to the market they are targeting.
It's a great piece of software for that market where you can ingest, edit, color correct and output your video.
Its not a wonderful tool for editors who are used to outputting for downstream processing in dedicated color correction facilities, audio post rooms, unless you have Automatic Duck, and GFX. It just doesn't play well with other software and nor, at the moment, is it targeted to do that.
It's no use complaining to Apple that it doesn't as I believe they have their strategy set, losing 20,000 or so broadcast and film editors worldwideas buyers doesn't equate to gaining millions of potential home and semipro users.
The simple facts are that most broadcast and film editors will stick with FCP7 until suuch time as it is no longer a vialble alternative and probably before then have done their homeowrk on the alternatives.
ABC TV (National Public Broadcaster) here in Australia use FCP7 and will stick with it until they need to update their hardware/software and make their choices then. They changed from AVID on PCs about three ad a half years ago to FCP and that would give them about three and a half years till they have to purchase new hardware and software, based on a typical 7 year asset cycle. Unless there's some radical rethink by Apple in the meantime my guess is it won't be FCPanything or Apple computers.
As I don't work for ABC but run my own small production facility I look at FCPX from a different point of view.
My main concern is that I have repeat clients who want to reversion existing product, edited in FCP6 and 7.
I can't do that with FCPX. However I also use other software to finish my videos, like ProTools, After Effects etc and there isn't a simple path betwen FCPX and other software, even using AD to export the audio is a much less usefull process than it was in FCP7 causing more time wasted moving audio tracks around so that they can be dealt with in sensibly ProTools.
I could start new projects in FCPX and then keep FCP7 around for the old stuff or just jump to Premiere which can import FCP7 XMLs. I have all three programs and so far I'm sticking with FCP7 until I see FCPX either improve to the point where I would want to use it or the speed of FCP7 becomes a real disadvantage. That decision for me will also come back to being able to use other software downstream of my editing software, whatever it happens to be, and FCPX just isn't there with that interactivity now. Perhaps the much vaunted improvements to XML export will change that, in the meantime I've got to earn a living.
So is FCPX a leap forward in editing software, in many ways yes. But the question is really which market is FCPX aimed at and in my opinion, and most of the film and broadcast professionals I know, the answer is simply not them as the basic toolsets they require for interaction with others in their industry just aren't currently there.
