Reality show producer ditches Final Cut Pro X

Bunim/Murray Productions, the company that produces everything from Keeping Up with the Kardashians to Project Runway to The Real World, has bailed from using Final Cut Pro X.

More Final Cut Pro X fallout: top reality producer ditches Apple for Avid

If this isn't a wake-up call to Apple to bring the emphasis of Final Cut Pro back to the "Pro," I don't know what would be.

Thoughts?

 

They found a better software for cheaper.
What other thoughts?

 

The production quality of those shows is so great, I am sure Apple is hurting that a company of substantial cinematic value is no longer using their software.

Yes, everyone knows that Final Cut Pro X was a step backwards in many ways but it will take a lot more than some trashy production company for Apple to make changes. For example, a big production company such as ILM or Weta Digital (the later doing the special effects for many movies including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar) not using Final Cut Pro X would be a much larger hit. Not that they use Final Cut for their CGI but many often use it when they are stitching things together during the entire process.

 

Honestly I dont think they care anymore, X-serve was killed off as was Color and Shake, that was the writing on the wall. FCPX and some of its bizarre missing features including no multicam support or basic things like OPENING a file or project from the previous version of FCP was the nail in the coffin for most if us.
( note : Premier, AVID, Lightworks etc CAN open a FCP7 project ..... WTH )


Gentlemen and possibly ladies, Avatar wasn't edited on FCP/FCS but an OLD version of AVID MC with assistance from MASSIVE
MASSIVE (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

TVTechnology: Behind the Post of ?Avatar?

Weta started transitioning to AVID in 08 kornchild
Avid |News Room

A friend at ILM says FCP7/FCPX are rare around there, here is a link to most of their software as of 2010 she cant give more current due to NDA

http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Industrial_Light_and_Magic#Software_Used
her dept is strictly Zeno, MC and Premier

and I dont see LOTR in FCP's credits, since it uses MASSIVE I highly suspect it was done in some flavor of AVID ( or combination of NLE's), since in the early years AVID was what it could interface with, Apple didnt want to give API access to FCP. I can ask Peter about that though. The only reference I am aware of for FCP in LOTR was apples bullitin on creating the trailers. ( end of first paragraph in link )
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/200...-Captures-Hollywood-Movie-Trailer-Market.html

Final Cut Pro - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


your now in my domain. alot of studios havn't outright dumped FCP because of the massive investments in hardware and software, but add new " seats " in other platforms primarily Premier as its cheaper and has no issue at all opening FCP7 files, projects and workflows ( FCPX cant open 7 )

Smaller studios have been dumping FCP like rats on a burning ship. ( no really go hang out on the video editing forums on creativecow.com etc ) one of my employers which I dont mind mentioning the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group is transitioning out mac pros, old x-serves, and FCP so fast your head would spin ( 681 seats ). even at home I had to transition away almost 100% from FCP, do edits at home on new projects.

The BBC dumped FCP in programs like Top Gear and many others.

even the FREE NLE, Lightworks is more feature rich than FCP-X and has a stack of impressive credits including: The King's Speech, The Departed, Mission Impossible, Pulp Fiction, Braveheart, Batman, Pulp Fiction, Centurion and Shutter Island.

Lightworks
Lightworks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All in all FCP has taken a huge blow from the pro industry, and if Apple wants to try to come back to the broadcaster and collaborative workplace they better pull up their socks and soon before the big editing rush starts ( feb - June ) we like to have our platforms finalized by Jan 15 for the year.

 

@Kornchild--

I was looking at it more as a market share issue, not an artistic quality issue--obviously Keeping Up with the Kardashians is less artistic than Avatar (thank KCE for the catch that Avatar was done on Avid and Massive, not Final Cut Pro), but nevertheless, Bunim/Murray is kind of a huge entertainment production company.

For the past few years, I looked at Apple as serving two markets: luxury consumer computers (MBA dominates the ultraportable market, iMac leads the all-in-one desktop market) and "creatives" business work. The main reason the latter bought Apple was because of software (including Final Cut Pro), not because of hardware. Now that major companies are switching to programs like Avid, which also run on Windows, I'm wondering whether those companies will continue to buy Apple hardware, or whether they'd switch over to HP and Dell business-class machines like much of the white-collar world uses.

If this trend continues, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Mac Pro deep-sixed, and the MacBook Pro line de-emphasize CPU power and increase emphasis on GPU power and SSD availability (which make more of a performance difference to consumers).

 

most of us getting new hardware are NOT getting Apple. personal example you can build a render unit built with a Tyan server board, 4 12 core Opterons (48 cores ), 128 GB RAM and a pair of Quadro boards for the same price as a loaded Mac Pro with 12 cores, 64 ram and a single quadro

there are many serious and credible rumors that the Mac Pro is done or has one refresh left. since Apple rep's think we should build render clusters from mac mini's ......... ill be willing to accept their rumor too

http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/31/apple-questioning-the-future-of-its-mac-pro-line/
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/01/02...-ship-dates-slip-as-future-remains-uncertain/

 

I wasn't talking about movies being edited in Final Cut. Go back and read what I said. Many studios/companies will use Final Cut for small jobs. Peter Jackson even mentioned that principle photography was completed with the help of his iPods and PowerBooks. They should shoot something, transfer it to an iPod (i.e. use the iPod as an external hard drive), load it up into Final Cut, look at it, and decide if things needed to be re-shot or not. I don't see "iPods" in the credits for Lord Of The Rings either but go back and watch the special features (I believe it was on the 2nd or 3rd disc of the DVD release of the extended edition of Fellowship), that is where he clearly mentions what he was doing.

I never said that any of those studios relied on Final Cut Pro for their feature editing. I simply said it was a common occurrence when people wanted to put a few things together to show off. I can say the same thing for Avatar. Going back and watching the special features for that craptacular movie, they were showing off some footage using Final Cut Pro.