Those of you who are regular reader of this blog will know that while I started out on Sony's Vegas, I really became a filmmaker using Apple's Final Cut Pro suite. Sure, by 2009 it was starting to get a little long in the tooth, but that was ok because what it lacked in horsepower it made up in stability and usability.
Even better, FCP was THE industry standard. Its enormous market share meant that third-part hardware and software makers could invest huge amounts of time an effort into FCP-compatable add-ons, knowing that if they created something good and useful a sizable market would be open to it. There was a lot of security there for aspiring filmmakers.
Then Apple had to go and laid the epic goose egg that was FCP X...
So last week was supposed to be a big week for the filmmaking world. Canon released their much anticipated C300 large-sensor 2K digital film camera with some accompanying jaw-droppingly awesome short films shot on the new camera. An hour later RED announced their new Scarlett camera, promising 4K resolution at 24p for under $10K. (which is a joke, considering that a single not-included proprietary RED memory card is $1,800!) Avid also announced their new version of Media Composer which I discussed the last week.
So here's the deal - this might have been a big deal for people who are trying to make independent feature films with budgets between $150K-500K. For the rest of us this really was something of a non-event. Make no mistake, to get either the Canon C300 or the RED Scarlett up and running you'll need to drop easily $25,000. Which is my deflnition of a deal-breaker!
"But Alex," the sales reps would say, "these cameras are meant to be rented, not purchased!" And here's my problem with that whole line of thinking...
I had a chance to watch the live stream of today's announcement from Avid of their new version of Media Composer 6. Avid previewed this software late last spring in order to try and capitalize on Apple's misfortune, but today's preview answered a lot of lingering questions surrounding the software. So what are some of the things we learned today, and what does that mean to filmmakers like you and me? Is Avid serious about gaining back all the editors and business they lost to Final Cut over the past decade or so?
