# Who needs a full version of FCP Studio 3



## MacDoc (Nov 3, 2001)

We think we have a channel with availability -full packaging retail version - just confirming now .


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

Have heard VideoGuys, Annex Pro and a couple other VARs in Canada still have some stock. Finding stock of the upgrades is near impossible however.


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

And now Apple is in on the game selling it from a 800 number - not available in the Retail or Online stores however.

Apple Puts Legacy Final Cut Studio Back on Sale - Mac Rumors


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## ehMax (Feb 17, 2000)

Really speaks volume that they are bringing this back for sale. I don't think that happens too often. 

Will really say something if suddenly they start selling Snow Leopard again.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

ehMax said:


> Will really say something if suddenly they start selling Snow Leopard again.


Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple Store (Canada).


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## John Clay (Jun 25, 2006)

ehMax said:


> Really speaks volume that they are bringing this back for sale. I don't think that happens too often.
> 
> Will really say something if suddenly they start selling Snow Leopard again.


Indeed, they never did stop selling Snow Leopard. Or the Box Sets.


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## hayesk (Mar 5, 2000)

Oddly enough, this happened when they overhauled iMovie. A couple of versions later, and most prefer the new one and the old iMovie HD was pulled again, I'm guessing the same will happen to FCP X. In a couple of versions, it'll satisfy most pro needs.


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## groovetube (Jan 2, 2003)

you mean when everyone finally just gives in.

Sad.


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Hey, they've got an opportunity to build a top of the line NLE with FCPX. Will it have a market in, say, two years? That's a good question...they really agitated the existing userbase with an extremely un-savvy product launch. (Which explains why FCS3 is back for sale for now.)

I'm expecting the post production software world to become clearer by the end of the year. Avid and Adobe are working on new versions and, hopefully, by the beginning of 2012 there'll be a better idea of what FCPX can and can't do for the forseeable future.

Although...apparently FCPX APIs haven't been released yet and the first "update" hasn't been seen or heard from yet either...


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

jellotor said:


> they really agitated the existing userbase with an extremely un-savvy product launch.


That's one way of understating it. For editors doing features or work for television it was more like a knife in the back between the product murder and lack of upgrade path. Hard for them to give it a fair shake with the betrayal sunglasses on.


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## jellotor (Feb 22, 2008)

Absolutely it's an understatement. For me, personally, the time to resort to hyperbole has passed and now I'm in the position of trying to figure out a path to take and whether it includes Apple. And I don't have the kind of money riding on the fickle whims of what seems to be the world's most secretive company that other's do. It's just kind of a waste of effort to be angry with Apple...you might as well yell at a cloud, for all the good it will do. But I'm wary of them, that's for sure.

Honestly, though (and this is admittedly weak as I haven't personally used FCPX) Apple does have a fair shot at making a kick-ass NLE. They did it once before, and they _could_ do it again, but their userbase seems to have given up on the notion of Benevolent Apple, dishing out tidbits of innovative technology that Makes Life Easier.

Seems like the only good thing about FCPX is the reminder that, in post production, there's still a few companies willing to hustle a bit to earn your dollar. Whether it'll just be a short term phenomenon (hellooo Avid) or not remains to be seen.

Sorry about the essay.


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## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

I haven't even started activating all my Apple Pro app's after my Lion upgrade.

Arrrrrghhhh!!!!!!


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## Guest (Sep 3, 2011)

Xserve RAID, Xserve, Shake, FCP Server, FCP (almost/sorta). They aren't showing us a very good track record for the pro video folks at all. Let's just keep hoping that they don't decide to start messing with the Mac pro's anytime soon.

As for software the only real Apple pro software left that hasn't been chopped or neutered yet is Logic Pro (although some of the suite feels pretty abandoned) and given it's age and history I suspect there's a lot of legacy stuff hanging around. Hope it's not the next one on the chopping block. I know a lot of people that would be seriously unhappy to get switched to Garageband Pro -- errr LogicProX.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

Ignoring Final Cut Server, XServe, XSan etc. for a moment: Final Cut Studio 3 is ageing and Final Cut X can't serve as a direct replacement in many professional workflows which therefore means that most Final Cut shops are going to have to change to something else sooner or later. This represents a cost in software, probably costs in hardware, costs in training and time that business are going to have to absorb.

Even if Apple fixes the deficiencies in what's left of the suite a year or two from now, businesses won't want to incur a second round of those costs and lost time to go back to Final Cut after being boxed into moving away - they'll just stick with package they moved away to. Apple let that ship sail.

Factor Final Cut Server, XServe, XSan etc. back in and I can definitely understand why the amount of business I'm doing with Apple stuff's fallen off sharply; all I'm getting asked to do is maintain existing setups or repurpose existing hardware/software. I've had one new build since Final Cut X came out and that's it.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2011)

Amiga2000HD said:


> Ignoring Final Cut Server, XServe, XSan etc. for a moment: Final Cut Studio 3 is ageing and Final Cut X can't serve as a direct replacement in many professional workflows which therefore means that most Final Cut shops are going to have to change to something else sooner or later. This represents a cost in software, probably costs in hardware, costs in training and time that business are going to have to absorb.
> 
> Even if Apple fixes the deficiencies in what's left of the suite a year or two from now, businesses won't want to incur a second round of those costs and lost time to go back to Final Cut after being boxed into moving away - they'll just stick with package they moved away to. Apple let that ship sail.
> 
> Factor Final Cut Server, XServe, XSan etc. back in and I can definitely understand why the amount of business I'm doing with Apple stuff's fallen off sharply; all I'm getting asked to do is maintain existing setups or repurpose existing hardware/software. I've had one new build since Final Cut X came out and that's it.


Yep and once Apple has fallen out of that market there's no way they're going to try and chase it down again in a few years when they can make all that much and more from the prosumer market with only 1/10th of the effort put into it.


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## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

mguertin said:


> Yep and once Apple has fallen out of that market there's no way they're going to try and chase it down again in a few years when they can make all that much and more from the prosumer market with only 1/10th of the effort put into it.


Won't this eventually hurt the prosumer market also? Eventually people will view the product with less and less regard.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2011)

ertman said:


> Won't this eventually hurt the prosumer market also? Eventually people will view the product with less and less regard.


I don't think so. THe pro-sumer market is a totally different beast than the true professional market. The prosumer market, at least as far as that type of software goes, is dictated by the software makers more than anything, but the professional market is dictated from the actual professionals more than anything. Basically the prosumers take what they are given and as long as it does what they want it's fine. The professionals have much more strict needs -- and typically at the software design end of things it is much more complicated to support the professionals to get both their needs into the apps and to keep them up to date with all the newest add-on hardware, etc.

With FCPX Apple has solved all of these issues with a single swoop. They built an API and are offloading all the hardware support bits to the vendors and/or third parties. So either way this goes Apple walks away fine, it's the third parties and the hardware/software vendors that stand to lose. Apple still walks away making probably more money with FCPX than they ever did with FCP without having to work anywhere near as hard at it.

The biggest problem with this approach is that I honestly don't think that a lot of the bigger named vendors are going to work very hard at supporting FCPX. I honestly think it's days in the higher end production world are pretty much done at this point. Sure the wedding video guys and amateur movie makers might stick with it, but honestly that's about the only market it's really catered to work for at the moment -- and even at that barely.


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## Amiga2000HD (Jan 23, 2007)

mguertin said:


> I don't think so. THe pro-sumer market is a totally different beast than the true professional market. The prosumer market, at least as far as that type of software goes, is dictated by the software makers more than anything, but the professional market is dictated from the actual professionals more than anything. Basically the prosumers take what they are given and as long as it does what they want it's fine. The professionals have much more strict needs -- and typically at the software design end of things it is much more complicated to support the professionals to get both their needs into the apps and to keep them up to date with all the newest add-on hardware, etc.


I'd say that's bang on but it does apply to hardware too. In professional environments even hardware manufacturers have to properly support equipment and fix defects/bugs. I've seen many modification kits and engineering change notices come out from hardware manufacturers sometime to the point where the equipment makers will send entire replacement circuit boards to correct defects. In the prosumer arena, if there's a software problem, you might get a bug fix patch at some point but you might not and have to work around the issue. As far as hardware goes, unless there's a safety issue that prompts a recall, you won't get much from a vendor beyond "if you don't like it, buy a new one."



mguertin said:


> With FCPX Apple has solved all of these issues with a single swoop. They built an API and are offloading all the hardware support bits to the vendors and/or third parties. So either way this goes Apple walks away fine, it's the third parties and the hardware/software vendors that stand to lose. Apple still walks away making probably more money with FCPX than they ever did with FCP without having to work anywhere near as hard at it.


This was the case with the pre-X Final Cut too. All of the video interface boxes and external control surfaces were built by third party companies (Aja, Black Magic Design, JL Cooper etc.) but my understanding was, unless things have changed recently, for Final Cut X was that there was no API support for breakout boxes beyond setting them up to act as a computer display that you could park part of Final Cut on. The big difference now is that Apple's farmed out much of the _software_. Things that Final Cut used to have built in functionality for now require third party software like Automatic Duck for example where you need to spend $500 on a plugin for a $300 piece of software just to get back the AAF/OMF export function.



mguertin said:


> The biggest problem with this approach is that I honestly don't think that a lot of the bigger named vendors are going to work very hard at supporting FCPX. I honestly think it's days in the higher end production world are pretty much done at this point. Sure the wedding video guys and amateur movie makers might stick with it, but honestly that's about the only market it's really catered to work for at the moment -- and even at that barely.


The big vendors have to look at the same set of facts that everybody else is: Final Cut X is seeing minimal, negligible uptake in professional environments where the big vendors make their sales. Effectively, it's the Final Cut Express market that is purchasing Final Cut X and that's never been a market that's spent heavily on gear from the big vendors. Given where the sales are likely to be, the big name vendors are going to continue to sell to the Avid customers like they always have and market to places that adopt Premiere in professional environments like BBC. They won't be wasting time or money chasing Final Cut X customers that simply aren't likely to be buying outboard hardware and software.

The biggest surprise out of this whole mess as a working electronics technologist is how fast my Apple skills and experience became irrelevant in the marketplace across all industries. I expected the decline in relevance but it was almost like an overnight transition from being highly marketable to where, effectively, that part of my resume pretty much means "hey, I can support your legacy Apple stuff!" and not much more. Thankfully I never boxed myself into computers only, and never specifically hitched my wagon to Apple exclusively, so I'm no worse off. It's the people that are heavily invested in Apple certifications etc. that now have to break into other areas that are going to get hit hardest in the whole affair.


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## a7mc (Dec 30, 2002)

I've used FCPX for 2 small projects (one edited theatre piece for A-Channel and one music video). Although I did enjoy some aspects of the new workflow, it was a serious hindrance for the music video (trying to sync with the original music was a nightmare). And it crashes well over 50 times in just 5 days of working with it. That alone makes it useless to me. It's good they've started selling the old version again... I know a few small shops that will be happy.

I'm waiting to see how Windows 8 shapes up. Microsoft has been really impressing me lately and if they keep it up with Windows 8, I have a feeling I may jump ship and go Avid. Everything else I use (CS5.5 Master collection) is available cross platform anyway.

A7


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

a7mc said:


> I've used FCPX for 2 small projects (one edited theatre piece for A-Channel and one music video). Although I did enjoy some aspects of the new workflow, it was a serious hindrance for the music video (trying to sync with the original music was a nightmare). And it crashes well over 50 times in just 5 days of working with it. That alone makes it useless to me. It's good they've started selling the old version again... I know a few small shops that will be happy.
> 
> I'm waiting to see how Windows 8 shapes up. Microsoft has been really impressing me lately and if they keep it up with Windows 8, I have a feeling I may jump ship and go Avid. Everything else I use (CS5.5 Master collection) is available cross platform anyway.
> 
> A7


i was just about to dload fcpx b/c i'm getting very, very tired of fcp7 not using all my cores for renders and exports, but maybe i'll hold off. disappointing to hear of the crashes. ick.


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## a7mc (Dec 30, 2002)

keebler27 said:


> i was just about to dload fcpx b/c i'm getting very, very tired of fcp7 not using all my cores for renders and exports, but maybe i'll hold off. disappointing to hear of the crashes. ick.


Yeah... I don't know if it's because of Lion, or my Raid setup or what. I even upgraded to 15GB of ram to see if that helped. It didn't. Once it starts crashing, it crashes every 3-4 minutes until I reboot. Then it runs for 15-20 minutes and starts crashing again.

Maybe wait until the first update as it will likely fix a lot of bugs.

A7


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## Guest (Sep 6, 2011)

a7mc said:


> Yeah... I don't know if it's because of Lion, or my Raid setup or what. I even upgraded to 15GB of ram to see if that helped. It didn't. Once it starts crashing, it crashes every 3-4 minutes until I reboot. Then it runs for 15-20 minutes and starts crashing again.
> 
> Maybe wait until the first update as it will likely fix a lot of bugs.
> 
> A7


Just curious, what's your RAID setup?


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## a7mc (Dec 30, 2002)

mguertin said:


> Just curious, what's your RAID setup?


I have a 2-drive internal (software) Raid 0 boot, a 2-drive internal Raid 0 scratch and a Firewire 3 drive Raid 0 (hardware) external box for storage. (14TB total) It's nothing overly strange, so I can't imagine that's an issue.

I've decided to switch my boot/app drive to a single drive instead, so I'll test it out on one more project this week before giving up entirely on FCPX.

A7


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## Guest (Sep 6, 2011)

Ya that all sounds pretty standard ... let us know how it goes.


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## madodis (Jan 29, 2013)

I am looking for Final Cut Pro 7, with a legitimate serial number. Can anyone help?


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## Lawrence (Mar 11, 2003)

I'm still using Final Cut Express 3.5.1 H.D. with Mountain Lion

Works just fine

.


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