FCS 3... anyone care to guess?

[Ivan Snoeckx]

Indeed very disappointing. Wining more then an hour about a telephone but nothing about Final Cut Studio 3. I guess we'll now have to wait until IBC 2009 in Amsterdam, and that's in september!

[Heath McKnight]

I wonder if we'll just get a generic announcement later this summer? No event, just an announcement. If they're avoiding announcing stuff at existing, non-Apple events, I doubt they'll announce at IBC 09.

Heath

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

I wonder if we'll just get a generic announcement later this summer? No event, just an announcement. If they're avoiding announcing stuff at existing, non-Apple events, I doubt they'll announce at IBC 09.

Heath

I would not be surprised if Apple just held a Press event where they demoed the latest versions of not only Final Cut Studio but Logic Studio and Apeture.

I'd presume this event would be coming upon the launch of Snow Leopard and would showcase optimizations and multi-core benefits of the OS with regard to how they benefit Pro users.

[Heath McKnight]

Harrison, I think you're right--nothing until Snow Leopard is out. From what we've heard, rumor-wise, FCS 3 may need Snow Leopard to run the best (probably not necessary but it will help), and I doubt PowerPC processors will be supported. That's about 1/2 the people I know buying new systems, if that's the case.

Heath

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Harrison, I think you're right--nothing until Snow Leopard is out. From what we've heard, rumor-wise, FCS 3 may need Snow Leopard to run the best (probably not necessary but it will help), and I doubt PowerPC processors will be supported. That's about 1/2 the people I know buying new systems, if that's the case.

Heath

At first I was staunchly against the idea of Apple delivering a new major version of FCS on untested OS (Snow Leopard) but then NAB came and went and then it began to sink in.

1. Apple cannot deliver a 64-bit version of FCS for Leopard as it doesn't support it.
2. The features of Snow Leopard like OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch are tailore made for Pro apps running on beefier hardware.
3. PowerPC support makes debugging and Quality Assurance harder.
4. Every Apple Pro app has gone through the same "hibernation" with little updates or word about future versions.


All in all this leads me to believe that the next Pro apps will be 64-bit and thus Intel only and they will be multi-core savvy. You may as well doing a good ole single day event ...show them all running on a fast Mac Pro and let the Press go crazy.

[Heath McKnight]

Well, if they're going to make it 100% Intel, might as well make it 100% Snow Leopard. Looks like I'll need to get that MacBook Pro upgrade, though the 13" and 15" models don't have ExpressCard/34 slots (BOO!).

Heath

[Harrison Murchison]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Well, if they're going to make it 100% Intel, might as well make it 100% Snow Leopard. Looks like I'll need to get that MacBook Pro upgrade, though the 13" and 15" models don't have ExpressCard/34 slots (BOO!).

Heath

Oh yes ..that was a point I forgot to make. Any developer that choses to support only Intel pretty much has to just support Snow Leopard since the only reason to support Leopard is if you have PPC clients to support.

You know I wonder when Firewire 3200 is finally going to rear its head. I was doing a bit of fact finding and basically the circuits used in FW 3200 are the same as FW800. So the physical interface should stay the same.

Now if Apple was to move towards FW 3200 next year it would lessen the blow of losing Expresscard for some people who primarily used the slot for eSATA Arrays. eSATA is still only 300MBps so FW 3200 could deliver 400MBps theoretical with a good chance of actually hitting 300MBps real world speeds.

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

FCS 3 may need Snow Leopard to run the best

I want 64 bit so FCS gets the memory I purchased to finally handle long sequences and thousands of clips. I want Grand Central so FCS knows how many processors I have and how to use them. I want OpenCL so FCS redlines my GPU like any half decent game does on a PC. I want QuickTime X so FCS understands colorsync and H.264.

How could FCS3 NOT be pure Snow Leopard? It needs more Cocoa!

I'm joining the camp that believes that FCS3 (or 'whatever comes next') is a sort of waypoint watershed 'end of the beginning'. The elephant in FCP's room is definitely becoming more and more apparent as legacy bugs remain unfixed or worked around in a pretty little dance. FCP is a classic, and the bodywork and interior are cool, but the chassis is creaking.

So (hopefully) Apple has made a new chassis with a pretty much unchanged cockpit layout and the same lines with a few new grace notes to distract you from the huge shift below. Okay, so you may need to run Snow Leopard. And why not? So you may need to ditch the PowerPC. There comes a time for any computer. Yes, there will be cock-ups. There will be problems. The editing Cavalry will have to wait for the Infantry to do their job, but at last we will have progress.

Sheesh, sounding like that chap in 1984.

[Heath McKnight]

Matt,

You're right, there are still a few bugs here and there that haven't been fixed yet, though it looks like the High Quality DVD encode in Compressor, that was always giving many of us bad video, was fixed in the last major updates. Along with Export to QuickTime Conversion (thank you, H.264) which always gave me ugly QuickTimes.

Heath