I have to say working with EX XDCAM footage, the log and transfer seems faster and less buggy. I used to have problems finding folders that where on external disks before

"Weird timing" is the perfect two word description of this FCS version.

Apple produce in me a love/hate relation. I love most of everything they do, but I always feel they never really try to give you the 100% in the computers or pro-apps. Their computers always need more RAM, HD capacity and GPU power. This round of new pro-apps is a joke, unless when Snow Leopard is released they put out a .1 update that REALLY ACCELERATE things.

My first mac was a G4 733Mhz with a Superdrive. I could have bought a nice used car with the money I paid for it, but it could do DV>MPEG2 nearly at realtime. Now I have an iMac 2Ghz Dual 2 Core. It does DV>MPEG2 at half of realtime. For me it's pretty disappointing, I would expect faster results.

Now if I buy a Mac Pro to get a x1.5-x2 increase over my iMac I would be disappointed the same, an 8 core should be at least x3.5 faster than a 2 core of the same clock-speed in raw computing power, as Compressor is (or should be!).

I would really prefer Apple to be the best computer brand, instead of being the one which makes more profit...

This is an unpopular over-simplified sentiment, but Apple is not a computer company, its a consumer electronics company that makes the majority of its profit from iPhones, iTunes, iPopds, etc..

Its surprising that they have not either discontinued the Pro Apps development (Shake) or sold it. It must be increasingly difficult for Apple to defend such a high expenditure on its professional products for such a low return on investment compared to its consumer brands.

Xavier, I like the fact that you compared Apple's progress to its older technology, I have not used Macs that long so I couldn't make the comparison. I share your love/hate relationship with Apple. I wish the best for them. but fear the worst...

Pro Apps are doing fine, overall. I got word that FCP now has around 50% of the editing market share.

Heath

Looks great to me.
Is there or will there be any way just to update Final Cut 6-7 at the least that would be all I would want.
Maybe Motion too.
Rather than paying $300 for the full update when I dont use Color, Shake, and the DVD thing anyway.

Sorry no, all upgrades from here on out are for the entire FCS suite. As Apple no longer gives users the option to purchase individual applications. And overall the price of the entire suite at regular price is far below what it used to cost for all of the individual apps separately.

Also, speaking of apps, just because you don;t use an applications today, doesn't meant that you won't have the need or desire to use it tomorrow. I used to use LiveType for my titling and never opened Motion. Now with LiveType gone, I had a desire to learn to use Motion for my titling, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and produced better overall results.

Granted the upgrade could have easily been an update, but $299 isn't a lot to pay.

I have difficulty believing that such an old computer could render DV to MPEG 2 nearly at real time. I don't see why you would be lying, and sometimes I'm dissapointed with FCP's need to render lots of things before it can show it to you, where Premiere Pro does a much better job. But a G4 doing DV to MPEG 2 at nearly realtime? Are you sure you are making a fair comparison?
But could anyone explain this? It's a very interesting statement, I would like to see it backed up with some information or explanation.

Thanks.

I think there's some confusion somewhere. I know my Quicksilver 867Mhz was very slow in rendering to mpeg2 for DVD. Apple's early encoders weren't very good at all. In fact, I ended up building a PC and using Cinemacraft basic, which did run in real time (even on a crappy AMD K6 processor).

Someone did sell a PCI encoder card that allowed for real-time DV-mpeg2 encoding.

I heard similar numbers. I read a a sales number for Final Cut a while back... not sure if it was 12 million or 120 million times. I don't think that Apple will sell its pro tools. Logic, Final Cut and Aperture are all doing fine as far as I know. Shake was just a rarity. And as mentioned, Shake was never an Apple product to begin with. Apple bought it and didn't do anything with it untill last week, when they killed it.

I do agree that the Pro Apps most likely aren't very profitable for Apple compared to the iPhone or iPod and the potential market is much smaller. But the same goes for OS X itself. As long as something ships a lot of Mac's, Apple is happy.

True, if they kill off their Pro apps, it will be even harder to sell the Mac Pros than it already is.
PS I am aware that a lot of people probably run Mac Pros without Apple´s Pro apps, but still

I love how some people act like they understand Apple's sales and revenue breakdown and then turn around and say they can't imagine why Apple continues to develop software such as pro apps and that Apple is an electronics company now and not/shouldn't/won't be in the computer/software world much longer. In all fairness, no one but a handful of people deep inside Apple know how much revenue comes from each division and it does a disservice to spread info about Apple killing pro apps. Common sense says that Mac computers have been selling very very well and increasing market share. You can bet that pro apps (or the dream of many people to use/be a pro user) drives the computer sales.

It seems like every thread someone spews that line out. Maybe I'm wrong? Perhaps Apple will sell off pro apps to Activision who will make it available on PCs, thus people like me will never own a Mac, spend thousands on Pro App upgrades, and buy new Macs to run the latest version of Final Cut, etc. Brilliant, I wish Final Cut was on PC, they cost much much less.

The total cost of ownership of a PC isn't much lower as a Mac. You need to get anti virus software, spyware, get a Windows Professional edition license. My Mac's have been running for over a year now without any real maintenance. I use Tinkertool system to repair premissions now and then and do monthly maintenance (via the script) but that's all. I also have a Windows computer and they only work if you finetune them and that costs a lot of time. And time is money in our industry. Windows 7 Ultimate is going to cost you like 300 EURO while you get Snow Leopard for like 129 EURO. You have already saved 170 EURO.

He is probably talking about the cost involved in just purchasing the PC. For instance, all of the Microsoft commercials that show how for $2,000 you could get a Mac that doesn't fit a persons needs, but at about $600 you can buy a PC.

The G4 I bought costed 1000$ more because it had a Superdrive, the first DVD-R burner. Each DVD-R costed 12€, 16$ and sometimes the burning failed, it wasn't easy to be a pioneer! ;-DD

I hope some other "old skool" boy could confirm this. I am talking just about the DV to MPEG2 (M2V) creation. It took like 35 minutes to convert 30 minutes. Of course they tweak their code to improve rendering times.

Improving the code is all Snow Leopard is about, that's why it's so dissapointing to see a FCS and Logic version presented two months before Snow Leopard!!!

IIRC, the big shock came when I switched to an Intel MacBook Pro from the G4 PowerBook (bought in 2005?). I would budget about 3.5 hours for a half hour programme using 2-Pass on a G4. I remember setting up such a render on the new MacBook Pro (first generation), thinking I could pop out and run some errands whilst it rendered. I was faffing around for around 40 mins or so before getting in the car - I just checked the progress to see if it was going okay. The fact that it was completed was mind-boggling.

But now we have Blu-Ray to contend with. "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" and all that.