FCPX, Zap Mama, and the ASR-33 Teletype

by James David Cottle

Yesterday Apple released their new software Final Cut Pro X. The release has received, to be generous, mixed reviews.

Editors invest a lot of emotion in their editing software. As a group they are disproportionate to the general population left-handed and intelligent. Certainly, they will in time spend more time with their preferred software than the software company marketing reps and probably more than the people that wrote the code. When editors talk about editing software they can be very serious. I watched a video of Larry Jordan discussing FCP X and by his demeanor, you would have thought he was talking about AIDS in Africa or the latest Japanese tsunami fatality numbers. No, he was talking about editing software.

A long time ago I began my editing career by agreeing to teach others if I would be given access to the latest computer technology, the CMX340 editor. I also had to learn the program loading through the DEC PDP11/03 minicomputer, the Re-Edit Assembler Program and audio mixing with CMX300 as a synchronizer. Because of my study and some luck in job openings I ended at CMX in Santa Clara as an instructor, software test supervisor, and chairman of the software review committee.

By the time I was in software review position, the CMX software was approaching 11-13 years old. Elements of code from the original CBS labs and Memorex project that created the first light pen and disc based system in 1970 were still in the software code. (It was the CBS/Memorex project that gave CMX its name.) read more...