Final Cut Pro X: Do the features tell us anything about the target market?

The present and future of post production business and technology by Philip Hodgetts

In a review of FCP X’s multicam feature (new to 10.0.3) Scott Simmons claims:

It’s far and away the easiest and most powerful way to setup and manipulate all the angles when prepping for the edit.

I completely agree with Scott. Before the release of multicam in FCP X, I joked that Apple needed to make it “idiot proof”, which was my way of saying that multicam was now used by people who did not necessarily follow the traditional path to multicam. This started me thinking about the feature set and what, if anything, it might tell us about who FCP X is designed for.

Shortly after FCP X was released, I attempted a similar analysis based on the demographics of the video editing marketplace. That remains an interesting perspective.

Multicam

Let’s start with multicam. Who needs it? Particularly who needs to switch up to 64 angles? Multicam is certainly popular in event production but those folk are equally well served with Premiere Pro CS 5.5's four angle multicam. 64 angles puts it into Media Composer territory and solidly in the realm of reality TV production where 16 concurrent cameras (or more) is common, particularly with challenge-type reality competitions. read more...