Apple to allow additional Final Cut Pro 7 licenses to enterprise, talks about updates to FCP X in London

Apple recently held a private Final Cut Pro X briefing for enterprise contracts in London, giving them some more information on what’s happening with the promised feature updates. As you may have heard, Final Cut Pro X caused a furor among professional editors when they discovered that many features that they rely on in the previous version of Final Cut Pro were now gone from the program.

In addition, it was revealed that Apple is working on allowing enterprise customers to purchase additional Final Cut Pro 7 licenses if they already have Final Cut Pro 7 installed in their companies. One of the major complaints about Apple’s handling of the FCP X release is that the new version will not open projects from the previous version, AND Apple discontinued sales of Final Cut Pro 7 at the same time. This left production houses and users both unable to upgrade, and also unable to add a seat to their company.

According to Sam Johnson, @aPostEngineer on twitter, who was in attendance at the meeting, the basic rundown was as follows:

1. FCP XML in/out is coming via 3rd party soon…no FCP 6/7 support project support coming ever it seems…
2. Ability to buy FCP7 licenses for enterprise deployments coming in the next few weeks…
3. FCPX EDL import/export coming soon…
4. FCPX AJA plugins coming soon for tape capture and layback…capture straight into FCPX [events].
5. XSAN support for FCPX coming in the next few weeks…
6. FCPX Broadcast video output via #Blackmagic & @AJAVideo coming soon…
7. Additional codec support for FCPX via 3rd Parties coming soon…
8. Customizable sequence TC in FCPX for master exports coming soon…
9. Some FCPX updates will be free some will cost…

Additionally the rest of the Final Cut Pro Suite has been EOL’ed (End Of Life) and will no longer be developed. So besides Motion and Compressor, nothing else was saved from the Suite, including Color, Soundtrack or DVD Studio Pro.

Apple is reaching out to the pro community with this, but it’s not all good news, particularly that many of the updates will be third-party, and that not all FCP X updates will be free in future.

Via: Mac Rumors
Source: alex4d

Eugene Huo is a Juno Award winning recording engineer, video editor, photographer, and all around Mac geek. His first Mac experience was with the Macintosh Plus. You never forget your first. You can follow him on twitter @gamerparent, and check… Full Bio