Yesterday Apple released Final Cut Pro X to the masses on the Mac App Store to much fanfare, but by day’s end there were more questions about the software than there were answers. Today we got a couple more nuggets to help clear up some questions, most notably, what’s happening with Final Cut Express, and will there be an upgrade option for previous Final Cut Pro owners?
Both Engadget and AppleInsider are reporting that Apple has discontinued both Final Cut Express and Final Cut Server. Both software packages will not be available as boxed solutions nor on the Mac App Store. Moving forward your only video-editing option from Apple is Final Cut Pro X.
Also confirmed today is that Final Cut Pro X will not have special upgrade pricing for users who currently own a version of Final Cut Pro. While we don’t know for certain, and the price of Final Cut Pro X is pretty cheap to begin with, we’d hazard a guess that the lack of upgrade pricing has more to do with the Mac App Store distribution than anything else at this point.
Final Cut Pro X is taking a beating in the Mac App Store comments, currently being rated at 3 stars online. Opinion is split pretty evenly between 5 stars (10 votes) and 1 star (9 votes), along with another 11 votes for 2 stars. Most of the complaints circle around the lack of backwards compatibility with Final Cut Pro 7, and an inability to import previous Final Cut Pro projects into Final Cut Pro X. Apple has, however, built in the ability to import iMovie projects.
There’s also a lack of support for RED cameras, and a ton of problems with I/O cards no working.
The general consensus is that Final Cut Pro X is more iMovie Pro than it is a pro-editing package. That being said, it has only been a day, and I’d be willing to bet that a majority of the complainers have yet to start and finish a project with the software. We’re going to wait a couple of months before we start singing it’s demise.
Article Via TUAW
