I just completed an online survey about my use of Final Cut Studio, for Apple software research. It doesn’t appear to be under any sort of NDA, so I guess I can pass on what I found interesting:
Most of the questions were routine profiling stuff – trying to get a picture of the range of uses to which I put the products. Describing myself as dissatisfied with Soundtrack Pro and Qmaster led to additional questions asking me why, that sort of thing.
But a whole batch of questions were about review processes, and how I seek feedback and signoff from my clients. Do I send them DVDs, put Flash video on a webserver, or send them tape? Do I get feedback via email, phone call, or annotations on the web video?
Oh, please please tell me that Final Cut Studio 3 – presumably coming next year, and a significant rewrite to Cocoa/64bit if it’s going to be Snow Leopard-native – will include some sort of work-in-progress review module. That could rock.
At the moment I’m cobbling together simple websites with Flash movies for my clients to view. It works, but I’d love:
- That process to be automated from within Final Cut.
- My clients to be able to scribble annotations directly on the video
- To be able to load those annotations into Final Cut as timeline markers.
That would be sublime.
Given an either/or choice between this and Soundtrack Pro actually, you know, working, I’d plump for the latter without hesitation. But would it be wrong of me to ask for ‘both’?