This paragraph from John Gruber’s reflections on Apple’s iPad 2 event really stood out for me:
iMovie for iPad seems like the realization of Randy Ubillos’s vision for movie editing software. Seldom does an app as popular and useful as iMovie get a genuine “let’s just start over from scratch†redesign like iMovie did on the Mac several years ago. And the current Mac version is, without question, a major improvement over the initial redesigned version. This iPad version, though, feels like the real deal, and makes the Mac version seem like the imitator. The concept, visual layout, and intended workflow are naturally suited to touch. This is what the new iMovie is supposed to be.
Randy Ubillos designed Adobe’s Premiere; then Macromedia’s Key Grip/Final Cut (which became Apple’s Final Cut Pro); then iMovie ’08/’09/’11; then iMovie for iPhone; and now iMovie for iPad. Do you think this year we’ll be able to say ‘Seldom does an app as popular and useful as Final Cut Pro get a genuine “let’s just start over from scratch†redesign like Final Cut Pro did this year’?
Read into it what you want.
Comments
8 responses to “The iPad version of iMovie is “the real deal”?”
Starting from scratch has huge benefits.
Let’s hope they do it justice, very curious we all are.
Now iMovie for iPad, makes me think about Final Cut Touch…
A smaller, FCP for iPad, that syncs to your main projects (like FCP server), and let’s you cut, trim and resync.
That would be a fun, useful way to edit.
So far Apple hasn’t fully committed to touch on the desktop. At Apple’s “Back to the Mac” event, Steve made it clear he doesn’t believe in reaching out and touching the monitor, and I agree- ergonomically it’s horrible.
There are really only 2 options-
Either Apple sticks with the keyboard shortcuts and general mouse interface that exists today…
OR Apple has created a new template for touch input.
Quite honestly though, I think it would be too much change to quickly to move to a new UI paradigm AND a new hardware input mechanism.
I love using my touch/trackpad with the current FCP, so I think we’ll get good support for touch interfaces. New UI and new input most likely would go hand-in-hand.
I suppose I’m stuck on the idea that a great touch interface for FCP would be a touchscreen, rather than a touchpad. Take a Cintq 21, and use something of that size for as the modal interface- get all the UI off the display screen.
Then, depending on what you’re doing, the interface can change to strengths of different functions.
This would be a HIGHLY specialized setup, and Apple wouldn’t do it just for pros. It would need to be a system-wide interface change.
Erm… I don’t think anyone (Phil) is actually suggesting that FCS is going TOUCH anytime soon. I in fact find that notion completely silly at this point in time. Especially since there currently is nearly *nothing*, even in iMovie for iPad, that touch gives you in terms of advantages. There certainly COULD be, in MULTI-touch, but that is hardly implemented.
I think the point is that iMovie is, as FCP will be, completely NEW from the ground up and I could in fact see iMovie becoming the new EXPRESS and FCP looking and feeling much like the current iMovie, only supplemented with a massive amount of pro features (that wouldn’t even work well on a screen like that of an iPad). THAT makes (far more) sense, if anything.
I in fact have a Cintique and sorry, other than when illustrating, there is NO WAY I could see hunching over it *full-time* as any kind of advantage… as I’m sure Apple doesn’t either.
Touch as in FINGERS, not track-pad that is.
I know there will be heartburn as with any change. I really think a blending of iMovie UI with the Fcp tool set will be great.
I also would love to see more of a Swiss army knife setup like Xcode or iMovie where if I want to work in color I don’t have to export and open. It would be a cube spin to my Color setup.
I don’t know if it’s feasible but I know that is where trouble happens bounding from one app to another praying it all linked up properly
What I always find interesting about the editing UI debate is that the person who most understands the mantra, you have to learn to change, (other than Phil) is Randy Ubillos. Its funny (or ironical depending on how many glasses of wine you have had tonight) how he is constantly evolving the editing interface and making major contributions to the craft while so many editors bitch and moan or worse still, dig in their heels.
Never was there an industry where change is a constant more than postproduction but humans hate change, editors hate change and so blogs fill up with ” what if final cut x becomes imovie x?
C’mon dudes. Ask a 20 year old what they think about change and the answer will be “Bring it on”