[rdouble]

there are amateur video editors out there, but I don't think its a growing market. It's not small, but I think Apple is making a poor bet if they think the millions of ppl creating video with their phones and cameras is going to buy this product.

This is quite possibly the most wrong comment I've ever read on hacker news. every kid on earth with a skateboard or snowboard or BMX bike will be buying this software as soon as they can afford it.

[kenjackson]

Funny you say that because my neighbor has a half-pipe (apparently, that's how it's spelled) in his backyard and I've never heard his son talk about editing video with FCP. And he actually does have a fair bit of video, as he uses a helmet cam.

But again, for him its usually management (I actually recommended something I saw called Project Odessa to him -- not sure if he's using it though). He does super simple titling, and on occassion a soundtrack. But he doesn't need something like FCPX. And if he did use it, he wouldn't buy it. Give him a copy, and I'm sure he'd use it (if he had a Mac), but free does everything he needs.

This isn't to say that some won't buy it (clearly the singular of anecdote isn't data), but I think its like non-free and non-pro music mixing software. Sure there is a market for it, but its just not huge.

[thaumaturgy]

I have to agree with you, even though it feels wrong to do it. I can provide enough anecdotes to start to blur the line between "data point" and "evidence": I was big into the climbing scene for a few years, as an instructor and manager of a Bay Area rock gym. There are few sports that are as self-promotional as climbing, especially in the pro circuit.

The thing is, every climber wanted to have cool videos of themselves, with great soundtracks and innovative photography and cut scenes and everything else ... but nobody -- really, seriously, almost nobody -- ever did it. Instead, they'd get to the crags and start having a good time and the camera bag wouldn't get unpacked, or the videographer would start climbing too, or, even if they did shoot for day, they never got around to any of the post-processing afterward.

I've also been to skate parks and motocross events and BMX and ... I think I could count on one hand the number of serious video recording I've seen at all of those combined.

[zarify]

Funny you say that because my neighbor has a half-pipe (apparently, that's how it's spelled) in his backyard and I've never heard his son talk about editing video with FCP. And he actually does have a fair bit of video, as he uses a helmet cam.

On the other hand, I live in a surfing town and a lot of the kids recently have been moving towards OSX and FCP for their movies (the ones that are doing it seriously anyway). Haven't seen a lot of stuff that the skaters do, since most of the skater kids I interact with at work are more into photography rather than film making.

[rdouble]

It's a half-PIPE, gramps.

[kenjackson]

Thanks. The way the kids talk nowadays, you can't really tell what they're saying. :-)

[rdouble]

No problem. I don't see how you can think amateur video editing is not a growing market. Vimeo/Youtube seem to contain a lot of evidence to the contrary...

[kenjackson]

That last sentence of mine wasn't clear. There are tons of people who will edit video and put it on YouTube. That I don't doubt. And most will use free or nearly free software to do so (in a huge number of cases, no SW at all, beyond editing on the actual capture device itself).

$300 is a lot of money to spend on any piece of SW, much less something as niche as video editing. Especially if you were to ask people what feature they want -- all of them are available in free programs.

[InclinedPlane]

I don't necessarily think that explosive growth of video editing (a sure thing, in my view) is identical to explosive growth of sales of a particular video editing suite, more so if that software develops a bad reputation (as FCPX seems to be acquiring quite rapidly).