So, Apple has bought Silicon Color, developers of Final Touch - a low cost "next generation" colour correction and conforming tool. I say "next generation" for two key aspects of Final Touch's workflow: leveraging the GPU for real-time capability on commodity (not proprietary) hardware and support for a lateral, not linear, workflow driven by integration with an EDL (provided via XML). While they didn't work so well, they were the key selling points.
Mike Curtis' excellent commentary is worth reading.Personally, my gut feeling is that the acquisition is about Shake and Final Cut and marketing.
The whole 'what comes after Shake' thing is still a big unknown for a lot of vfx facilities, including Weta. Apple is rather quiet on the subject. While D2 is being rather aggressive with their Nuke marketing and Toxik is getting a push, facilities are being cautious: switching over your 2D pipeline to an entirely new product, however shake-like, is a big risk management issue. When you have a production slate sketched out for 18 months, you don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water. I wouldn't be surprised if most facilities with at least 10 shake seats just buy the source code for the licenses alone and then bide their time to weigh up their options.
Apple has only a limited window (say 12 to 18 months) to announce their Shake replacement before their customer base makes the costly switch to a competitor, either Nuke or Toxik [which is rather un shake like]. Once that switch is made, those customers are unlikely to switch back to whatever Apple ships for a long time. They may buy a few evaluation licenses but they won't be integrated into their main workflow.
I see the Silicon Color acquisition as part of a wider strategy to slow customer emmigration while Apple work out their next-generation application. It creates buzz and keeps the mindshare that Apple is still serious about shipping a pro level application. After the non-event of Shake 4, Apple needs to *ship* a modern compositing application. The more people in facilities that are convinced that this is the case, the less likely they are to switch in the short term. I speak of facilities because they are the market for a compositing application of Shake's power and flexibility.
The problem that Apple has is that feature-level compositing applications just don't sell that much. They will never make wads of cash from selling a compositing application or the hardware to go with it.
Shake was always more about marketing via association. How many people here are talking about Shake actually own a license? How many own a license of After Effects? See. Yet, somehow Shake became a symbol of Apple's (growing) maturity as a developer of professional production tools... and the future of Shake has always been used as a barometer of Apple's intentions with that market. The logic has usually gone - "Weta used Shake. Shake is made by Apple. Therefore if I use Motion I can be like Weta too!". Shake probably sold more copies of Final Cut than it sold of itself.
Unfortunately, Apple now find themselves in a position where facilities may move away from Shake and Apple generally because of the lack of a visible roadmap (or even a hint)... and this is just at a point when the whole OS X & Intel combination made them a very attractive proposition. From a marketing perspective, this is very bad - the association works in reverse. "Weta has dropped OS X! Apple no longer considered serious player."
[ ... and the dynamics of the broadcast market - traditionally dominated by expensive, realtime hardware like Inferno - never, ever suited the kind of tool that Shake was or could ever be. It was never going to compete with Flame, regardless of the speed of the hardware. Apple had cornered itself]
So...
What does Silicon Color give them?
- Speculation and mindshare about how the technology can be incorporated into NuShake. Everyone wants to see a GPU driven compositing application with a phat 32 bit colour engine, not another Motion. People are willing to wait for this rather than invest in Nuke, Fusion or Toxik. Silicon Color will be seen as a commitment to that path, whether or not they *need* the technology. Remember already have the Combustion team which was instrumental in Motion's real time GPU ness, the CoreImage team, the Aperture team, the original Nothing Real & Silicon Grail teams [and that other one they bought, I never remember], and the legendary Ron Brinkmann. Perhaps Apple hit a brick wall and needed the throughput the Final Touch guys could deliver? Hmm.
- The ability to ship a dedicated colour correction application as part of the Final Cut Suite. My gut feeling is that it won't be built into Final Cut because its too late to be integrated into FCP6 (NAB 2007, mark my words) and, frankly, a dedicated colour correction application is a better idea because of the different workflow between editorial and grading. They can do this quickly: They can move on this very quickly too. Take what would have been FT3, tidy it up, and release it as part of FC Studio 6 with Apple branding. They did that with DVD Studio Pro 1, LiveType, Soundtrack & Final Cut itself [when it was with macromedia].
- The option to create the rumored third-tier of Final Cut ness... Final Cut Extreme ie a full 2 to 4K editing *and* conforming solution. Apple has always wanted to sell the whole widget but they haven't been able to move into the booming Digital Intermediate Market because they've lacked a solution. Now they have one. One which should elegantly tie into their NLE package - something which other colour correction and conforming solutions lack. It will be the whole package, because a stand alone 'Final Touch' remake just wont' shift units OR create mindshare.
NBs:
- When Apple acquired Shake, Nothing Real already had a good reputation in the VFX industry. They bought it AFTER it was used on Fellowship of the Rings in order to get a foot hold in the industry. Silicon Color don't have the same reputation, they acquisition isn't about quickly penetrating an already existing market...
- Apple has to strike the balance between delivering a feature-level compositing application and something which will also sell to the wider market.
- The whole UNIX philosophy, which Apple has continued to embrace with OS X generally, is to have a range of specialised Applications which integrate well together. Address Book, Mail, Motion, Soundtrack etc. I am willing to place large bets that whatever happens with Final Touch, it will be as a separate application and NOT incorporated into an already bloated Final Cut.
