A new home for Final Cut Library Manager
Ten years after coming to the scene, Arctic Whiteness' Final Cut Library Manager gets a new home at Hedge.
Born out of their own needs in the editing room, back in 2014, Vincent Zorzi and Timothy Arms released Final Cut Library Manager to deal with FCP's ability to store media and generated files (optimized, proxy and caches) outside of libraries. The enthusiastic response they got, showed there was a clear need for media management and reclaiming disk space by Final Cut Pro users world-wide.
However, a lot can and will change in a decade, and both Tim and Vincent now have different lives than back in 2014. Vincent and Tim approached us last year, looking for a new home for their app, feeling it was time to pass the baton.
Not For Profit
After some internal debate, we decided to take FCLM under our wing. Economically, it doesn't make much sense; even though FLCM has thousands of users, it has never been able to financially support Tim and Vincent.
For developers, it's tempting to simply stop working on an app like that; it's a bigger nuisance than it's worth spending time on. As a result, FCLM has effectively been in maintenance mode for years, with some bugs left unfixed.
Sometimes a tool a lot of people are using is simply not economically viable, and that's OK. However, useful software shouldn't get scrapped as if it's a car that is too expensive to maintain. Software doesn't go total loss.
That's why we decided to get on board. But this isn't a typical acquisition; we're not in it for the money. To ensure FCLM stays available and healthy, we're taking on stewardship.
With stewardship, one party takes responsibility for logistics, support, and maintenance without looking to make a profit. It's like running an in-company non-profit division funded by the revenue it generates itself, without the usual bureaucratic overhead of setting up and running a true non-profit organization.
Through our stewardship, we're in a position to let the project piggyback on our processes and infrastructure for free, and give contractors working on the project the guarantee they get paid an honest rate, and on time.
That's not all: we're ensuring the money spent on maintaining and developing FCLM fully benefits the FCP community, by bringing on Chris Hocking to work on FCLM. Through funding him to work on FCLM, he can put more of his spare time into FCP-focused tools like CommandPost - another app that has zero economic viability, but should never go away. All in all, it’s a win-win situation for the FCP community at-large, like we’ve done before with MergeX.
Together with you, we can make sure a tool that has no real commercial viability stays healthy, and will be given an opportunity to bloom.
Ch-ch-changes
Ten years into development, Vincent and Tim realized FCLM's licensing model was too complicated. A free version plus a range of in-app purchases for a-la-carte functionality adds a lot of complexity.
Arctic Whiteness never charged for updates, resulting in a stale app, while having to scramble when there is a new (always unannounced!) FCP release. Having to drop everything you're doing just to release a new version to existing users who might have paid for the license a decade ago isn't very rewarding, both literally and metaphorically. It's not a healthy model.
Per Tim and Vincent's suggestion, FCLM adopts Hedge's license model of a fully functional perpetual license. Each new license includes a year of updates and support, so all required updates for macOS and Final Cut Pro versions released within a year after purchasing are included. To get access to another year of updates, you'll be able to extend your license for a small fee. It's our goal to bring that fee to near-zero; the more people extending their license, the cheaper it becomes for everyone.
To make all this possible, today we're re-releasing FCLM as a completely new app:
Arctic
The name Arctic is an homage to Arctic Whiteness, Vincent and Tim's company, and it nicely refers to FCLM's archiving purpose.
Arctic looks exactly like FCLM (why change something that works) minus a bunch of crashes that have been bugging people. Next, we'll be adding some often requested settings and improvements before having a go at ideas that Vincent and Tim wanted to work on, but never got around to.
Going forward, a new license costs $49. All existing users will receive a coupon that allows them to purchase a new license at a 60% discount; the rate of extending a license. If you bought your FCLM license less than a year ago, we've emailed you a personal 100% discount coupon. Both discounts are valid until the end of May, so no need to rush things.
By upgrading your FCLM to Arctic, besides the mentioned fixes, you get support for any upcoming versions of macOS and FCP released within a year from now. If you don't need that, for instance when you're purposely running older versions, by all means do not upgrade - only do so when you need it. However, the less people decide to upgrade, the less money there is for ongoing maintenance. Upgrading should be seen as supporting, as nobody's getting rich here. We for sure don't make a dime, we do this just for the FCP community. If that's not worth it, feel free to use your current version for as long as you need it.
Like, with our other apps, Arctic comes with a single activation that is easy to move between machines. If you are using Arctic in a team or organization, it's easy to add additional activations at the same 60% discount in our online License Manager.
Credit where credit's due
Vincent and Tim never made a living from FCLM, despite spending an awful lot of time on it. It's always a shame to see such an amount of effort not being rewarding for those investing their blood, sweat, and tears.
Let's set that right and give them a nice goodbye gift: for the coming three years, every third dollar spent on Arctic goes straight to Vincent and Tim, with the other two reserved for future development costs. If that's not sufficient, we are covering the funds required to iron out some existing bugs, keep it bug free and support new versions of FCP as well as macOS. And if it is, we’ll be able to bring down pricing. Another win-win!
PostLab
Isn't Arctic a PostLab-alternative, I hear you ask? Not really, to be honest.
We've learned from our PostLab users that they don't run into the issues Arctic solves; pruning libraries and archiving them is simply not needed if you use PostLab; it's all handled for you. PostLab is for teams, and those who want peace of mind knowing their libraries are cared for. Arctic is not designed for teams; it's more for that one person in a team that handles cleaning up, archiving, and more chores.
What about a future integration between Arctic and PostLab? We've been looking at it, but do not have a clear view as yet. We'd love to hear your ideas - get in touch: arctic@hedge.video
What's Next?
We've inherited a list of feature requests, but before jumping in we'd love to learn what your current needs are. Let's make this a group effort, and start discussing the future of FCLM, now Arctic, in the excellent Final Cut Pro Workflow (real names only!)
See you there 👋
