Experiences/Reviews from DVinfo members with FCS3?

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hi,

anyone would like to share their experiences with FCS 3?

I only worked a little bit with it, bought it last week. Overall glad with the upgrade. Little things work nicer now. In FCP 6 it would never remember the azerty-keyboard layout if I opened FCP. Now it just remembers the settings.

If I import a 16/9 anamorphic SD file in Final Cut Pro, and edit it in a 16/9 anamorphic sequence, if I export it with the current settings, it just plays as a 'real' widescreen file in Quicktime. Previously, you had to go via Quicktime Conversion and adjust the settings or you would get a squashed stretched out image. Nice to see it finally working like it has too.

Also curious to see if Snow Leopard will bring any difference.
I'm seeing some little things though: it has been said that in Snow Leopard, if an external disc or file you want to remove is in use by a program, Snow Leopard will (finally) tell you WHICH program.
Similarly, if I used to quit FCP 6, just after I had quit it, it would tell me that 'FCP quit unexpectedly'. Now it also tells me because of which plugin (it says LS3 Renderer, but I can't find it back, not a big issue though).

short review, but still trying to go trough it all.

[Christopher Drews]

Color is more awesome now. The new presets are stellar. It knows what to do (finally) with speed changes. I don't have to set the render directory every time I reopen the Color project. That was huge.

As far as FCP is concerned, I've been using the new proxy codec like crazy. I love it. It's so light, I can cut HD without RAID almost non-stop. Going online is easy. I'm not too thrilled with the share window, DVD Studio Pro, Broken Qmaster and lack of blu-ray menu support - but I've gotten over this unlike some others on this forum.

Overall, it's a worthy upgrade. I haven't touched SoundTrack yet: It'll be interesting to see if they've made it more stable (especially when using FX PLUG).

-C

[Gabe Strong]

Overall, I do like it a lot. However, I have been having a couple issues.

First, EVERY time I quit Final Cut Pro, it has been giving me the 'Final Cut Pro
has quit unexpectedly because of the LS3 Renderer plug in' message as well.
I have no idea what that means, and it doesn't seem to affect anything, just
annoying.

Second, Soundtrack Pro has been a bit...buggy. About half the time I send something
to Soundtrack Pro, and do some work, it will not let me save what I do (the save
project is grayed out). If it does allow me to save, I often get the spinning beachball
of death before the program quits on me, and if it doesn't quit, it will just sit there
with the spinning beachball forever....and then Final Cut Pro always tells me it
can't find the soundtrack pro project file.....I guess cause it keeps crashing
before the save or something. I actually called Apple Support on this one after the
5th straight time it did this to me.....of course then, as I was getting my support
number from my Final Cut Studio package....Soundtrack Pro miraculously
decided to work so I told the support guy it was working now and got off the
phone. Of course, soon after it started doing the same things.

Finally, yesterday after having Soundtrack Pro crash on me, I tried to reopen my
Final Cut Pro project. Somehow something got all screwed up cause all my
Final Cut Studio programs started asking for my serial number again and I had
to re enter the serial number in each of the applications....

Now it seems to be working again....I'm gonna cross my fingers......

[Tim Dashwood]

I just had something weird happen. I changed the resolution of the 2nd monitor and that caused FCP7 to unexpectedly quit, which isn't that big of a deal and probably to be expected.

The weird thing was that I relaunched FCP7 and it asked for my serial number before letting me do anything! It's a good thing I was home and had the number handy.

[Mike Chandler]

I'm liking the new FCP a lot. As an xdcam user, the new Log & Transfer is now better at naming than xdcam transfer, the Share function puts out nice-looking mpeg2 dvd's from hd timelines with no fuss, and the IChat Theater is great for working remotely.

[Anthony J. Howe]

FCP 7 seems to be better for me too, capturing, exporting etc have had no issues.
The only thing I'm not happy with, is the smoothcam filter in FCP 7, I'm having issues with this and the video looks worse after applying the filter.
So now I use Motion to apply staediness to the video and is much better.
In FCP 6 I did not have any issues using this filter.
Buy overall I'm happy with the upgrade.

[Floris van Eck]

Originally Posted by Mathieu Ghekiere

Similarly, if I used to quit FCP 6, just after I had quit it, it would tell me that 'FCP quit unexpectedly'. Now it also tells me because of which plugin (it says LS3 Renderer, but I can't find it back, not a big issue though).

Floris comes to the rescue.

That message is related to Magic Bullet plug-ins. I think it is Looks or Quick Looks (they use the LS3 render engine). If you delete them from the FX folder, you get rid of the error message. You will need to update Magic Bullet Looks to the latest version which can be downloaded for free from their website: http://files.redgiantsoftware.com/Pr...L_Mac_Full.zip
It is working fine for me ever since.

I have similar problems with Colorista and PP CS4. It is working fine in After Effects CS4 but it gives '0 picture handle' error messages when I launch Premiere Pro (which I don't use much so I can live with that one).

Let me know if this works for you guys!

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Hi Floris,

thanks for the advice.

I can't find the FXfolder, where is it exactly?