Suggested “Must Haves” for the FCP editor?

[Tom Daigon]

Digital Juice gives you a wealth of quick and generic graphics…and
Motion 3 has a wealth of content included with the software. Its like have a built in and editable DJ library right in your FCP Studio!

[Mark Suszko]

My suggestions based on things I have and wish I had.

Zaxwerkes stand-alone for mac, lets you do some basic 3- d animations without the heavy learning curve. This is more powerful if you have the vector creation/export capability of Adobe Illustrator, but you can get along without that. Allows the look of the canned Jumpback animations with the customizability you want.

flip4mac WMV converter, pro version

I have Sonicfire and love it, but be sure to buy a few extra packs of songs for it. This is a good alternative to stacktraxx.

MS Powerpoint for mac ( I have to do lots of slide imports for clients, this helps tremendously)

VESA-compliant pantograph support arms for my dual cinema displays, to keep them at the right ergonomic height and distance while freeing up console table space.

Wacom tablet, if you don’t already have one. Wunderbar for working in Photoshop.

[Stuart Simpson]

[Michael Lynch] “Final Cut Server $999/10 client license”

I personally don’t think this is worthwhile if you don’t have a big shop – plus it doesn’t really work properly without a SAN…

You can never have enough storage though!

-Simmie
4 MacPros – Kona 3 & Kona LH
2 G5s – Kona LH
xbox360, Wii, PSP, PS2
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Stuart Simpson]

[Steven Gonzales] “I’d suggest the HVR-M15U”

Or even better – the HVR-M35

-Simmie
4 MacPros – Kona 3 & Kona LH
2 G5s – Kona LH
xbox360, Wii, PSP, PS2
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Tod Hopkins]

It sooo depends on what you want to do, but…

Digital Juice SFX are a nice deal.
The new Thermaltake BlacX for hard drive backups is great. Make sure you get the right connections for you. Even cheaper the SYBA Creative I/O at Newegg is fabulous. And if you’re gonna go that way, buy the drives while you have the money unless you can budget them like tape.
Max your RAM. Seriously. Just Max it out. Don’t upgrade the rest.
Connect systems directly via Gigabit switches if they are not already.
Lynda.com subscription.
Upgrade your speakers. Again, they are rarely ever good enough.
Decent, comfortable headphones.
Decent mic for scratch tracks.
Mackie mixer to connect it all. Don’t forget the cables.
Blu-ray burner with Toast. Buffalo just intro’d a much cheaper external.
DVD set top recorder for quick outputs if you don’t have one.
Custom FCP keyboard if you don’t have one.
Better mouse. Wireless, optical, good mousepad.
Diskwarrior.

Cheers,
tod