[Rob Ainscough]

Steve,

I think I will get CompressHD and turn QMaster off. $500 investment that is well worth it considering it’s rated speed and resolution support (amazing).

FYI, I’ve tried every possible combination of QMaster configuration and none of them work on my MacPro.

Others,

I highly doubt Apple will release an FCP 7.x update that turns it into a native 64bit SL anytime soon. Heck it took Apple 1 year to finally fix Logic Pro 8 so it was usable. LP9 will be at my door tomorrow so I can evaluate that.

My guess (and that’s all it is) is that Apple are simply applying logical financial business resource allocation to Pro Applications based on the sales of those Pro applications. Given the lack luster feature/upgrade set in FCS 3, I’ll assume that FCS sales just aren’t good enough to justify the resources. Limited resources equals limited enhancements. So it would seem the sales numbers just don’t justify the investment in a complete overhaul and native SL FCS.

Implications here are that unless Apple does take a “risk” with FCS (invest more resources and hope sales pick up), it’ll most likely fade away and iDVD will be it. But as has been pointed out, I don’t think Apple want to try to compete in the more series post production market.

From my perspective, the FCS 3 release is writing on the wall, just as killing off shake was some years ago — I’m sure most of us have transitioned to other products and use multiple products so it’s not like were out in the cold. The only part of this puzzle (in my head anyway) is why Apple bought Shake in the first place? Anyway, doesn’t really matter now.

Anyway, I’ll keep using FCS 3 if I can get that Matrox CompressHD card to work well. But I’ll also keep using other post production products such as Sony Vegas, Digital Performer, and Adobe and see where I ultimately spend most of my time.

I’m not really blaming Apple, as was pointed out, “it is what it is” and I’m sure there is a very valid reason how/why Apple took this path.

Rob.

[Rob Ainscough]

Andy,

So I take it when FCS does finally get converted to 64bit and we all can start using more than about 2GB of RAM, you’ll not think this is a high priority benefit? I’ve worked with 64bit apps (Vegas Pro 9) on Windows environments, they work extremely well with enough RAM tossed at them — in the order of about 5X-10X faster than the current file I/O single instance segment method used in FCP.

I don’t know what Apple might decide on future upgrade policy, do you?? I got this upgrade more for insurance for when FSC 4 comes out. But if FSC 4 is not SL native then I will stop the upgrade maddness with FSC until it joins the 21st century. 😉 I know Adobe’s suite is only 64bit “optimized” (except photoshop which is true 64bit) but even with that it’s A LOT faster than FCS 3.

As far as FSC 3 not taking anything away, well currently I can’t get QuickClusters (on same machine) to work at all — even the old tried and true method I used FSC 2 no longer works. So yes, they did seem to screw up a VERY important feature for me.

As for H264, Elgato Turbo HD is restricted in resolution (800 x 600) and results are not that good but considering the price it’s not bad. As I understand it SL will also have better H.264 hardware acceleration support which AGAIN begs the question why didn’t Apple wait a few months and release FCS 3 as a native SL app??

As it stands now, we’ll have another 2 year (or more) wait while the rest of competition (as this same price level) has long since embraced 64bit and is work on average 5X faster than FCS 3. I don’t see how it was “good advice” for Apple to release FCS 3 so feature weak before SL? Apple will now be so far behind the curve (in this market price range) that catchup will be impossible.

Sorry folks, but I stand by my opinion, this is a pretty weak upgrade that took a long time and it certainly isn’t worthy of a version 2 to version 3 — as has been pointed out, at best case is FCS 2.5.

Rob