DR News Category: Digital Rebellion Blog

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.3 Beta 1 released - new utilities and more

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:27:02 MDT

We've just released a beta of the next major version of FCS Maintenance Pack, version 1.3.

This version offers many exciting new features, some of which are summarized below.

New tool - QuickFix

Ever had a problem with Final Cut Pro but don't know (or care) what it's caused by? There are lots of tools in FCS Maintenance Pack but you need to have a general idea of what the problem is in order to know which tool can fix it.

QuickFix aims to solve this problem by becoming a one-stop solution whenever problems occur. When something goes wrong simply launch it, press the QuickFix button and it will perform a series of common tasks to resolve issues that would normally require launching several tools at once. You can then quickly get back to work without needing to worry about determining the cause of the issue.

Keyboard shortcuts

Now you can perform common maintenance tasks simply by pressing a keyboard shortcut. When used in conjunction with QuickFix, it makes it even more powerful by enabling you to easily fix common problems simply by pressing a button. It makes QuickFix even quicker.

Note: keyboard shortcuts are only supported for FCS Housekeeper and QuickFix in this beta. Support for the other apps in the suite will be added in future betas.

Crash Analyzer error message database

Crash Analyzer is invaluable when Final Cut Studio applications crash, but what if they just display an error message without crashing? That's why we've added a new tool to Crash Analyzer that allows you to search for common error messages and receive tips for overcoming them.

The database is very much a work in progress right now so not every error message is supported. If you receive a message that's not in the database we'd appreciate it if you could use the built-in error message submission system to send it to us so that we can support it in future versions.

File Salvage droplets

You can now create droplets (mini-applications that you can drag files onto) within File Salvage to make it easier to salvage multiple files of the same format at once. Just go to File > Create Droplet, select the relevant source and destination formats and then drag corrupt files onto the droplet.

Growl notification support

If you schedule a task or use a keyboard shortcut it can be difficult to tell when the task is running. If you have Growl installed, FCS Maintenance Pack can now notify you when these background tasks run.

Note: Growl is only supported for FCS Housekeeper and QuickFix in this beta. Support for the other apps in the suite will be added in future betas.

Please note that this is a beta release designed for evaluation purposes only. It is not intended for use in a production environment. If you require a stable version please use version 1.2.7 instead.

To download this update, either visit the FCS Maintenance Pack product page or, if you have an existing version of FCS Maintenance Pack installed, go into the Preferences menu of Software Update and select the option to check for beta updates, then go to File > Check for Updates.

It's also worth noting that in addition to our regular appcast, we now have a beta appcast to separate beta updates from stable versions.

Update: Just to clarify, this will be a free update when the final version is released, so if you buy version 1.2.7 today you will not be penalized for it.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.7 and Network Admin 1.0.2 released

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:52:57 MDT

Last week we released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.7 and FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin 1.0.2, providing lots of new changes.

FCS Maintenance Pack is a useful tool to optimize and maintain your Final Cut Studio system and Network Admin takes that one step further by providing significant time savings to businesses.

Here are the highlights:

Comments can now be submitted with Crash Analyzer logs

Crash Analyzer has long had the ability to upload Final Cut Studio crash logs to our servers in order to improve our crash diagnosis algorithm. We've now expanded on that by giving you the option to add additional useful information to help us further, such as error messages reported by Final Cut Pro, unusual software or hardware configurations and any other important symptoms.

As an added bonus, system administrators can now submit logs from within Network Admin.

Corrupt Clip Finder file skipping

Corrupt Clip Finder locates corrupt clips in your timeline by opening each one with QuickTime and seeing if it crashes. However, some files don't crash but instead pop up an error message, such as in the case of a reference movie where the media has since been deleted or moved.

In previous versions of the software you would be forced to wait for Corrupt Clip Finder to realize that the file was taking far too long to open before you could move onto the next file, but with version 1.2.7 you can just go to Edit > Skip Current File or press Cmd+K to instantly declare the file corrupt and move on.

Password-protecting FCS Maintenance Pack applications from the admin dialog

The ability to protect FCS Maintenance Pack applications with an administrator password to prevent user tampering has been around for a while now, but before now this would need to be enabled for each application individually. This would be particularly time-consuming if you needed to do this for many computers on your network.

Now you can easily perform this on multiple computers at once, just by ticking a box in the FCS Maintenance Pack pane of Network Admin.

Standalone applications can be updated from within Network Admin

Standalone applications not affiliated with FCS Maintenance Pack (such as FCP Versioner) can now be updated on every machine on the network at the same time via Network Admin's software update mechanism.

This is just a sample of the features, tweaks and fixes available in these new versions. Both products have been used on network television and film productions and have been proven to save time and reduce support costs. Each has a 15-day trial available so that you can test them out.

More information about FCS Maintenance Pack and FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin is available on their respective product pages.

FCP Versioner 1.2 released - many more XML backup options

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:01:18 MDT

We released FCP Versioner 1.2 last week and I completely forgot to blog about it.

If you have a large FCP project, Final Cut Pro can sometimes take a while to export an XML copy when you save. Older versions of FCP Versioner had incorporated an all or nothing approach - either you waited for it to finish or else you were left without an XML copy of the backup, which meant that some of the functions of the software wouldn't work.

Version 1.2 changes this completely. You now have a slider to control how often you want to generate XML copies. At lower settings, the XML copy will only be generated for the second, third or fourth backup depending on how far you push the slider.

Versioner will then show the differences between versions that you have an XML copy for and if you want more detail, you can choose to generate the XML data on demand for backups without that information. But in most cases this will be unnecessary.

Alternatively, version 1.2 gives you the power to completely disable automatic XML generation and only generate XML copies when you actually need to use the functions of Versioner. This provides the best of both worlds for larger projects by giving you all the benefits of Versioner without interrupting your work.

FCP Versioner is a backup and versioning utility for Final Cut Pro. It automatically backs up Final Cut Pro projects in XML format and generates changelogs to show exactly what has changed between revisions.

In addition, it offers a wealth of options for managing your backups to ensure they don't consume all your disk space. Rather than simply keeping a certain number of total backups, Versioner can choose to keep a certain number per day, week or month, allowing you to see much further back in time while minimizing disk usage (the current day's backups are always kept in their entirety unless you set a limit on them).

FCP Versioner is available for $59 with a 15-day trial version available here.

Introducing FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:24:46 MDT

Yesterday we released a brand new product, FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin.

FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin is designed to compliment FCS Maintenance Pack by giving system administrators the ability to run tasks remotely across the entire network in unison.

It also allows you to sync preferences, plugins, user paths and scheduled tasks between computers, which is great for minimizing problems and makes it easier to move projects from one machine to another.

FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin also offers many extra troubleshooting features in addition to those featured in FCS Maintenance Pack. The Difference Finder works out the differences between operating system, plugin, kernel extension and framework versions to tell you what is unique about a certain group of computers.

This is really useful if you have one or two computers on your network that are experiencing a problem and every other computer is fine. Just drag the computers that work properly to the Working category and the ones that aren't working to the Not Working category. Difference Finder will then tell you if the non-working group is missing any important files or using old versions compared to the working group. This is a huge timesaver.

You can also view Crash Analyzer statistics to discover how often the machines are crashing, which are the most and least stable, the most common cause of crashes, and much more. If users experience a problem, they can request help from their system and the administrator is immediately notified in Network Admin, allowing them to remotely troubleshoot the problem.

These are just some of the features of FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin. To find out more, download the 15-day trial or check out the user manual. It also requires FCS Maintenance Pack but this can be installed remotely from within Network Admin (another great feature).

A common question we've been asked is if it is suitable for small businesses with only a few systems on the network. The answer is yes - FCS Maintenance Pack Network Admin provides lots of benefits that are useful no matter how many computers are being used. Many of our beta testers only had a few systems and experienced tangible benefits despite this.

As this is a version 1.0, we're looking for people to try it out and tell us how well it fits in with their workflow. We want to hear if we have missed out any features that would be useful for you, or if there is a common issue you run into that you wish it would fix automatically.

To contact us, use the Report Bug or Request Feature links inside the app itself, the contact form on our website or contact us on Twitter.

Update - If you are connecting though a corporate firewall, you will need to open ports 35011-30513. The user manual has a troubleshooting section at the back that lists other circumstances that may prevent clients from connecting.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.5 released

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 10:41:51 MDT

We recently released an update to FCS Maintenance Pack, bringing it up to version 1.2.5. Here are some of the important changes:

Task Scheduler can now run tasks as root

Task Scheduler can now run certain tasks (such as Compressor Repair) as root, meaning that it will no longer pop up a password dialog when protected tasks run.

To take advantage of this you will need to remove and re-add your scheduled tasks. When you try to add a task that needs to run as root, you will be prompted for an admin password.

More options for Autosave Cleaner

We've added an action button to Autosave Cleaner that can be used to perform cleaning actions manually, such as removing all autosaves older than 7 days. This allows you to perform actions on a per-project basis rather, which is very useful if you finish a project and want to clean things up by removing all except the 5 most recent autosaves, for instance.

When running automatically, Autosave Cleaner can now archive (compress) autosaves that match the specified criteria instead of removing them.

QT Repair now repairs invalid ImageDescription extensions

There's a strange bug in Final Cut Pro where it will crash if an ImageDescription extension is incorrect while QuickTime quite happily ignores the issue and plays the file just fine.

QT Repair can now fix this issue.

Corrupt Clip Finder is faster and more accurate

Corrupt Clip Finder has been improved to be faster at scanning folders and more accurate when scanning Final Cut Pro project files.

Other changes

Autosave Cleaner - Improved Final Cut Express support
Compressor Repair - Fixed an issue where multiple clusters would sometimes appear after repairing
Path Manager - Final Cut Express support
Preference Manager - Fixed an incompatibility with the Open in Editor function of Final Cut Pro
QT Repair - Added m4v support
System Toolkit - Now lists system QuickTime components
XML Repair - Interface improvements
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
General bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

The full list of changes in version 1.2.5 is here. There are also many significant under-the-hood changes in this version that are not listed in the changelog.

FCS Maintenance Pack is an essential tool for any Final Cut Studio user. It is available for $129 and a free 15-day trial and user manual is available here.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.4 released

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:09:10 MDT

Yesterday we released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.4, a bugfix and polish release. Notable changes include:

Logging

Most of the applications now generate detailed logs showing exactly what the application did while it was processing, and if it encountered any problems along the way. It will also create separate logs for tasks started by Task Scheduler, letting you know when the task last ran and the actions it performed.

These logs are available in the Help > Troubleshooting menu.

Support for future beta versions

We will be entering a public beta stage soon for the next major version of FCS Maintenance Pack. With this in mind, Software Update can now notify you of beta software updates. This makes it easier for us to distribute betas while at the same time separating them from regular stable releases.

Participation is optional so you will need to switch this on in Software Update preferences.

Other changes

QT Repair - Fixed an issue where large files would not repair correctly
System Toolkit - Speed increases when performing Refresh Files and Strip Temp Files scans
System Toolkit now pays attention to language settings when showing eligible files for streamlining
Corrupt Clip Finder no longer stops processing when it encounters a read-only hidden file
FCS Housekeeper - Now closes running apps before cleaning and reopens them when it finishes
Software updater can now check for beta updates (switch this on in preferences)
Path Manager - Fixed a bug with the Qmaster cluster path not being recognized when using the Browse button
Task Scheduler - Reduction in the CPU usage and disk I/O of scheduled tasks
Task Scheduler - Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause tasks to repeat over and over
Plugin Manager - Many UI improvements
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
General bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

FCS Maintenance Pack is an essential tool for any Final Cut Studio user. It is available for $129 and a free 15-day trial is available here.

Advance notice - Tiger support to be phased out

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 12:46:49 MDT

We will shortly be phasing out OS X 10.4 Tiger support for FCS Remover, Preference Manager and Compressor Repair.

Phasing out Tiger support is necessary to improve the experience for users of more modern operating systems. This will lead to more frequent software updates, greater stability and additional features. We believe that now is a suitable time to do this because it has been a considerable amount of time since Apple has actively supported Final Cut Studio on Tiger systems.

We will be releasing special Tiger-only versions of these applications within the next few weeks, which will receive no further software updates except in the case of any major bugs. If you have any bug reports or feature requests to make for the Tiger versions of these applications, please submit them as soon as possible.

After the Tiger-only versions are released, future software updates will only support OS X 10.5 and 10.6. Note that PowerPC systems will continue to be supported.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.3 released - improved File Salvage and QT Repair

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:40:55 MDT

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.3, a minor update to our suite of popular troubleshooting tools for Final Cut Studio.

This update mainly focuses on File Salvage and QT Repair but there are many other tweaks and improvements elsewhere in the suite. Here's the changelog:

QT Repair - added options to ignore certain consistency checks when rebuilding - this can help to repair particularly problematic files
QT Repair - added option to renumber track IDs to ensure they are unique
QT Repair now caches file information to speed up rebuilds when rebuilding from the same working file
File Salvage - Improvements to audio salvaging
File Salvage - Fixed an issue with green frames appearing in the middle of DVCProHD movies
File Salvage - Improved memory usage and responsiveness when scanning
System Toolkit - Improved memory usage when scanning applications
Launcher - Fixed an issue with a blank launcher window appearing on 10.6
Crash Analyzer now shows an icon to indicate when a log has been submitted to Digital Rebellion for analysis
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
General bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

FCS Maintenance Pack is an essential tool to keep Final Cut Studio in good working order. A free trial is available here.

For more information on FCS Maintenance Pack, check out the user manual or the recent Q&A we did with Pro Video Coalition.

FCS Maintenance Pack Q&A on PVC

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 09:43:05 MST

I recently did a Q&A with Scott Simmons over at Pro Video Coalition about our flagship product, FCS Maintenance Pack. It gives a good insight into the reasons for creating the suite and answers many common questions.

If you haven’t been having any noticeable problems with Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio, do you need Maintenance Pack?

If you haven’t run into problems in the past, that’s no guarantee that you won’t run into problems in the future. And of course, those show-stopping problems always happen on a deadline.

FCS Maintenance Pack is not just limited to fixing problems though. It has been designed as a prevention, diagnosis and cure rolled into one. You can run common housekeeping tasks to keep Final Cut Studio performing well and minimize the chances of a problem developing, use Crash Analyzer to diagnose your crash logs if a problem does occur, and then use System Toolkit, Project Repair, QT Repair, or one of the many other tools to fix it.

Some of the applications, while being invaluable if a problem arises, are useful applications in their own right. Plugin Manager, for instance, allows you to organize your Final Cut Studio plugins into groups, selectively enable and disable them, toggle between making them available to all users or just the current user, and painlessly install new plugins - all without having to worry about which one of the many plugin folders the plugin resides in.

So FCS Maintenance Pack is still useful for users who might not currently have problems, and it will be invaluable once problems do crop up (and I can guarantee they will sooner or later).

You can read the full article here, and feel free to leave a comment with additional questions.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.2 out now - redesigned Corrupt Clip Finder and more

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:57:46 MST

Yesterday we released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.2. This update adds several new features, a few of which I will detail below.

Corrupt Clip Finder

Corrupt Clip Finder has a redesigned user interface and now offers more options for dealing with files once they have been found.

You can now assign a color label to corrupt files in the Finder so that they are easily recognizable, as well as quarantining them into a separate folder or moving them to the Trash. Corrupt Clip Finder now supports batch operations so these actions can be performed quickly to a large number of files.

In addition, Corrupt Clip Finder is now more tolerant of reference QuickTime movies, and will automatically close any QuickTime dialogs that pop up as a result of trying to process these files.

FCS Housekeeper

FCS Housekeeper has been greatly simplified to be more user-friendly. The new Preset drop-down at the top of the window gives you a choice of two presets.

Basic is for everyday housekeeping tasks where Final Cut Studio is not necessarily misbehaving and Comprehensive is specifically designed for troubleshooting. You can also select and deselect tasks individually.

These are just a couple of new fixes and tweaks. Here's the full changelog:

Improved Corrupt Clip Finder clip detection
Corrupt Clip Finder - Batch operations on corrupt clips are now supported
Corrupt Clip Finder - Corrupt files can now be color coded in the Finder for easy identification
Corrupt Clip Finder - UI improvements
Corrupt Clip Finder - Added a timeout to prevent reference movies with missing data from tying up the application
Path Manager - Support for Final Cut Pro user paths (read-only)
Autosave Cleaner - Added the ability to specify autosave paths manually
FCS Housekeeper - Simplified the application by adding presets for common tasks
File Salvage - Improvements in responsiveness when creating a QuickTime movie
QT Repair - UI improvements
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
General bug fixes, tweaks and improvements

FCS Maintenance Pack is available for $129 and a 15-day trial is available which will fix many problems for free.

We're always on the lookout for feature suggestions and the changes in this release are a direct result of user feedback. So if you have a request, however important or trivial, use the Help > Suggest a Feature link in each application, contact us or send us a message on Twitter.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.1 released

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:04:15 MST

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2.1, a small maintenance update to our popular Final Cut Studio troubleshooting software.

As well as the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, this update also offers a couple of new features. File Salvage now supports Big Endian audio formats and also offers audio support for DV QuickTime movies; Corrupt Clip Finder can now locate corrupt audio files in addition to corrupt movie clips; and Preference Manager can now automatically launch the Final Cut Pro System Settings dialog when you open a new project to encourage users to double-check their scratch disk settings.

Here's the full changelog:

Improved Task Scheduler memory usage
Fixed an Autosave Cleaner crash
Improved compatibility with PowerPC processors
File Salvage now supports Big Endian audio formats
File Salvage now supports audio for DV QuickTime movies
Path Manager automatically creates a subfolder for safety if you set a path to an important directory such as your user library or system root
Corrupt Clip Finder can now locate corrupt audio files
Preference Manager can now automatically launch the Final Cut Pro System Settings dialog when a new project is opened
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
General bug fixes, tweaks and performance improvements

FCS Maintenance Pack is $129 with a free 15-day trial available here. Check out the Resources section of the site for more useful tools.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 released

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:08:12 MST

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2, a significant update to FCS Maintenance Pack.

There are far too many tweaks, bug fixes and optimizations to mention in detail but here's a summary of some of the biggest changes.

Three new tools

QT Repair repairs QuickTime movies and is intended as an alternative to the heavy-handed approach of using File Salvage to extract data to a new file. It can also repair invalid CLUT IDs that can corrupt movie clips created with older versions of QuickTime and optionally restore trimmed or edited media if you make an edit that you regret (providing the media is still within the file).

For more heavily damaged files, it can rebuild the clip by combining the movie data of the damaged file with the QuickTime structure of a working file.

Path Manager provides a central place to manage Final Cut Studio content and user paths. It replaces Content Manager and offers extra options such as mass path organization, path locking and syncing, and more.

XML Repair verifies and repairs Final Cut Pro XML files. Can also convert between Final Cut Pro XMEML versions for compatibility with older versions of Final Cut Pro.

Final Cut Express support

FCS Maintenance Pack now supports Final Cut Express 4.

Redesigned File Salvage

File Salvage has been redesigned with a focus on batch processing. Multiple files can now be salvaged sequentially - saving a lot of time if you have a large number of files to process.

It also supports significantly more formats than the previous version, including DVCPRO HD and all flavors of ProRes. Audio support has been added for several file formats and you can specify custom frame sizes and frame rates for formats where these parameters are variable.

One very useful new feature is the ability to read information from a working QuickTime file with the same encoding settings (captured with the same camera or exported with the same Compressor preset for instance) and apply these settings to the corrupt clips in the batch. This is very useful if you can't remember the exact codec or frame size, for example.

Crash Analyzer now supports all Final Cut Studio apps

Crash Analyzer is no longer limited to Final Cut Pro support but can now analyze crash logs from Final Cut Express and all applications in Final Cut Studio.

This is, of course, in addition to the usual updates to crash definitions. Crash Analyzer now supports over 60 different categories of crashes (yes, FCS really is that unstable).

Users of previous versions of FCS Maintenance Pack will have to install the update manually. This is to ensure that all users have the recent software updater components on their system which will allow future updates to progress smoothly.

FCS Maintenance Pack is available for $129 and a 15-day trial is available here.

Many of the improvements in FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 are a direct result of user feedback. We're always keen to hear from people and find out what works well and what doesn't. Just use the Report Bug or Suggest Feature links in the apps themselves, contact us or message us on Twitter.

FCP Versioner 1.1 released

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:26:48 MST

We've just released FCP Versioner 1.1 with the following changes:

Added the ability to only backup a specific sequence, boosting performance
Added the ability to initiate a manual backup snapshot
Improved marker support
Improved changelog generation performance
Fixed extraneous "New filter added" notifications
Improved memory usage when generating logs
Frame values are now converted to timecode
Markers can now be filtered
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to remove the base copy of a project

FCP Versioner is a backup and versioning utility for Final Cut Pro. This is how it works - you add the FCP projects you wish to backup to the list of watched files. Then, every time you save, Versioner creates an XML copy of the project and compiles a list of changes so that you can see exactly what changed between revisions. If you need to restore a specific version of a project it is dead simple to find the one you are looking for by looking at the changelog. You can also set it to autosave your project file at specific intervals.

So it offers three main advantages over more general backup solutions:
1. You get a list of changes so you're not just looking at a filename or date
2. It saves the project as XML so you get a plain-text version for safety and compatibility
3. It offers flexible backup management options to ease disk usage

FCP Versioner costs $59 ($49 until Christmas) but a 15 day trial is available here. It requires OS X 10.5+ and Final Cut Pro 6.0.2+ (autosave requires FCP 7.0).

As always, we appreciate any and all feedback - just use the Report Bug or Suggest Feature links within the application.

We have lots of other software for Final Cut Pro; see our Resources page for more details.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 2 released

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:14:51 MST

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 2. This is a performance and stability update for users of Beta 1.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 is a significant update to FCS Maintenance Pack so we're releasing it as a public beta to gather feedback and locate bugs.

Please use the Report Bug or Suggest Feature links in the Help menu of each application to let us know of any issues, however severe or trivial, and help us discover the features our users want.

Although Beta 2 is pretty stable our official line is that it is not recommended for use in a production environment.

You can download the beta here:
FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 2 (DMG)
FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 2 (ZIP)

Also note that FCS Maintenance Pack is currently on special offer - if you buy before Dec 25th you will receive 15% off the retail price.

Changes in FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 2:

Corrupt Clip Finder - Improved progress display
Corrupt Clip Finder - Stability improvements
Corrupt Clip Finder - Corrupt files are now displayed in the list as they occur
Corrupt Clip Finder now searches directories recursively
File Salvage - Fixed an inaccuracy when processing DV NTSC footage
File Salvage - Added support for NTSC and PAL ProRes files
File Salvage - Drag and drop support added
Project Repair - Stability improvements
System Toolkit - Checks apps are closed before streamlining
Crash Analyzer - Updated definitions
Path Manager - Updates parent directory when an individual item is edited
Plugin Manager - Lots of bug fixes and performance boosts
Plugin Manager - Audio Unit Validation UI improvements
Plugin Manager: Added the ability to drag plugin folders into the window
QT Repair - Stability and memory usage improvements
QT Repair - Added support for removing edits from QuickTime files
QT Repair - Now supports files larger than 4 GB
General bug fixes and performance improvements

Changes in FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 1:

New application - XML Repair. Fixes illegal characters, malformed XML, missing tags and elements not supported by the current XMEML version.
New application - QT Repair. Repairs various structural problems with damaged QuickTime movie files to allow them to be opened by QuickTime again.
New application - Path Manager (replaces Content Manager). Allows you to manage your user and content paths from a central location.
Autosave Cleaner now supports Motion.
Plugin Manager now allows you to change whether or not a plugin is available to the current user or all users.
Plugin Manager - added a new tool to validate Audio Units
Corrupt Clip Finder - now works on movie files without a .mov extension
Corrupt Clip Finder - improved the accuracy of corrupt clip detection
Redesigned FCS Housekeeper UI
FCS Housekeeper now works even if Spotlight is disabled on the scratch drive
Crash Analyzer now supports all applications in Final Cut Studio
Crash Analyzer - dramatic improvement in loading speed
System Toolkit can now restore streamline backups
File Salvage now supports Apple Intermediate Codec, ProRes and DVCPROHD
Redesigned File Salvage interface with a focus on batch processing

Christmas promotion - 15% off everything

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:00:33 MST

Christmas is a time for giving, so in the final week before Christmas we're offering a 15% reduction on all of our products until Christmas Day.

You can get FCS Maintenance Pack for as little as $84 and FCP Versioner for just $49.

You don't need to do anything special - just visit the product page, click the Buy Now button and the lower cost will be reflected automatically.

This is an excellent time to buy if you're on the fence, as introductory pricing on FCS Maintenance Pack will be ending in January (the price of FCP Versioner will stay the same). This is your last chance to get it for a rock-bottom price.

Merry Christmas!

Introducing FCP Versioner

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:29:38 MST

We've just released a brand new application called FCP Versioner, which is a backup and versioning utility for Final Cut Pro. This is how it works - you add the FCP projects you wish to backup to the list of watched files. Then, every time you save, Versioner creates an XML copy of the project and compiles a list of changes so that you can see exactly what changed between revisions. If you need to restore a specific version of a project it is dead simple to find the one you are looking for by looking at the changelog. You can also set it to autosave your project file at specific intervals.

And even if you never use the versioning capabilities, it is still very valuable to have XML copies of your project files because XML files are plain text and therefore it is virtually impossible for them to become corrupt beyond use. We've all had the situation where our FCP project got corrupted and it corrupted half of the autosaves as well.

In addition, it offers a wealth of options for managing your backups to ensure they don't eat up all your disk space. Rather than simply keeping a certain number of total backups, Versioner can choose to keep a certain number per day, week or month, allowing you to see much further back in time while minimizing disk usage (the current day's backups are always kept in their entirety unless you set a limit on them).

So it offers three main advantages over more general backup solutions:
1. You get a list of changes so you're not just looking at a filename or date
2. It saves the project as XML so you get a plain-text version for safety and compatibility
3. It offers flexible backup management options to ease disk usage

FCP Versioner costs $59 but a 15 day trial is available here. It requires OS X 10.5+ and Final Cut Pro 6.0.2+ (autosave requires FCP 7.0).

As always, we appreciate any and all feedback - just use the Report Bug or Suggest Feature links within the application.

We have lots of other software for Final Cut Pro; see our Resources page for more details.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 1 released

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:25:40 MST

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 is a significant update to FCS Maintenance Pack so we're releasing it as a public beta to gather feedback on some of the changes.

Please use the Report Bug or Suggest Feature links in the Help menu of each application to let us know of any issues (however trivial they might be) and help us discover the features our users want.

This is a beta so it is not recommended for use in a production environment. If you want the latest stable version choose version 1.1.6 instead.

Changes in FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 1:
* New application - XML Repair. Fixes illegal characters, malformed XML, missing tags and elements not supported by the current XMEML version.
* New application - QT Repair. Repairs various structural problems with damaged QuickTime movie files to allow them to be opened by QuickTime again.
* New application - Path Manager (replaces Content Manager). Allows you to manage your user and content paths from a central location.
* Autosave Cleaner now supports Motion.
* Plugin Manager now allows you to change whether or not a plugin is available to the current user or all users.
* Plugin Manager - added a new tool to validate Audio Units
* Corrupt Clip Finder - now works on movie files without a .mov extension
* Corrupt Clip Finder - improved the accuracy of corrupt clip detection
* Redesigned FCS Housekeeper UI
* FCS Housekeeper now works even if Spotlight is disabled on the scratch drive
* Crash Analyzer now supports all applications in Final Cut Studio
* Crash Analyzer - dramatic improvement in loading speed
* System Toolkit can now restore streamline backups
* File Salvage now supports Apple Intermediate Codec, ProRes and DVCPROHD
* Redesigned File Salvage interface with a focus on batch processing

Download FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 1 (DMG)
Download FCS Maintenance Pack 1.2 Beta 1 (ZIP)

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.1.4 released

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:31:41 MDT

We've just released a maintenance update to FCS Maintenance Pack, bringing it up to 1.1.4.

Change list:

Improvements to trial validation
Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
System Toolkit now shows per-file progress when refreshing large files
General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

FCS Maintenance Pack is a utility pack designed to keep your Final Cut Studio machine running at optimal performance and help resolve problems when they arise.

Major problems always seem to occur right on a deadline - FCS Maintenance Pack is designed to quickly diagnose and fix common issues, ensuring you meet your deadline. With the Task Scheduler utility, you can even schedule maintenance tasks in the background and not have to worry about them.

FCS Maintenance Pack costs $99 but a 15-day unrestricted trial is available here. See the Resources section of the site for more useful tools.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.1.2 released

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:35:51 MDT

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack 1.1.2 with the following features and changes:

* Snow Leopard compatibility
* Improved Crash Analyzer UI
* Added a crash reporter to all applications
* Plugin Manager window now refreshes automatically
* Autosave Cleaner now updates automatically
* Updated Crash Analyzer definitions
* Significant improvement in Task Scheduler launch speed
* Added registration option to launcher
* General bug fixes, tweaks and optimizations

This means that all of our products are now Snow Leopard compatible.

FCS Maintenance Pack is $99 and a fully-functional 15-day trial is available here.

FCS Remover 2.5.3 and Compressor Repair 1.2 released

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:54:13 MDT

We've just released FCS Remover 2.5.3 and Compressor Repair 1.2.

FCS Remover is now compatible with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and FCS Maintenance Pack. It's had a couple of cosmetic improvements too.

Compressor Repair is now compatible with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, FCS Maintenance Pack and Final Cut Studio 3. It officially supports Compressor 3.5.x (Final Cut Studio 3) and 3.0.x (Final Cut Studio 2) but runs in a reduced mode for lower versions.

Both utilities are completely free and available from the Resources section of the site.

FCS Maintenance Pack 1.1.1 released

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:37:37 MDT

We've just released FCS Maintenance Pack v1.1.1.

FCS Maintenance Pack is a utility pack designed to keep your Final Cut Studio machine running at optimal performance and help resolve problems when they arise.

Major problems always seem to occur right on a deadline - FCS Maintenance Pack is designed to quickly diagnose and fix common issues, ensuring you meet your deadline. With the Task Scheduler utility, you can even schedule maintenance tasks in the background and not have to worry about them.

As well as general bug fixes and overall polish, it has a couple of new features. There's a new QuickTime pane in System Toolkit that allows you to manage QuickTime components and unlock hidden QuickTime X settings.

There's also the option within System Toolkit to preserve more than one language when streamlining an application (you can find this setting in the Preferences window). This is useful if you have other people using the same computer who are fluent in a different language - just select which languages to keep and System Toolkit will preserve those when it streamlines the application.

FCS Maintenance Pack costs $99 but a 15-day unrestricted trial is available here. See the Resources section of the site for more useful tools.

Preference Manager 2.0.4 released

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:37:35 MDT

We've just released Preference Manager 2.0.4.

Version 2.0.4 is now fully Snow Leopard compatible, and we will be working to verify Snow Leopard compatibility on our other software over the coming days.

This release also adds support for Final Cut Express and offers improved compatibility with FCS Maintenance Pack - you can now schedule Preference Manager tasks within Task Scheduler.

Preference Manager allows you to manage preference files for Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Express. Preference files store information about user preferences, window and toolbar placements, launch settings, etc. Sometimes these can become corrupted, causing problems. Preference Manager allows you to trash corrupted preferences and keep backups of working preference files in order to quickly restore your settings.

Preference Manager 2.0.4 remains completely free and is available here.

Introducing FCS Maintenance Pack

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:02:27 MDT

I'd like to introduce our newest product, FCS Maintenance Pack.

FCS Maintenance Pack is a group of utilities designed to help maintain your Final Cut Studio system. The tools fall into two categories - those that help keep things ticking along and those that help to fix problems when they arise.

FCS Maintenance Pack can clean up your autosaves, locate corrupt clips within a Final Cut Pro sequence, analyze crash logs, periodically trash caches, salvage data from damaged files, manage plugins, repair projects that refuse to launch, remove bloat from applications, and much much more.

FCS Maintenance Pack includes:

Autosave Cleaner	Expanding on the basic autosave management in Final Cut Pro, Autosave Cleaner offers more flexibility and can remove autosaves based on additional criteria including age and file size. It can also be set to automatically remove autosaves from the Trash so that you don't have to keep emptying it when working on a long project.
Content Manager	A tool to manage the content that ships with Final Cut Studio. You can repair broken content links and remove or move content quickly and easily.
Corrupt Clip Finder	When you have corrupt media on your timeline, Final Cut Pro will simply crash and you will not have any idea which clip is causing the issue. You face the long and arduous process of reconnecting each clip one-by-one in order to find the problematic one. Corrupt Clip Finder finds the corrupt clip for you in seconds.
Crash Analyzer	All of us have at some point received cryptic or confusing error messages and crash logs. Crash Analyzer analyzes your Final Cut Pro logs, attempts to diagnose the cause of the crash and suggests ways to solve the problem.
FCS Housekeeper	Trashes various caches and temporary files to keep Final Cut Studio in peak operating condition. FCS Housekeeper is even more useful when used in conjunction with Task Scheduler to run these tasks automatically.
File Salvage	Salvages video frames from corrupt movie clips. Currently compatible with DV, DVCPRO50 and Motion JPEG media. The input file need not even be a QuickTime container - it can extract data from any type of file, even if it is not a movie clip.
Plugin Manager	Plugin Manager allows you to quickly and easily organize your Final Cut Pro plugins. You can group them together, install new plugins and selectively enable and disable them - all without having to worry about where the plugins are physically located on disk. Also includes a crash tester for discovering which plugins are causing Final Cut Pro to crash upon startup.
Project Repair	Attempts to repair non-launching projects so that they are recognized by Final Cut Pro again.
System Toolkit	A wealth of options to tweak and tune up your system, including: Extra launch and display options for Final Cut Studio applications Manage Final Cut Studio registration Scan, repair, refresh files and remove temp files from disks Adjust system and per-application scaling Streamline your applications by removing unused languages and architectures Access many options hidden in OS X

Also includes:

FCS Remover	Removes Final Cut Studio, Express and Server. Can remove the entire suite or individual applications.
Preference ManagerManages Final Cut Studio preference files. Allows you to trash, backup, lock and restore preferences. Can also be configured to restore a particular set of preferences before a certain project is launched for per-project preferences.
Compressor Repair	Repairs the fragile links between Compressor and Qmaster.

The version we're releasing today is version 1.1 - some of you may know that the pack had a limited release just over a week ago in order to gather feedback from the community, and version 1.1 is the result of the great feedback we received.

The pack is $99 but a 15-day fully functional trial is available to test things out. FCS Maintenance Pack greatly simplifies the life of a Final Cut Pro user and should be an essential part of any editor's toolkit.

Why don't my old Preference Manager backups work on FCP 7?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:40:42 MDT

One question we've been seeing a lot lately is from people who are wondering why the Preference Manager backups they previously created under Final Cut Pro 6 no longer work on Final Cut Pro 7.

There is a very simple reason for this - Final Cut Pro's main preference file is called Final Cut Pro x.0 Prefs.fcset, where x is the major version of the software. So when you updated to version 7, it created a new file called Final Cut Pro 7.0 Prefs.fcset and ignored all previous files.

So when you try to restore a backup created under Final Cut Pro 6, it will transfer the Final Cut Pro 6.0 Prefs.fcset file which will be ignored by the newer version, thereby having no apparent effect. You could just rename the file but there may well be side-effects to doing this. The solution, therefore, is to recreate your Preference Manager backups under Final Cut Pro 7.

(Incidentally, I've heard a lot of people complain about scratch disk locations resetting and favorites being lost upon upgrading. FCP 7 does not read the old preferences when creating the new file so your preferences are completely reset.)

Final Cut Studio 3 compatibility with Digital Rebellion products

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:12:11 MDT

I've already posted this on Twitter several days ago but here it is again to clarify our products' compatibility with Final Cut Studio 3 (2009).

FCS Remover

Versions 2.5.0 and above are compatible with Final Cut Studio 3.

Download FCS Remover

Preference Manager

Version 2.0.3 is compatible with Final Cut Studio 3.

Important Note: Final Cut Pro stores preferences for each major version separately, consequently version 6 preferences will not be recognized by version 7. You will therefore need to overwrite your old preference backups with new ones. This doesn't affect other applications in the Studio - just Final Cut Pro.

Download Preference Manager

Compressor Repair

Not fully compatible with Final Cut Studio 3.

Some features will work but many will not. Expect an update in the next few weeks.

Download Compressor Repair

FCS Remover 2.5.2 released

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:13:05 MDT

We've just released FCS Remover 2.5.2. This is a general maintenance release that fixes several issues, most notably the crash that a small number of users were experiencing. The software has additionally been given several performance boosts.

FCS Remover is a tool to completely remove Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Server. This can be useful in many instances such as upgrading to a newer version, removing content or unused applications to save disk space, or general troubleshooting. FCS Remover gives you a great deal of flexibility by allowing you to specify exactly which components you wish to remove.

FCS Remover is completely free and is available here. It is fully compatible with Final Cut Studio versions 1, 2 and 3 (2009) and works on OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard.

FCS Remover 2.5 released

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:21:00 MDT

We've just released FCS Remover 2.5.

This version adds support for last week's Final Cut Studio (2009) release, as well as improving the overall speed and responsiveness of the application.

One minor tweak worth noting - if you want to reinstall Final Cut Studio but don't want the bother of entering your serial number and license information all over again, go to the Shared Files heading, then deselect Registration. This is a new option in this version, as requested by several people.

FCS Remover is a tool to completely remove Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Express and Final Cut Server. This can be useful in many instances such as upgrading to a newer version, removing content or unused applications to save disk space, or general troubleshooting. FCS Remover gives you a great deal of flexibility by allowing you to specify exactly which components you wish to remove.

FCS Remover is completely free and is available here. It is compatible with OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard (PPC and Intel) and Final Cut Studio 1.0 and above.

Check out the Resources section of the site for more tools.

Compressor Repair 1.1.4 released

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:39:25 MDT

Yesterday we released Compressor Repair 1.1.4. This is a maintenance release that fixes a single bug that resulted in qmasterd not relaunching in certain situations.

Compressor Repair is a utility designed to diagnose and repair issues with Apple Compressor and Qmaster. Compressor relies heavily on Qmaster in order to operate properly, and the link between the two is very fragile. Compressor Repair tries to resolve launch and batch submission issues, particularly the dreaded "Unable to connect to background process" error.

Compressor Repair is completely free and is available here. It works best with Compressor 3.x on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard.

We have many other tools available which can be found in the Resources section of the site.

Preference Manager 2.0.3 released

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:52:40 MDT

Preference Manager 2.0.3 was released earlier today with some minor new features.

Preference Manager is an application for managing the preference files of Final Cut Studio. Preference files store user preferences and other settings, and can cause strange behavior if they become corrupt. Preference Manager allows you to trash, backup, restore and lock these files for maximum flexibility.

Here are the changes in the latest version:

Backup editing
Backup settings can now be edited.
Import Backup function
The Import Backup menu item adds a backup to the library without automatically restoring it, unlike Open Backup.
Project filenames are now listed below the backup name for convenience
You can now see at a glance which project is associated with a particular backup.
Support for Boris text plugin preferences
Preference Manager is now capable of backing up preferences from the Boris text tools included with Final Cut Pro (Text Scrambler, Title 3D, Title Crawl and Vector Shape).

Preference Manager is completely free and is available for download here. View the user manual for a walk-through of some of the new features.

Preference Manager 2.0.2 released

Sun, 17 May 2009 10:59:00 MDT

We've just released Preference Manager 2.0.2, which is primarily a maintenance release but has a couple of small features too.

Preference Manager is an application for managing the preference files of Final Cut Studio. Preference files store user preferences and other settings, and can cause strange behavior if they become corrupt. Preference Manager allows you to trash, backup, restore and lock these files for maximum flexibility.

The main changes are:

Better support for prior versions of FCP
Preference Manager now supports all versions from Final Cut Pro 3 onwards.
New icons to differentiate project-linked backups
When you link a project to a backup, a linked chain symbol will now appear. Hovering over the icon will reveal the name of the project it is linked to. If the project does not exist, a red broken chain icon will appear.
Selections in the Advanced dialog are now remembered when the application is closed
A lot of people asked for this, so here it is. Also, when you launch Preference Manager for the first time, only preferences are selected in the Advanced dialog. Some people inadvertently deleted their button bars and window layouts because they didn't realize they were selected by default.
Support for custom Compressor settings and destinations
Preference Manager is now capable of backing up custom Compressor settings and destinations.

Preference Manager is completely free and is available here.