Re: Okay, so what do you REALLY think?

I've been using the new FCS since the first week it was released. As usual tried it out on my laptop first, things went so well and a few of the features were so compelling for my workflow that I upgraded my work machine, in the middle of delivering a show. Not something I usually do, actually cloned to an external drive and installed FCS there in case I had to back pedal. Opened the one hour show from FCP 6.06 and all was good, in a couple of days swapped drives so the clone was now the internal and haven't looked back. We've finished two shows now and are on the third.
This isn't the sexiest upgrade but the timesavers and workflow enhancements are worth the price of admission. I really like the following.
1. Share export- Made one off DVDs and small movies for review without locking me out of my machine. 90% of my dvds are review or just need simple menus and this works great. Love being able to put chapters in and give them names from the timeline.


2. Markers- Love the color coding and the ability to drop markers while the timeline is playing. Searching for named makers means I don't have to zoom out so much to find places on my timeline. Being able to drag them is also nice. As annoying as it can be when I'm trying to drag a maker, its nice to be able to delete a marker by dragging it off the timeline.

3. Droplets- I have to make a variety of different types movies when I'm delivering a show. I've got custom settings in Compressor, but now I keep droplets for the diffent versions I need to make on the desktop and drop the files onto them and off they go.

4. ProRess4444- Animations with alphas are now much smaller 265mb instead of over a gig and they play on the timeline without rendering, very nice

5. Misc- speed changing is now fun, and works very intuitively. Ripple training has a good free tutorial. Reveal affiliate clips and batch transitions.

So, like I said, not the sexiest but some excellent timesavers.
My two cents, I believe Apple released this before Snow Leopard to give us some great tools, now without tying it to any issues with SL. Once SL is released, I'm guessing a great .5 upgrade shortly thereafter, hopefully around NAB. They've done it before, it won't surprse me if they do it again.

Thanks,
Vince Sanchez
Intel Quad Mac 2.66
AJA LHe
HD link
OSX 10.4.11
FCP Studio 2