Tuesday, April 8, 2008

FCPRescue vs FCP Attic

We all know (hopefully) the freeware app FCPRescue which will backup your FCP prefs and restore them from your backup if they ever get corrupted. The bottom line is that trashing your FCP prefs or restoring a known good set can solve all sorts of strange behaviors and problems.

But, there's a new bit of kit on the block called FCP Attic which is shareware at $15.00 from Chesapeake Systems. I couldn't find it listed at macupdate for some reason. They say it's worth the $15 (up from free I suppose) because of:

Trash, Backup and Refresh your Final Cut Pro preferences with the click of a button. Can be used with all Mac OS X compatible versions of Final Cut Pro (version 3.x thru 6.0.x). Unlike other preference utilities, FCP Attic allows you to choose your backup folder location so you can move your preferences from machine-to-machine with external media.


It's not hard to know where FCPRescue stores it's backup and truth be told, it's not hard to whip up an applescript to perform all of this yourself which sounds like something I'll give a go later on tonight if I have time. I'll post the script here.

Chesapeake Systems also makes something called Multiuser Pro for Final Cut which:

Multiuser Pro brings an Avid-like project window to Final Cut Pro. Create multiple Final Cut Pro users within a single Mac OS X user login. Migrate your preferences easily from machine-to-machine in a SAN environment. Create preferences based on a user or project name... do what they said couldn't be done!


Now I haven't tried out any of their tools but frankly, if you know your way around Final Cut it's not hard to do all of this yourself. In fact, you should know where all the bits and pieces of Final Cut are spread around on your hard drives so you can troubleshoot things manually. But that's me :)

3 comments:

Jon said...

There's also Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion:
http://www.digitalrebellion.com/pref_man.htm

Backs up the entire Final Cut Studio prefs, not just FCP. You can change the location as well, and it's completely free.

Yes, it's not difficult to do this yourself but the whole point of these utilities is to do something you could do yourself much quicker and easier.

Walker Ferox said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Walker Ferox said...

Thanks, I had forgotten about that one. If I remember correctly there were some issues with it where it kept the backups. I'll have to try it again.