AppFresh

There's a little freeware application for Mac OS X that's hard to come by on your own. It's called AppFresh and all it does is compare the versions of all of your installed applications with the ones listed on some common software download sites. What's funny is that this free software updating application isn't (generally) listed on the popular for-profit software update sites. Funny how that works, eh?

Anyway, check out AppFresh, it's free and can save you some time. I've already come to rely upon it for non-Apple updates overall. Because of AppFresh I've abandoned versiontracker.com and now only use macupdate.com as a handy one-url-to-remember source to download commonly used apps I install on the networks and editing machines I manage.

Bonus Link: iusethis is a great site to discover new shareware, freeware and donationware.

No Name

I've noticed on a few edit stations I've been working at with FCP 6.0.2 and Leopard 10.5.2 that when you mount P2 Media from an HVX-200 they won't show up in the Finder's windows sidebar but they will show up at root level in a Finder window. I'll have to do a bit of testing but it may have something to do with the users selecting not to show mounted volumes on the desktop.

The P2 media work as expected mounting and ejecting reliably but they just do not show up in the sidebar on some machines.

Missing Encoders?

Check this out: If you're missing some encoders in Final Cut Studio here's how to solve it straight from Apple.

Take the following steps to enable additional encoders:

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences.
Choose View > QuickTime.
Click the Advanced button.
Select the checkbox next to Show legacy encoders.