FCS2 Missing Manuals
 

Be prepared: FCS2 only ships with manuals for FC6 and Color "setup", unlike the oringal FCS which came with manuals for all the apps. So if you want details on DVDSP4, Motion 3, Color, Soundtrack and other setup details you'll have to refer to the "help" menu or the PDF's.

Not exactly as convenient as having the manual on your desk or lap when trying to figure something out or, if you want to do some reading on the apps when away from the computer.

Obviously Apple, like most other tech companies, is trying to save money by not printing the massive manuals but in my estimation was a big mistake because it now forces you to either be chained to computer or print out the manuals yourself (a costly venture) to gain access to the highly required reading.

ISTR a blurb about this. I think the other manuals are to be available at a later date, but weren't ready for press at release time.

Maybe I dreamed that during the information overload I experienced at NAB.

-gb-

Apple is the environments friend...

Yeah, I know it's not as convenient...

But I'm doing some summer cleaning here in the studio and I'm tossing boxed sets of manuals from FCP 2, 3,and 4, and the FCP part of the Original Studio manuals. (FCP v1 manual was pretty small and I'm gonna keep it for nostalgia's sake)

The Studio 2 manuals are about the paper volume of a serious telephone book.

I bet they could do similar manuals for DVDSP and Sountrack Pro.

So at some point you've got to wonder if it makes sense to keep churning multi-pound manuals for something that will have a rev life of maybe a year or so.

Not as convenient. But much more eco-friendly.

(must be a pain in the ass to be on the documentation team, to put in a year or two of hard deadline work, only to see a lot of it become obsolete after the next serious product rev!)

Apple has been slimming down packaging on all their products for quite a while now. I think its a fine idea.

The manual for Color would have had to be printed in full color, and I doubt Apple was interested in spending the money to do that, especially considering the full Color User Guide is 350 pages long. I was surprised that they didn't print the thin setup guide in full color. That sort of sucks.

Oh well... I actually prefer opening the manuals in Preview and using spotlight to jump directly to certain search strings. If your manuals open in Acrobat Reader, you should get info on a pdf and change the default app to Preview and then apply to all files of the same type. Preview is lightning fast compared to Acrobat Reader.

BTW, I think the best thing to get yourself straight into the new apps is the last DVD included in the package, Final Cut Studio DVD Tutorial. It isn't very in-depth, but gets you off on the right track and will decrease the learning curve a bit. The UI in Color sucks, and isn't very intuitive. I still can't figure out how to navigate to an external volume from within Color.

I've gotten to where I prefer manuals in PDF. You can pop them up on another screen, and the search function makes all the difference.