It’s probably been a busy week or two over in the UK for somebody as Digital Heaven, maker of useful tools for Final Cut Studio, has updated two of their products to version 2.0. If you’re a fan of BigTime or Loader (both for Final Cut Pro) then these updates might be for you.

First was the update to BigTime. BigTime is “a resizable floating timecode display for Final Cut Pro (v5, 6 and 7).” FCP users long suffered without any option for a floating timecode window until BigTime 1.0 came along and basically used a backdoor to get the timecode data out of FCP and into a display. Apple finally added it’s own timecode window in version 7.0. Do you need the Digital Heaven tool if you have FCP 7? Maybe not as much as version 6 and before but BigTime does allow a few things that the built-in timecode window does not like look customization and the ability to display over FCP’s Digital Cinema Desktop Preview. New in BigTime 2.x, from the Digital Heaven website:

  • – BigTime’s floating timecode display is now a HUD (head-up display) window.
  • – Additional DCDP overlay feature means you can now view timecode over the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview display.
  • – Ability to automatically launch and quit along with Final Cut Pro.
  • – Remembers control surface settings in Final Cut Pro after initial setup.
  • – New preferences allow comprehensive customisation of both the HUD window and the DCDP overlay display.
  • – Requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard.

BigTime is $49.oo and there is a trial version available.

The other, and arguably bigger, Digital Heaven update has taken their popular Loader and moved it to 2.0. For the uninformed, Loader “is the smarter way to import music, sound effects, graphics and movies into Final Cut Pro.” Imagine a small, floating tab that resides in the corner of your screen while working in FCP. When you need to load any of the above mentioned elements into an edit just drag them to that tab and Loader takes care of copying and/or converting the new media into your designated Capture Scratch folder and loading it into your project. It’s one of those types of tools that you use and think that FCP should have had built in from version 1.0. Kind of like BigTime! From the Digital Heaven website:

  • – Option to set the Final Cut Pro destination for imported items – Named Bin* (where new items get added to an existing bin), Timestamped Bin or Top Level of Project.
  • – Option to convert all audio files to a common specification, regardless of original format.
  • – Audio conversion settings for sample rate, bit depth and number of channels.
  • – If the Command key is held when dropping items on the Loader window then the original file is moved to the trash.
  • – Significantly faster copying and conversion of CD Audio tracks.

* Named Bin option is only available when running Final Cut Pro 7 (or later)

Loader has been mentioned as a useful tool many times before. It will just make life easier for experienced editors while taking care of vital organization and media management for the inexperienced editor. If you don’t use Loader then give the demo a try and grab $79 to purchase the full version after the demo expires.