Ever wanted to know when an FCP render has finished? Well now you can. And by the time you get back from getting that all important coffee you should have a message waiting.

 “Render Notification 1.0.2” by Josh Petok from the current cut. It is a nice little script that watches the processor usage of a few pre-selected apps and will email you when the load goes down. In other words it alerts you to your render finishing. To find out more about it go here. There's also a useful suicide script for killing off a hung After Effects at the same link.

Those very informative people at NewMediaWebinars present a VFX Plug-in Essentials Webinar looking specifically at the plug-ins and filters offered within Noise Industries' FX Factory.

Today is a very sad day for a lot of small developers as they can't submit their applications or plugins to the new Mac App Store as they don't meet the requirements.

I've been using a Wacom tablet with FCP since 2003 and yes I couldn't live without it now. I haven't got round to programming macros though so thankfully this video from Luminoir can show you the speed benefits by eliminating repetitive keystrokes. Make sure to watch in HD to see all the detail.

This is a library of user created presets for Apple's software Color.  From coloruser.net. The presets listed here are stored in the .colorgrade format. It's a community of color accolytes so as well as allowing you to download for free, they also want you to upload your own color presets. You can recreate the 'magic hour', get that greenish Kodak 400 look or go for Film Noir. Lots of Canon 5d Mark II Presets available.

Final Cut Pro Templates have got a special season two day 30% off offer on their excellent Motion/Final Cut Pro template packs. More after the break.

Ever been frustrated by dead pixels on pans and tilts making life difficult? The people at Digital Heaven have come up with the solution.

Well it is not a completely idiotic thought. If you can remember back to editing in the early nineties, there were only two NLEs on the block, Lightworks and Avid. Everybody knows the Avid story, but could Lightworks be coming back to change the market again? Links, opinion and a video tour of the GUI after the break.

Visual Effects innovator The Foundry have developed STORM which assists RED Digital Camera workflows. There's a Public Beta available for download until 1 March 2011. Take a look here.

The guys at Red Giant are getting into the holiday swing with a great 40% off deal.

FCP guru Larry Jordan shows us how to add some groove to our title sequences without going via Motion. All thanks to Boris FX.

How could we possibly miss the chance to show Beyonce working FCP? She complains it is all a bit complicated, but they could have at least bought her a dedicated keyboard. Video after the break.

Another Apple patent this time in the video field. Custom themes and dropzone usage when making DVDs gets wrapped up in 'Creating a theme used by an authoring application to produce a multimedia presentation'

Another card gets launched today, this time the beefy $1,199 NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU. With FCP, Motion & FxPlug plugins using the GPU, more GPU power means faster renders. There are speed references with FCP mentioned on their site, but be warned this model will not fit some old MacPro's.

AJA have released updated version 8.1 KONA software which has added 3D video controls to the KONA 3G’s Control Panel software interface. 

Steve Cohen, A.C.E, one of the Hollywood pioneers in ushering in the digital age, talks to Hollywood Reinvented about the evolution of non-linear editing. 

vWave-Lite allows you to control Color as distributed in Final Cut Studio.

Fx-Script, FxPlug and Quartz Composer based plugins for Final Cut Studio

The big VFX house style of plugins. Sapphire offers over 200 FXPlug plugins for FCS 

Normally if you think Martini, and work in Film or TV, in the words of 007 you'll want it shaken and not stirred. Well this cool app helps you shake the gap between what has and hasn't been shot and stirs up your FCP timeline.

A big claim from the manufacturer, Apricorn. Comparisons, specifications and even an installation video on how to get this monster PCIe card into your Mac after the break.

Recently Apple's CEO Steve Jobs detailed some new attributes coming with OS X Lion. What Jobs didn't reveal was "scrollable menus and toolbars" which Patently Apple discovered, came to light  in a new European patent filing. 

Update: ''1-6_Right-Project'' - the project name was from the FCP6 demo material we're informed by reliable source.

We won't ruin the fun, but shouldn't all tutorials be as dangerous?

3D is the big growth area in the post-production world, and Senior Applications Editor at Key Code Media, Michael Kammes has done an excellent job of giving us the pros and cons of the top two editing platforms in the pro market.

After comparing and contrasting across six different criteria: cost, quality, workflow, speed, flexibility and location it seems that Final Cut Pro is tipping the scales as weapon of choice for the 3D world.

Discussing the points in Michael's article: Presenting 3D in Avid & FCP Workflows at the Createasphere 3D Workshop: Burbank, Ca. November 2010

If I was 18 years old, Swedish and my name was Rickard, I'd like to think that I'd be pushing the envelope, and experimenting with my 550D and Twixtor to get some amazing results. I'd just make sure my mom didn't hang out the washing before I went out to get grungy! More cool Twixtor stuff after the break.

The cool new iTunes style slideshow generator for FCP, Motion and After Effects.

Take a look. No on second thoughts, just download it straight away, it's free!

Surely this old piece of NLE operation is old news? Or has Apple got a more advanced plan using this patent? Could the new Apple data centre, the new iMovie and a new MobileMe account be the first inroads into cloud editing?