About the cut scenes and seetings...

i think i now why you cant turn off the cut scenes. today, i tried to turn off the crowd aninmation to get some more frames. but i can set the crowd animation wherever i want, nothing changes. so, the way i see it: you can make changes for cut scenes and crowd animation but it doesnt take any effect - as if the changes arent saved in any way?!

looks like a bug to me, what do you mean?

Crowd animation on/off works fine here.