Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.12 released - improved FCPX support and more

Yesterday we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.12, a minor update to our suite of tools for troubleshooting and repairing problems with your editing system.

Here are some of the more important changes.

Plugin installer registration

Plugin Manager's installer now supports CocoaFob, so you can force users to enter their registration information before they will be allowed to install your plugins.

This requires you to base your backend on CocoaFob too, but you get this for free if you're using FastSpring for purchases.

Motion templates for all users

FCPX Motion templates can now be installed for every user on the system and you can easily move templates between the current user and all users.

This is just a small subset of features and changes - to view the full list please see the changelog.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for all video professionals. To find out more, see the feature list, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the 15-day free trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Friday December 7 2012 1:03 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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How to quickly replace an audio track in a QuickTime movie

Sometimes you need to swap out an audio track if there's a problem or you need to provide multiple languages or different soundtracks.

Instead of compressing the video again, QT Edit makes it really easy to do this in just a few steps.

1. Open up the movie file in QT Edit.

2. Select the existing audio track and press the - button to delete it.

3. Click the + button and select Audio. Browse for the new audio, which can be an AIFF, WAV or another movie file.

Important: QT Edit inserts the track at the current playhead position so make sure the playhead is at the beginning. If you make a mistake, manually set the start point of the new track to 00:00:00:00.

4. Double-check sync in the preview window and then hit Save.

5. You will be asked if you want to flatten the movie. This makes the movie self-contained. In most cases you will want to flatten, but if you want to create a reference movie select Don't Flatten.

QT Edit is just one of many useful utilities in the Pro Media Tools suite. To find out more, check out the feature list, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the 15-day trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Tuesday December 4 2012 2:11 PM to Utilities, QuickTime, Tutorials
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Pro Media Tools 1.1.8 released - new QT Edit metadata presets and more

Earlier we released Pro Media Tools 1.1.8, a minor update to our suite of media management and problem-solving tools.

Export Edit Detector markers to an FCPX event

You can now create Final Cut Pro X events from Edit Detector. This will produce a .fcpxml file that you can import into FCPX to create a new event containing the source file with markers on every cut point.

New QT Edit Quick Task

You can now import reel information from an ARRI-originated file and add it to the Final Cut Pro X Reel field. This feature can also be performed in batch mode.

New QT Edit metdata presets

We've added lots of new metadata presets for ARRI, Final Cut Studio, QuickTime and RED. Metadata preset fields are now prefixed with their application name so that you can differentiate between ARRI and FCPX Reel fields, for example.

This update included many more changes and tweaks, which you can read in the changelog.

Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for editors, assistants and post production professionals. To find out more, see the feature list, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the free 15-day trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Monday December 3 2012 4:34 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Pro Versioner 2.0.6 released - better Dropbox management and more

Today we released Pro Versioner 2.0.6, a minor update to our project backup and versioning software for Mac.

New folder watcher presets

Better Dropbox management

You can also manually clear space on Dropbox by ctrl-clicking a project and selecting Remove All Synced Backups.

We've also fixed several bugs and other issues. The full list of changes is available here.

Pro Versioner is an essential tool for ensuring project integrity and piece of mind. To find out more, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the free trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Thursday November 15 2012 1:35 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Cut Notes 1.2 released - Premiere Pro sync and more

We're pleased to announce the availability of Cut Notes 1.2 for iPad. We've listened to your feedback and this version adds much-requested Adobe Premiere Pro sync support. This is achieved through a downloadable plugin for Premiere Pro CS 6.0.2 or higher for Mac.

To get it setup, follow these steps:

1. Download the Cut Notes Adobe Plugin located on the right-hand side of the page.

2. Make sure all Adobe apps are closed.

3. Run the installer to install the plugin.

4. In Finder, launch Audio MIDI Setup in the Utilities folder under Applications. Go to Window > Show MIDI Window and then double-click the icon marked Network.

5. Click the + button under My Sessions and name the new session Cut Notes. Tick the box next to it to enable it. Under "Who may connect to me" at the bottom, set it to Anyone. In the Bonjour Name field, enter the name of your computer if it is not already set.

6. Now launch Cut Notes on your iPad and tap the Sync button. The name of your iPad should appear in the Audio MIDI Setup window on your Mac in the Directory list. Select it and click Connect. It should then appear under Participants on the right-hand side. You will need to repeat this step whenever you launch Cut Notes.

7. Relaunch Premiere Pro.

8. Go to Premiere Pro > Preferences > Playback and tick the box next to Cut Notes.

9. Scrub the timeline and the timecode should appear in Cut Notes.

Note: the playback buttons in Cut Notes do not control playback in Adobe Premiere.

The plugin will also work with Adobe Encore for Mac and we are planning a Windows version in the future.

Cut Notes 1.2 also includes several crash and bug fixes. The full changelog is available here.

We're keen to hear your feedback on the new sync mode. You can use the feedback link within Cut Notes itself or file bug and feature requests through our support site.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Tuesday November 6 2012 12:05 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Preference Manager for Windows Beta 1

We're pleased to launch the first public beta of Preference Manager for Windows 7. This is a Windows port of our popular Mac tool for trashing and managing user preferences for your editing application.

The beta can trash, backup and restore preferences and other settings for Avid Media Composer, Symphony, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Backups are stored in a new file format which is different from the Mac version so Mac and Windows backups cannot yet be shared, but it's something we plan to address in future.

Please be aware that this is pre-release software so it may have bugs and issues and we do not recommend using it in a production environment yet. Please report any bugs or feature requests here.

Preference Manager for Windows is a free application that requires Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4.0.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday October 24 2012 10:37 AM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.11 released - improved Premiere Pro support and more

Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.11, a minor update to our suite of maintenance tools for Final Cut Studio, FCPX, Avid Media Composer / Symphony and Adobe Premiere Pro.

This version contains improved Premiere Pro support in CS Repair and Housekeeper. We've also added support for backing up Premiere audio channel layouts in Preference Manager for easy syncing between computers.

In addition to bug fixes, we've also added an option in Preference Manager to relink FCP 7 preferences to Motion 4 after trashing to prevent the error message saying it's incompatible with Motion 5.

A full list of changes is available here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system. To find out more see the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Tuesday October 16 2012 2:00 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Video Space Calculator 1.0.5 released - 3K ARRIRAW, DNxHD 80,100,444

Today we released Video Space Calculator 1.0.5 for iOS and 1.0.3 for Mac.

These updates add 3K ARRIRAW support, along with Avid DNxHD 80, 100 and 444 codecs.

Video Space Calculator can calculate the disk space taken up by over 75 codecs including ProRes, Animation, ARRIRAW, DNxHD, XDCAM and DPX.

The app is available on the iOS App Store and the Mac App Store.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Thursday October 4 2012 5:52 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Preference Manager best practices

Preference Manager is a useful tool for trashing preferences for a range of video editing applications including Avid, Premiere and all versions of Final Cut Pro. This wipes the user settings for your editing application and can fix a wide range of problems.

However, having to set everything up again can be a chore. With a little bit of preparation in advance, you can ensure you never have to trash them again.

1. Start with a stable foundation. We recommend trashing preferences in Preference Manager and then setting them up again from scratch in your NLE, but you can skip this step if you are confident that your settings are stable.

2. Backup the settings. You can choose to backup additional items such as keyboard layouts if you desire.

3. Optionally, lock your preference files to prevent them from becoming corrupt. Some apps don't work correctly with locked preference files, so for these apps the lock option will be greyed out.

4. When a problem occurs, instead of trashing preferences, restore the backup. This will restore the settings you backed up previously to enable you to get back to work quickly.

Additional tips:

• You can right-click on a backup in the Restore pane and set it as the default backup. This means that it will be automatically restored when running a Quick Fix and you can set it up to fix problems simply by pressing a button on your keyboard.
• If you make changes to your editing software preferences later on, right-click on the backup in the Restore pane and select Update All Files to replace the preferences in the backup with the current versions on disk.
• By default Preference Manager will autosave your preferences every 7 days. This allows you to go back to previously working settings if you did not make a backup beforehand

Preference Manager is a free and useful tool for editors and post production professionals. See the user manual for more workflow tips.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Monday August 13 2012 1:41 PM to Video Editing, Utilities, Tutorials
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Pro Media Tools 1.1.6 released with OS X 10.8 support

Last week we released Pro Media Tools 1.1.6, a minor update to our suite of media management workflow tools.

Mountain Lion support

Compressor and DVD Studio Pro-compatible chapters

QT Edit can import markers from an FCPX XML file so this is a great solution for users wanting to easily get Final Cut Pro X markers into their compressed export or DVD. It can also import markers from Final Cut Pro 7 and Avid.

QT Edit frame export

New QT Edit Quick Tasks

The full list of changes in this version is here.

Pro Media Tools is an essential toolkit for editors, assistants and other post production professionals. To find out more, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the free trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Wednesday August 8 2012 2:36 PM to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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