Digital Rebellion Video Editing Blog Category

How to import sequences into Premiere Pro from XML without duplicating media

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 07:34:57 +0000

Premiere Pro stores metadata that helps it determine which files exist in a project, however when roundtripping via XML through a non-Adobe app this metadata can get lost, resulting in Premiere duplicating all of the existing media in the project upon import.

Here's how to prevent that:

Create a new, temporary Premiere project. Because Premiere can only open one project at once, your current project will close.
Import the XML file into the temporary project and save it. Relink any files that need it.
Reopen your main project.
Click the Media Browser tab at the bottom left and browse to the location of the temporary project on your hard drive.Â Select it and after Dynamic Link has loaded, the contents of the temporary project will appear in the Media Browser.
Navigate to your imported sequence and double-click it to load it in the Source Monitor in the top left.
Drag the video from the Source Monitor into your project / bin to import it into the project. Premiere may reimport certain things like titles but your media files will not be duplicated.

ARRI Alexa dailies workflow with DaVinci Resolve 12

Mon, 1 Feb 2016 05:27:44 +0000

I've been working on a feature film shot on the ARRI Alexa and Alexa Mini and had to come up with a workflow for syncing and rendering out dailies. DaVinci Resolve 12 proved useful because all of the prep work could be done in one application all at once, with the added bonus of being able to roundtrip again after picture lock.

Step 1: Offloading

I used our very own Auto Transfer tool to offload the memory cards to two hard drives at once with checksum authentication to ensure the copies were identical to the source files. The media files were then backed up to LTO tape at the end of the day.

Step 2: Organize and sync clips

In Resolve 12, create a new project, then go to File > Project Settings and switch off Use local version for new clips in timeline from the Color page. This will be important later on.

Then bring the video and audio files into your Media Pool and organize them in whatever manner makes sense to you. I chose to create bins for each scene (be careful what names you choose for the bins).

On this particular movie no audio was shot in-camera so the only way to automatically sync audio and video is by timecode. Select the video and audio files in your bin, right-click and choose Auto-sync Audio Based on Timecode.

In theory this is all you should need to do to get perfect sync, but in practice timecode can drift or it may be set incorrectly (or not at all) in the camera or sound recorder.

An additional reason for splitting things into bins is because if you are shooting time-of-day timecode, you may have multiple clips with the same timecode that could confuse Resolve and cause it to sync clips up to audio from a different scene.

In the event that the audio is not synced correctly, open the video in the viewer, scrub to the exact frame that the slate hits on and write down the timecode for that frame. Then open up the audio file and stop it on the exact frame that you hear the clap of the slate (in a lot of cases this will be an obvious short spike in the waveform towards the beginning of the file). Then right-click the audio file in the Media Pool and select Clip Attributes. In the Timecode pane, enter the timecode from the video you noted down earlier. Then repeat the earlier step of selecting the video and audio files, right-clicking and choosing Auto-sync Audio Based On Timecode again.

(If you can't hear the slate, go to the Audio pane of Clip Attributes and make sure your extra audio channels aren't muted.)

This will modify the timecode of the audio file so it can then be matched up automatically. You may be wondering why automatic matching is so important when you could just manually sync clips in a sequence. There is an important reason for this that will be clear later on.

Now select all the video clips then right-click and select Create Timeline Using Selected Clips.

Step 3: Grading

Open the timeline then switch to the Color tab and grade the clips as you normally would.

Step 4: Render

In the Deliver tab, choose the Individual source clips option under Render timeline as and Use source filename under Save as. This will export each clip in the sequence as an individual movie file with the sameÂ filename as its original source file - this is important to make it easy to reconnect back to the high-res source files later. Because these are offline clips we're rendering as ProRes Proxy to keep file sizes small but keeping the resolution the same as the source files.

This is why it was necessary to auto-sync the clips in the earlier step. I could find no way to manually sync audio clips and then link the audio back to the original source file. That synchronization will only exist in the sequence itself and is ignored if you choose the Individual Source Clips option.

Mark in and out points on the timeline at the bottom of the Deliver page to make sure it's going to render out all of the clips, then click Add to Queue. It's easiest to queue up lots of sequences and render them all out in one go.

Step 5: Edit

Import the rendered proxy files into the NLE of your choice and edit.

Step 6: Roundtripping back to Resolve

After editorial, export an XML from your NLE and reimport back into your Resolve project.Â (With Avid you need to export an AAF and things become a bit more complicated but this is covered in the user manual.)

On the Load XML dialog, deselect Automatically import clips into media pool (because they already exist in the media pool) and deselect Use color information if you edited in FCPX. Then click Ok.

Resolve should present you with a timeline from your NLE, however often things will not translate fully and need to be fixed. A great way to do this is to render out the full sequence from your NLE and then navigate to it in the media pool's browser. Right-click the file and select Add as Offline Reference Clip. Then right-click the timeline in the media pool window and select Timelines > Link Offline Reference Clip and choose the clip you just added.

Switch to the Edit pane and click the icon that looks like a filmstrip underneath the left-hand viewer. Choose Offline and Resolve will show the file you rendered from your NLE. You can then scrub through or play your timeline and it will show the reference clip alongside the corresponding frame of your timeline so you can compare them.

If any clips are offline you can right-click the timeline in the browser and select Timelines > Reconform from Bin(s), then select the bins with your source media. If the clips still won't reconnect, select the relevant clip in the media pool then right-click the offline clip in the timeline and choose Force Conform with Selected Media Pool Clip.

(At this point you may want to media-manage the timeline onto another drive to save disk space but I opted not to.)

Now go to the Color tab. If you don't see the grades you did previously, select all of the clips (you may need to click the Clips button at the top to see them) then right-click and choose Use Remote Grades (you may need to right-click again and choose Update All Thumbnails to see the changes).

Because you switched off local grades by default at the start of the project your grades were remote, which means they will stick across different timelines and if you adjust the grade of a clip, any other copies of it on your timeline (and throughout the project) will also be updated. In some cases this may not be desired, so you can right-click and choose Copy Remote Grades to Local so that your changes only apply to that specific instance of the clip.

Step 7: Sending back to the NLE

After grading you'll probably need to send it back to your NLE again for titling and syncing with the finished audio. You can do this one of two ways: export each clip individually like in Step 4 and then reconnect in your NLE (media managing before doing so will help a lot) or render out a single QuickTime file of the entire timeline. If you don't expect many editorial changes at this point the latter is simpler, which is what I opted for.

Understanding render options in Adobe Premiere Pro

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 19:10:42 +0000

Adobe Premiere Pro's export dialog features several rendering options that are not widely understood. All of them are switched off by default because they either degrade quality or increase rendering times, however they can all be useful in particular situations.

Render at Maximum Depth

This renders content at 32-bit color depth. Very few output formats actually support 32-bit color but processing at this depth can produce better quality for compositing and effects operations before being scaled back to the output format's bit depth. It can reduce or eliminate artifacts and banding in your video but that benefit comes at the cost of an increase in processing time, so only use it when completely necessary.

You may benefit from this option in the following situations:

Your source media has a higher bit depth than the format you are outputting to
Your sequence contains heavy compositing or lots of layered effects (particularly 32-bit color effects)
Your sequence contains very high contrast or very low contrast images (for example subtle gradients)

You can read more about Premiere's color processing here.

Maximum Render Quality

This is a high-quality resize operation that should be used when outputting to a different frame size from your sequence. It can reduce aliasing (jagged edges) when resizing images but is of no use when outputting to the same frame size. This operation significantly increases render times so only use it when resizing.

Frame Blending

This option smooths out juddery motion when exporting to a different frame rate than your sequence. While it may improve motion quality compared to not having it switched on, it's not considered a high quality option. You will probably get better results from exporting with the sequence frame rate and then converting in Adobe Media Encoder, Apple Compressor, a standards-conversion tool like JES Deinterlacer or a hardware conversion device like Teranex.

Use Previews

This results in reduced export times because your sequence render files are used instead of having to re-render the sequence. This is of course assuming that you have a significant amount of your timeline already rendered, which may not be the case if you have a fast computer or your sequence is simple enough to be played back without rendering.

Generally you should not use this option because it is likely to result in reduced image quality, particularly when outputting to a different format from your sequence and also because it will bypass the quality options detailed above. It should only be used where processing time is more important than image quality, such as previews or rough cuts for example, although these are likely to be simple enough that this option doesn't significantly affect processing times.

Useful Avid Console Commands

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 17:14:03 +0000

Avid Media Composer features a little-known Console window that allows you to enter commands to tune performance, improve debugging and enable hidden features. Many of the commands are aimed at plugin developers but here is a list of several that are generally useful.

To access the Console, go to Tools > Console. Note that many commands will need to be re-applied the next time you launch Media Composer.

Allow editing over network drives

By default Avid will only recognize locally-attached hard disks. You can switch off this limitation to enable editing over a network share. Note: do not let others access the project at the same time.

AllDrives 1 - Switches it on
AllDrives 2 - Switches it off

List installed AMA plugins

Displays a list of installed AMA plugins and their version numbers. Plugins can also be enabled, disabled and removed through our Plugin Manager app.

AMA_ListPlugins

Cache audio before playback

Specifies how many seconds of audio to cache before starting playback. If you are getting ADM_COREAUDIO_UNDERRUN or similar errors, you may benefit from increasing this number. You can also decrease it on a fast computer to reduce the time taken to begin playback.

audiopreread [number in seconds]

Set still image default frame duration

When importing an image via the Import dialog the length can only be specified in seconds. This command allows you to specify it down to a frame.

Cmd_setimportslidelength [number in frames]

Conform imported QuickTimes to current sequence frame rate

This applies a rudimentary conform feature by overriding a movie's frame rate with the rate of the project. This can also be done with QT Edit.

IgnoreQTRate 1 - Switches it on
IgnoreQTRate 0 - Switches it off

Cache multicam frames

Multicam playback is very taxing on a computer because it requires the playback of multiple video and audio streams at once. To help improve this you can increase the number of frames Avid caches before playback starts.

multicampreload [number of frames]

Load precomputes into a monitor

Allows precomputes (render files) to be loaded into a monitor for playback and editing. You'll need to make precomputes visible in the bin before you can do this, by going to Bin > Set Bin Display and ticking Rendered Effects.

subsys monpane debug

Set timecode break threshold

This sets the interval at which to detect timecode breaks, in frames. Setting it to a high number might miss some timecode breaks; setting it to a low number might cause false positives. The default is 6.

TCBreakTolerance [a number between 2 and 12]

Toggle between PSF and progressive

Outputs video as Progressive Segmented Frames (PSF) instead of pure Progressive. Useful for compatibility with certain displays that don't support Progressive at higher resolutions or frame rates.

TogglePSF 1 - Switches PSF on
TogglePSF 0 - Switches Progressive on

Fixing missing database errors in DaVinci Resolve

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 16:09:35 +0000

Upon launching DaVinci Resolve you may see the following error:

"Resolve did not locate a compatible or upgradable database."

Clicking past it shows an empty project view.

There are several possible causes including database corruption but a common one is caused by your PostgreSQL database being too large. This can cause PostgreSQL to request more shared memory than is allowed by OS X or Linux.

To determine the exact error on OS X, you can launch the Start Server app in your /Applications/PostgreSQL folder. If it fails to launch it will show an error message after about a minute or so. On Ubuntu the equivalent command would be sudo service postgresql start.

The error may not have the exact wording shown above but will be labeled "could not created shared memory segment".

There are two ways to fix this problem - either permanently or temporarily until your next reboot. I'd recommend trying the temporary option first because if something goes wrong you can just restart to fix it.

Temporary Fix

1. Enter the following command into the Terminal located in /Applications/Utilities:

sudo sysctl -w kern.sysv.shmmax=41943040

You'll need to enter your admin password after typing this.

2. Launch the Start Server app or type sudo service postgresql start on Ubuntu. If all went well, it should not report an error and Resolve should be able to see the database when you relaunch it.

3. If you still get an error, try the command again with a higher value then repeat Step 2. The memory limit is specified in bytes so multiply the number of megabytes by 1024 twice. PostgreSQL documentation recommends you use 1/4 of the available memory for this, although I was able to get it working with much less.

Permanent Fix

1. Back up the file /etc/sysctl.conf.

2. Use the following command to edit the file:

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

3. Add the following line (or edit it if it already exists):

kern.sysv.shmmax=41943040

4. Press Ctrl + O to save the file, then reboot.

5. Resolve should now be able to see the database. If it can't, try increasing the memory limit further and reboot.

If you get into problems and your system refuses to boot, either boot into safe mode or use target disk mode to copy the backup file and then reboot.

Buy OS X 10.8 while you still can

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 16:17:39 +0000

While Apple recently instituted a policy of offering older versions of an app to users on older versions of iOS, it does not have the same policy on the Mac App Store and has so far given no indication that it will make older versions of OS X available upon the release of Mavericks. Consequently, the moment OS X 10.9 is released (possibly tomorrow), OS X 10.8 is likely to cease to be available for purchase.

Sometimes it can be difficult to juggle the OS compatibility of multiple third-party applications, particularly if you are still using deprecated apps in your workflows (e.g. FCP 7). So even if you have no plans to install it any time soon, we'd recommend buying OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on the App Store today so that you have it tied to your account for future use.

Update: While 10.7 and 10.8 are no longer available for direct purchase from the Mac App Store, Apple is now offering redemption codes for OS X 10.7 and OS X 10.8 on its main online store.

Bugs of the Week - 10-20-13

Mon, 21 Oct 2013 04:03:34 +0000

Here's another installment of bugs in your NLE you should know about.

Premiere

Premiere will crash if you adjust the border on a wipe transition

Contiguous clips in an EDL will be imported without cuts (Avid has this behavior too but FCP 7 doesn't)

Media files corrupted by "Write XMP ID to Files on Import" feature (I always switch this off - it's damaged too many files to risk it)

Durations are wrong, nests must be pre-rendered

Crash when importing multichannel AVI files created by Blackmagic Media Express

TickTime error can occur on media where Interpret Footage is activated

It's better to license CS6 and CC on different Adobe IDs

Avid

Bins in subfolders move about as you navigate the project

Media creation setting not sticking for NTSC projects

Splitting stereo audio to dual mono may result in two A1 tracks

Background processing may not work if your DNS setup is incorrect

Perian can cause files to fail transcoding

How to sync metadata between QuickTime movies

Mon, 14 Oct 2013 16:17:32 +0000

It's common nowadays for videos to be processed through one or more applications prior to editorial. Unfortunately that can result in camera metadata being stripped from the processed files. This can cause lots of problems later on if you need to relink back to the original files for grading.

QT Edit solves this by letting you import metadata from another QuickTime movie. Here's how to do it:

1. Open up the destination movie.

2. Go to File > Import > Metadata. Browse for the camera original source file.

3. Select the metadata items you'd like to import or just import all metadata from the source file.

4. Save the destination file.

Being able to choose the metadata that is imported allows you to copy metadata fields between files even if the source file isn't the camera original version. Metadata can be added, removed or edited after import.

Pro Media Tools helps studios, production companies and freelancers alike forge new workflows every day. To find out more view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Bugs of the Week - 9-15-13

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 03:04:39 +0000

After a long break, our list of NLE bugs you should know about is back.

Putting a blur filter on interlaced footage softens it, even if the blur is set to 0%. Softening also occurs in progressive but it's much less noticeable (thanks Andy).

FCP 7

When cutting multicam, switching angles after adding a 3rd party transition will cause a cut at the end of the transition and the rest of the clip will revert to a normal clip type. (from Strypes)

Avid Codec Guide

Mon, 15 Jul 2013 17:38:01 +0000

Avid Media Composer and Symphony ship with a wide range of old and modern codecs. They can also be downloaded free of charge for systems without Avid products installed.

SD codecs

Avid DV - SD codec used when exporting DV material
Avid MPEG2 50 - SD codec for MPEG 30, 40 or 50 material
Avid Meridien Compressed - SD codec for compressed material
Avid Meridien Uncompressed - SD codec used for 1:1 OMF outputs

Meridien Compressed has various compression ratios ranging from 2:1 (36 Mbps) to 35:1 (12 Mbps).

SD / HD codecs

Avid 1:1x * - 8-bit lossless 4:2:2 codec that produces very large file sizes
Avid Packed - Essentially the same as 1:1x except it supports 10-bit media
Avid RGBPacked - RGB version of the Packed codec
Avid DV100 - HD codec used for exporting DV100 media

* x normally refers to 10-bit codecs but in the case of Avid 1:1x it was used to designate MXF during the transition away from OMF

DNxHD Codecs

DNxHD is the most likely codec to be used in Media Composer. Each variant is named according to bitrate and bit depth, so for example DNxHD 120 means it's a 120 Mb/s 8-bit codec and DNxHD 185x means it's a 185 Mb/s 10-bit codec (the x indicates 10-bit).

Offline Codecs

DNxHD 36
DNxHD 60
DNxHD 80
DNxHD 90

Medium Quality Codecs

DNxHD 100
DNxHD 115
DNxHD 120

Mastering Codecs

DNxHD 145
DNxHD 175
DNxHD 185
DNxHD 185x
DNxHD 220
DNxHD 220x
DNxHD 440
DNxHD 440x

Similar Bitrate Codecs

Try to choose a codec that matches the bitrate of your acquisition format. All codec bitrates are calculated at 23.98 fps.

DNxHD 36 - DV, IMX40, XDCAM EX, XDCAM HD
DNxHD 60 - DV50, IMX50, Apple Intermediate @ 1080, XDCAM HD422
DNxHD 100 - AVC Intra 100, Cineform 444 @ 720, Digibeta
DNxHD 115 - Cineform 422 @ 1080
DNxHD 120 - DVCPRO HD, Motion JPEG @ 1080
DNxHD 145 - HDCAM
DNxHD 220 - Sony SR Lite
DNxHD 440 - Uncompressed 422 10-bit @ 720, Sony SR SQ, HDCAM SR

Approximate ProRes equivalents

All codec bitrates are calculated at 1080p 23.98 fps.

ProRes Proxy - DNxHD 36
ProRes LT - DNxHD 80
ProRes 422 - DNxHD 115
ProRes HQ - DNxHD 175x
ProRes 4444 - DNxHD 440x (444) (although ProRes 444 is actually closer in bandwidth to DNxHD 220)

Other variants

Avid Media Composer 6 and higher can also wrap ProRes in an MXF wrapper. This is only available on the Mac version of Media Composer.

Calculating storage space

Our online calculator will calculate storage space for some of these but our Mac and iOS calculators have more options and codecs.

Bugs of the Week - 6-30-13

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 20:13:18 +0000

Here's another installment of critical, useful or bizarre bugs in your NLE that you should know about.

Adobe Premiere

Multicam edits switch angles when relaunching a project in Premiere CC (probably best to do multicam edits in CS6 for now)

More multicam quirks

Update 7-1-13: Adobe has posted a candid response to the multicam bugs.

Match frame may not match to the correct clip

New NVIDIA Quadro driver can improve Lumetri effects processing (Windows)

Keyboard Shortcut panel is blank

Audio dropouts, possibly due to image sequences

Pressing M twice in the source panel adds a second marker instead of editing the first

Visual corruption when playing XDCAM media

Several reports of Effects Panel lag

Premiere CC still losing render files

Timecode is not preserved when sending to SpeedGrade

Labels can disappear in CS6

Importing media files first and then importing an XML can prevent freezes for large XML files

Avid

Media Composer 7 released

Not all AMA plugins are compatible with MC7. Here's a list

You may need to start background services manually for them to work

You may need to refresh autosequenced clips that have LUTs on them for the LUTs to show

Cannot scroll timeline horizontally with mouse wheel / trackpad

Reports of trim lag continue in MC 7

Scaled audio meter shows incorrect values

Media Composer 7 doesn't apply proper pulldown when converting frame rates

Dynamic Media Folders do not work correctly with audio files

Matrox Mini / MXO2 aren't officially supported in MC7 yet but they appear to still work

MC7 still can't export native ProRes media to an AAF

RED AMA plugin installer lacks a .pkg extension

Mark In / Out keys go to in and out points instead of marking them

Adobe Media Encoder

AME will pause encoding if Premiere starts playing

After Effects

After Effects is not compatible with OS X 10.9

Bugs of the Week - 6-22-13

Sun, 23 Jun 2013 00:10:17 +0000

After a bit of a hiatus, Bugs of the Week is back again.

Premiere

Like any major software update, Premiere Pro CC has several new and exciting bugs.

Fix for CC applications crashing immediately

Adjustment Layers may not affect nested multicam sequences

Color Curve Tool clips luma at 100%

Matrox Mini is not yet supported in Premiere CC

Changing the compatibility mode to Vista could fix situations where Premiere won't load (Windows)

Trick for installing Adobe apps in multiple languages

Audio gets cut off at the end of a clip

Audio waveform sync doesn't work with one camera angle and multiple audio files. Here's a workaround.

The CC installer doesn't not contain Functional Content

Adobe Encore is not part of Creative Cloud but here's how to get it if you don't have a perpetual license of CS6

Fix for Cineform clips being the wrong duration (Windows)

Premiere may not boot for some Windows users with old graphics drivers

Premiere CC no longer creates a new sequence with a new project (this is probably a good thing but it's causing some confusion)

Cannot sort clips by creation date

Clip Mixer levels can reset when stopping playback

Avid

Media Composer 6.5.3 released with lots of fixes

Media Composer 6.0.4 released. Among the usual bug fixes, it also includes a new XML export option for markers.

Workaround for failure rotation stabilizer failure in the 3DWarp effect

Repeated frames on QuickTime imports

Performing a mixdown instead of transcoding can sometimes prevent gamma shifts

Dongle Manager may not launch if permissions are incorrect

OS X

Apple finally fixed a bug we reported a year ago that prevented certain apps from opening QuickTime movies that did not have a chapter marker on the first frame. We've been working around it but it is now fixed in OS X 10.8.4 so we recommend updating.

5 hidden features in Adobe Premiere CS6

Mon, 27 May 2013 19:33:42 +0000

Adobe Premiere Pro has a little-known Console window that provides access to hidden functions. To access it, press Cmd+F12 on the Mac or Ctrl+F12 on the PC. You may have to also hold down Fn on a laptop.

A blank window will appear. Click the dropdown button in the top right and select Debug Database View.

A list of various hidden options will appear. Here are five useful things you can do with it.

Enable the Time Warp filter

Adobe disabled the Time Warp filter in CS5 and subsequent versions. If you still want to use it, change TimeWarpFilterEnabled to true then relaunch Premiere.

Suppress peak file generation

Peak files allow Premiere to cache waveform information so that it doesn't need to be regenerated every time the project opens. However, these files take up space on disk and the peak file generation process can take time for certain formats. If you'd like to disable peak file generation, change SuppressPeakFileGeneration to true.

Display out of sync indicators

When you unlink video and audio and then adjust it, Premiere does not show that the clips are out of sync. You can enable that by setting TL.SupportsUnlikedSyncIndicators to true.

Note: this only appears to work on video clips that were imported with audio attached, rather than clips where the audio was manually linked.

Apply QuickTime gamma level

This respects the gamma level of the QuickTime movie as specified in its gama atom (you can add this in QT Edit). To switch it on, set QTUseSourceGammaLevel to true.

Hide Adobe Media Encoder presets

You can hide the list of AME presets that appear in the Export dialog by setting AME.EnablePresetDB to true (yes, this is counter-intuitive).

Bugs of the Week - 5-4-13

Sat, 4 May 2013 04:54:44 +0000

Another installment of our weekly list of serious, useful and unusual bugs in your NLE.

Premiere

Audio dropouts can occur if caches are not stored on the system drive

Text cannot be dynamically linked to After Effects

Avid

Workarounds for sending audio from Media Composer to Adobe Audition

You cannot use the arrow keys to audition fonts in Marquee on the Mac

FCPX

Lots of people getting the "share operation Master File has failed" error

Bugs of the Week - 4-26-13

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 01:15:50 +0000

Here's another installment of our weekly list of critical, useful and bizarre bugs in your editing system.

Avid

Some of the test patterns with ship with Media Composer are wrong

The "ignoreqtrate" command is broken in 6.5.2 but fixed in 6.5.2.1

Workspaces may not save on dual-monitor systems

Some users may be having problems downloading from the My Products page

Premiere

CUDA operates in linear color space so you can get gamma shifts with media imported from After Effects and other applications

Switching third-party plugins to CPU rendering can in some cases boost rendering performance

Resetting a custom keyboard layout can sometimes fix the "LinkContainer" error

FCPX

Lots of reports of export failures in 10.0.8

Bugs of the Week - 4-19-13

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 03:12:41 +0000

After a long NAB-related hiatus, Bugs of the Week is back with a listing of serious, useful or bizarre bugs you should know about.

Premiere

Explanation / workaround for "TickTime" error

Text rendering differences in software / hardware modes

How to batch export to Adobe Media Encoder

Avid

Workspaces not saving

FCP 7

Ghost exports

OS X

OS X 10.8.3 breaks CUDA and OpenCL

Bugs of the Week - 3-2-13

Sat, 2 Mar 2013 20:23:03 +0000

Here's another rundown of critical, strange and useful bugs in your NLE.

Premiere

Blu-ray presets incompatible with Scenarist

Workspace completely disappeared

Workarounds for seeing live scopes during playback

Premiere cannot accept broadcast waves larger than 4 GB

Premiere does not currently support the XAVC codec

Gain adjustments are not included in OMFs

Avid

The latest Mac Minis are now qualified for 6.5.2

Workflow for dealing with Davinci Resolve's new clip naming system in version 9

More tips on dealing with clip names in Resolve 9

Changing sequence timecode start modifies the timecode of imported clips

Button configuration can reset after relaunching the app

Trimming in audio mode can switch you back to edit mode

Changing dissolve duration causes dissolve to occur past the edit point

Certain flavors of H.264 can produce green frames when brought in via AMA

FCPX

Only the first channel of a multichannel audio interface is recorded

FCP 7

Audio issues after Flip4Mac upgrade

Bugs of the Week - 2-15-13

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:12:09 +0000

Here's another installment of our weekly selection of serious, useful and bizarre bugs in your NLE.

Avid

Playback issues with non-standard variable GOP AVCHD media

How to temporarily disable your Blackmagic card

How to prevent adjacent clips from being merged in EDL Manager

Premiere

Audio corruption with Denoiser filter
(I too have experienced issues with this filter and have stopped using it)

Cannot export a frame from the program monitor if an audio-only sequence is open on another monitor

Hold shift to snap to an edit point when dragging the playhead

FCPX

Performance comparison between different apps playing an H.264 file
(the strange part is that QuickTime Player and FCPX both use AV Foundation)

OS X

You cannot hold down Option at startup to boot from a recovery partition on a Fusion drive

Bugs of the Week - 2-10-13

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:51:56 +0000

We're back with more serious and unusual bugs in your NLE.

Avid

Workaround for Avid bins opening off screen

Cannot change bin capitalization

New iMacs qualified for MC 6.5.2

Premiere

Premiere has no continuous rasterization function so scaling of vectors may not be high quality

Walking away from the computer without saving the project will eventually fill up your Autosave Vault with identical copies
(this is where Pro Versioner can help)

Video playback may not work with the Blackmagic 9.7 driver

Mono tracks may be quieter than stereo tracks

FCPX

Performance issues with the new 27" iMac

Workaround for flash frames in FCPX 10.0.6+

Encore

Embedded Premiere chapter markers can sometimes cause an Encore burn to fail

Compressor

Certain frame sizes with a watermark make jobs fail

Misc

Typing a specific text string can crash almost any app on OS X 10.8

Bugs of the Week - 1-27-13

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:54:43 +0000

Another installment of serious, useful and bizarre bugs in your NLE.

Avid

QuickTime movies with timecode tracks do not work correctly with Fast Start

DISK_TOO_MANY_OPEN error on ISIS could be caused by invisible OS X system files

Select Project window cannot be resized to show long filenames

Users still experiencing lag with third party I/O cards

Unable to rename template items in Marquee

Premiere

The timeline doesn't play back (CS Repair can fix this)

Blend effect does not work well with retimed clips

Error 213:11 if permissions are incorrect (Windows)

No way to customize the autosave location (Pro Versioner helps with this)

Keyboard timeline navigation sometimes stops working

DNxHD clips exported from Avid in 601/709 space will need a level adjustment before they will display correctly in Premiere

Several Blackmagic users reporting playback issues

Premiere does not allow Firewire output when hardware MPE is active

FCPX

Final Cut Pro X hangs when loading a project

Tips for color correcting with dual viewers

Misc

I suddenly feel better about Avid's cryptic errors

Final Cut Pro X hangs when loading a project

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:17:54 +0000

Some of you may have experienced the beachball of death when FCPX tries to load a project and eventually resorted to force-quitting the app.

In most cases, the app hasn't hung at all but is just taking a really long time to open the project. If you leave it long enough (8-12 hours) it should eventually open. We recommend running our Project Repair tool to optimize the project file before doing this, as the optimization process lowers the file size and can shave off some loading time.

The reason it is taking so long is that the project has become too complex. A common cause of this is over-use of compound clips, especially compound clips inside multiclips. I have seen this lead to multi-gigabyte project files, even though the timeline was only a few minutes long.

Once the project opens successfully, begin the process of removing the compound clips. FCPX will hang for a short while whenever you try to do anything, but as you reduce the number of compound clips it will become more and more responsive.

Bugs of the Week - 1-19-13

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 19:32:50 +0000

After a little hiatus, Bugs of the Week is back with more serious, interesting or unusual bugs for your NLE.

Premiere

Premiere doesn't have a disk-based thumbnail cache so all thumbnails need to be regenerated upon opening a project

Premiere has a 99 track limit which limits the number of possible layers in a PSD file

You cannot move a clip by typing in numbers if your keyboard doesn't have a numpad

Dip to White start value is ignored with CUDA acceleration enabled

Speech recognition modifies the script

If Premiere crashes and won't relaunch, check that the process is no still running (Windows)

Trick for match-framing to a sequence in a nest

Avid

Summary of some of the changes in Media Composer 6.5.2 (improved trimming performance is huge if true)

Surround channels can be incorrectly assigned when imported from Pro Tools

Blue color shift with Avid FX

Misc

Thunderbolt devices can be disrupted by mobile phone signals (apparently this can also affect FireWire)

Bugs of the Week - 12-9-12

Sun, 9 Dec 2012 19:10:48 +0000

Here are some more critical, useful and bizarre bugs that you should know about.

Premiere Pro

Canon C300 spanned clips can be merged in the wrong order

Premiere processes all audio clips in a sequence, even when only exporting a small section

Clip markers disappear after reconnecting media

Several reports of render files disappearing

Premiere may not load after updating QuickTime to 7.7.3 (Win 7)

H.264 CBR is not constant

Incorrect in and out points in subclips when importing FCP XML

Premiere hangs when opening a project on a computer with fewer monitors than the one it was saved on

Unable to name a captured clip if capture is stopped

Switching to "H.264 for Blu-ray" preset causes bitrate option to disappear

Audio out of sync when exported as AAC

Positions in the title editor are relative to the center of the object so it is difficult to line up left/right aligned text

FCPX

FCPX 10.0.7 released with several major bug fixes

You may experience problems running plugins and Motion templates created for 10.0.6 on earlier versions

Upside-down frames from plugins not fixed in 10.0.7

Cannot eject external drives while FCPX is running

Several reports of frames not being shown in the timeline

FCP 7

How to Fix Red Exclamation Mark Error in FCP7 Log & Transfer

Bugs of the Week - 12-1-12

Sun, 2 Dec 2012 07:21:09 +0000

Another installment of our weekly list of serious, useful and bizarre bugs in your NLE that you should know about.

Premiere

Potential fix for slow playback

Project Manager does not copy spanned AVCHD clips

Titler adjustment handles invisible on white backgrounds

Timeline scrolling with the scrollwheel slower in CS6

CUDA crashes on Windows 7 (includes lots of tips and a registry tweak)

Premiere crash when sending merged clips to Audition

Avid

Trick for getting Avid to ignore a drive

Bins can appear off-screen when opening a project created on a system with a larger monitor

You may need to delete the AVCHD AMA plugin before updating to a newer version

System audio can only be heard if Avid is active

Fix for "expand luminance range for computer displays" not working

FCPX

New AJA Kona drivers with support for automatic FCPX event creation

Green flashes can occur if FCPX drops frames

"Cannot save changes" error appears when using third-party plugins

Cannot switch to other clips after applying settings in the Inspector

Lots of reports of sharing problems, primarily when burning DVDs

Several reports of audio turning red in the timeline

FCP 7

With the playhead on the clip, hitting Option + Down Arrow on a clip collision causes the clip to shift one pixel down - Strypes

Bugs of the Week - 11-25-12

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 02:22:33 +0000

Here's another installment of our weekly list of critical, useful or bizarre bugs that you should know about.

Premiere

Solution for being unable to play back on second monitor

Video freezes when a transition is used on an adjustment layer

Projects sometimes forget audio configuration

Premiere sometimes loses Dynamic-Linked renders

Avid

Problems syncing stereoscopic EDLs

Alpha channels not recognized in ProRes 4444 media with MC 6.5

Windows tool for fixing DISK_ACCESS_DENIED errors

Crash on startup if you are using a case-sensitive formatted hard drive

FCPX

Workaround for setting in and out points in the new Import window

FCPX sometimes deletes media when you try to relink it

Text may be rendered incorrectly

Bugs of the Week - 11-16-12

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 19:20:12 +0000

Another installment of our (semi-) weekly list of important, interesting or unusual bugs in popular NLEs.

Premiere

Many people reporting problems with NVIDIA driver 306.97 for the GTX285 on Windows

Corrupt JPEG headers can cause Premiere to reference the wrong file

The Encore process doesn't stop when quitting Encore on Windows

Premiere crashes when you reanalyze a clip with the Warp Stabilizer effect switched off

To export H.264 video in higher than 1080p resolutions, you must be using H.264 Level 5.0 or 5.1

Premiere crashes if dynamically-linked applications are not closed before it exits

Workflow notes from an FCP switcher, including several bugs and workarounds

Avid

Media Composer 6.0.3.2 released

Several complaints about waveform drawing times

New Blackmagic 9.6.8 driver improves Media Composer 6.0.3.2 trimming performance

Media Composer doesn't remember settings when outputting more than 8 audio channels

Symphony appears to use 12-bit data for color correction when a ProRes 4444 file is fast imported

AMA can sometimes misinterpret and clamp luma levels from some QuickTime sources

Issue with Avid only keeping a few copies of a bin in the Attic (Pro Versioner can help with this):

FCPX

10.0.6 stability discussion

Many threads about 10.0.6 users being unable to Share or it being very slow

Exported audio levels not matching audio meters

Several threads about reduced responsiveness in 10.0.6

Titles may be shortened when uploading to Vimeo if they contain an ampersand

Encore

Here's one I had myself this week - encoding an H.264 for Blu-ray and an MPEG-2 for DVD in Adobe Media Encoder from the same ProRes 4444 source resulted in them being labelled as different lengths by both QuickTime Player and Encore. However, they both had the same start point and end point, were the same frame rate and the audio matched up perfectly so it would appear to be an issue with how the duration was reported. The strange part was that it occurred even after I re-encoded the file in Compressor.

The reason this was a problem is because Encore has a great feature where you can link Blu-ray and DVD media to create both types of disc from the same project. However, this feature relies on both files being of identical length. In the end my workaround was to simply duplicate the project and create a separate copy for the DVD version.

FCP 7

Autosaves not appearing in interface after restart

Trick for quickly revealing a sequence in the browser

Cinema Tools

Cinema Tools expects certain fields to use alphanumeric characters only

Bugs of the Week - 11-2-12

Fri, 2 Nov 2012 19:42:37 +0000

Here's your second installment this week of critical, interesting or bizzare issues you should know about.

Avid

MC 6.5.0.1 released with XDCAM Edit While Capture support and several AMA improvements

New Sony AMA plugins to support the new XDCAM features of 6.5.0.1

Trick for improving Avid shared storage workflows

MC 6.5 requires less RAM for stereoscopic workflows

Subcap cuts off text

Discussion about the best Blackmagic drivers to use for Avid

Premiere

Reveal in Finder not working in OS X 10.8.2

Exporting MP4s without audio creates M4Vs that are unreadable in most apps

FCPX

Issues with third-party plugins showing upside down frames

Bugs of the Week - 10-30-12

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 17:55:54 +0000

We missed last week's post and were going to combine them with this week's, however Apple released FCPX 10.0.6 which introduced new bugs that we wanted people to be aware of.

Premiere

Issues moving clips with a pen / tablet (via Strypes)

Dynamic link failure caused by RelevantKnowledge malware (Windows)

Changing the scale causes playback corruption

Wrong interface fonts

Audio offline after sending to Prelude

FCPX

FCPX 10.0.6 released

Many third party plugins have rendering issues

The Offset option has been removed from the Letterbox effect

Memory usage has been reduced

Several reports of FCPX insisting on dual-layer DVD media unnecessarily

You cannot search in the new Import dialog

Blu-ray and Export using Compressor Setting have been moved to the Add Destination section of the Share window

Color picker stops functioning with multiple layers

You need to Break Apart Clip Items twice if you have dual mono audio

Core Image filters have been removed from Motion 5.0.5

FCPX 10.0.6 renders a lot faster

Duplicate backups can cause FCPX to be unable to save your project

Avid

ISIS client 4.2 beta with OS X 10.8 support

Title tool goes opaque the second time you launch it

New Canon AMA plugin

Bugs of the Week - 10-19-12

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:43:14 +0000

Here's another installment of our weekly list of serious, interesting or bizarre bugs in various NLEs.

Premiere Pro

Blackmagic 9.6.6 drivers may reduce Premiere latency

Several users are reporting the inability to send clips to Audition after installing the latest Dynamic Link update

Workaround for Premiere not exporting to Media Encoder queue

Reference window will now update when RGB Color Corrector is applied to a clip

Workaround for audio clips turning red when loading a project

Audio channel limitations for various containers

Avid

OS X 10.7.5 and 10.8.2 now qualified for MC and Symphony 6.5

Media Composer 6.5 stability discussion

Bugs of the Week - 10-12-12

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:24:52 +0000

Here's another pick of series, interesting or useful bugs we came across this week.

Premiere

Can't export to QuickTime H.264 or DNxHD (Windows)

Subclip descriptions set in Prelude do not show up in Premiere

Fix for Premiere Pro "Media Pending" error

Avid

Moving the playhead in QuickTime Player changes the source timecode

Fix for DISK_FILE_ALREADY_EXISTS error on Unity

Dupes are detected on effect tracks

After Effects

After Effects CS6 11.0.2 released with bug fixes and new CUDA GPU support

Compressor

Fix for Compressor 3.5 crashing at startup

Weekend Reads - 10-5-12

Fri, 5 Oct 2012 23:41:36 +0000

Adobe Programs Explained

Ever wondered what each tool in Creative Suite does? Here's a great summary.

How to build a Thunderbolt Hackintosh

A guide to building a faster Mac Pro with Thunderbolt for half the price.

Smoke ConnectFX: Damage and Deform Nodes

Great overview of two useful nodes in Smoke 2013.

DNG 1.4 Specification Notes

This is an overview of changes in the new DNG specification. DNG is an open alternative to proprietary raw still image formats such as Canon CR2 and Adobe offers a free DNG converter.

Performance Enhancing Visual Effects Techniques

List of various VFX techniques to enhance an actor's performance or improve story clarity. I seem to do #7 a lot, often having to add establishing shots or remove entire characters from the movie.

What could the new Mac Pro look like?

I'm not convinced Apple will go for a modular Mac Pro design (and the jury's still out on whether the Mac Pro will ever be updated) but it's an interesting and well-designed proposal regardless.

Bugs of the Week - 10-5-2012

Fri, 5 Oct 2012 22:27:07 +0000

We've got more important, useful and bizarre bugs this week that you should know about.

Avid

A fix for the hang when scanning media folders is coming in 6.0.3.2

Various issues with ExFAT drives

Avid FX installer does not install the Avid FX plugin by default

Issues with AMA linking 24p CanonXF files

Despite what it says on Avid's site, the Artist Color only fully supports MC 6 and higher

Premiere

New Mac NVIDIA drivers improve CUDA stability

Audio goes offline after pasting clips from another project

Application windows may appear offscreen if you disconnect a monitor (Windows but may affect Mac too)

Playback stops several frames after you pressed Space

Tip: to enable CUDA support, delete the entire cuda_supported_cards.txt file instead of editing it

QuickTime HDV file issues in Premiere Pro CS6 for Windows

FCPX

Various issues with standard definition media

Compressor

Green bar when Frame Controls are switched on

Bugs of the Week - 9-29-12

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 01:45:27 +0000

Here's more important, useful and bizarre bugs that we discovered this week.

Avid

Media Composer and Symphony 5.5.3.5 released

MC launches slowly unless network access is disabled

Effect changes in MC 5 and 6

'Online Resources' window hangs Avid

Typing too quickly in Subcap causes characters to be swapped

Workaround for unsupported foreign characters in Marquee

Bin memory drops to 0%

Canon EOS clips appear blank when Perian is installed

Workaround for "Audio has attempted to overrun its buffers" error when capturing

Premiere

Adobe has released updates for a security issue on Windows

The main problem affecting users of Adobe products is that the code signing certificate will now expire on October 4th, which could cause Windows error messages or problems with anti-virus tools. It is therefore worthwhile installing the updates before October 4th. Mac users do not need to update.

Premiere Pro 6.0.2 fixes the long-standing issue inability to render more than 2.15 GB to a network share

Problems with Adobe Application Manager on Windows showing applications not installed

Workaround for titles not appearing in exports

Retimed clips need to be nested in order to add additional effects to them

FCPX

OpenCL issues with plugins

FCPX does not support straight alpha

Blank viewer window if monitor color profile is incorrect

Weekend Reads - 9-22-12

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 06:04:25 +0000

EQ Settings Guide

Very useful list of frequencies you can equalize to remove or enhance certain elements of the sound.

What are secondary storylines in FCPX and how do you use them?

Macbreak Studio provides a great overview of this useful Final Cut Pro X feature.

Making the switch: Mac to PC

David Bourne on his reasons for switching to a PC.

DaVinci Resolve: Which GPU provides the best acceleration on the Mac Pro?

Radeon GPUs seem to perform poorly with Davinci Resolve when compared with NVIDIA cards.

Demystifying the After Effects CS6 Performance Cache

Overview of the new caching system in CS6 that aims to improve performance.

Little fix to make using Premiere CS6 a little bit better

A set of smaller cursor icons for Premiere Pro CS6 to fix the problem where cursors appear large when zoomed in. Note that you'll probably need to re-add them whenever you install a new Premiere Pro update.

Bugs of the Week - 9-21-12

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:11:47 +0000

Here's another roundup of some of the important, interesting or bizarre bugs we came across this week.

Premiere

Unable to relink to an image sequence from an EDL

Avid

OS X 10.8.1 approved for MC / Symphony 6.0.3.1 and 6.5

FCPX

Background Tasks window not appearing after OS X update

Mac Pro

SuperDrive not appearing when cards are in the third PCI slot

Bugs of the Week - 9-15-12

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 04:41:13 +0000

We've compiled another list of critical, interesting or unusual bugs you should be aware of.

Avid

You can no longer mark in and out to select an audio region for keyframe adjustment in MC 6.5

Clips in bin not staying highlighted

Poor trim speed with hardware

Corrupt audio transitions can throw duplicated sequences out of sync

Premiere Pro

Media Browser keeps scrolling back to the top

Issues with RGB Color Corrector in 6.0.2

Weekend Reads - 9-9-12

Sun, 9 Sep 2012 20:08:41 +0000

H.264: How would you like that wrapped?

Interesting discussion about MP4 vs MOV containers. We recommend MOV for the reasons mentioned in the article and also the fact that it supports timecode tracks.

Why We're Switching from Macs

Freddie Wong details why his company is switching from Mac to PC. He makes some good points and it's the same reason why we're developing for both Mac and Windows now.

Adobe Premiere Pro Plug-In for ARRI RAW

Adobe has released a beta Premiere Pro plugin for ARRI RAW files.

File Naming for Video Editors, Designers and Photographers

Premium Beat provides lots of useful tips for file naming. Our free Post Haste tool is useful at enforcing naming conventions.

EPIC-M Monochrome

RED has introduced a $42k black and white camera. It will be interesting to see how well it sells.

Round Trip between Avid Media Composer and Davinci Resolve

Video tutorial showing how to roundtrip between Media Composer and Resolve. The comments are worth reading too.

Bugs of the Week - 9-9-12

Sun, 9 Sep 2012 19:35:20 +0000

This week we've got more critical, interesting or unusual bugs that you should be aware of.

Premiere Pro

Adobe released Premiere Pro CS 6.0.2 with many bug fixes

Unable to change position / scale of retimed clips

CUDA processing unavailable with multiple monitors

Zooming in the Effects panel doesn't center the playhead if the clip is not at the beginning of the sequence

Premiere doesn't maintain folder structures when importing directories

Maximum bit depth creates strange artifacts

Avid

Avid Media Composer 6.5 released

Here's a list of some of the smaller changes in MC 6.5

A site bug is preventing students from upgrading to MC 6.5. Avid is working on fixing it

Dupe detection disappears when effects are added

Quad split reverts back to single frame when playback stops

DVD Studio Pro

DVD Studio Pro keeps burning an old version of a DVD

Cinema Tools

Fix for Cinema Tools crashing on Lion

Weekend Reads - 9-2-12

Sun, 2 Sep 2012 22:07:18 +0000

Avid AMA Best Practices
This has been a hugely popular post so check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

Anatomy of an iMac Suite
Walter Biscardi details how he built a Premiere Pro iMac editing suite with Small Tree shared storage.

When to use and when not to use Fixed Resolution in Motion 5
Interesting discussion about Motion 5's Fixed Resolution option for imported objects.

Twenty Premiere Pro CS6 Power Tips for FCP Editors
More useful Premiere Pro information from Clay Asbury.

SpeedGrade 6.0.3 Update
Adobe has released a SpeedGrade update with Retina support and various bug fixes.

Smoke 2013 Pre-Release 3
Autodesk has released a new pre-release of Smoke with a big overhaul to the conform workflow.

5 After Effects Tips and Tricks for Video Editors
Excellent tips for navigating in After Effects.

Exporting Low Res QT from Avidâ€¦Fast
Great tip from Shane Ross for quickly exporting low-res QTs in near-realtime with timecode burn-in. Also check out the comments for additional tips.

Bugs of the Week - 9-2-12

Sun, 2 Sep 2012 20:09:37 +0000

This week we've got more serious, unusual or interesting bugs that you should be aware of.

Premiere

Crashes and kernel panics with new CUDA drivers

Workaround for conforming multiclips

Almost invisible interface text

Workaround for keeping handles when sending to After Effects

Avid

Remove Effect also removes locators

Bins start flashing

FCPX

Third-party plugins can conflict if they reference different versions of a third-party framework

FCP 7

Visual distortion in FCP 7 on Mountain Lion

Avid AMA Best Practices

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 22:17:19 +0000

Avid Media Composer traditionally required all media files to be converted to its DNxHD Op-Atom MXF format but recent versions have allowed you to skip this process and import tapeless media instantly. This feature is called Avid Media Access (AMA). Media Composer ships with very few AMA plugins so to support additional camera formats you may need to download and install extra AMA plugins.

Using AMA is not without its pitfalls so here are some ways of reducing problems.

The first thing to determine is if AMA is a viable workflow for your project. It's useful for short projects with a fast turnaround but Avid can get bogged down with longer and more complex sequences, especially where multicam is involved. AMA can be very useful at importing additional metadata so a common workflow is to mount the AMA volume or link to the AMA files and then transcode.
It is recommended that you copy the camera media to another drive before importing. When doing so, make sure to keep the same folder structure and filenames as the original card or Avid may be unable to locate the media files or associated metadata. Auto Transfer is a useful tool for achieving this.
Some AMA plugins may use the same file types, which can cause a conflict if Media Composer doesn't know which plugin to use for a particular file. For example, the ARRI Alexa MXF plugin can conflict with the Avid MXF plugin. When linking to AMA files it is therefore important to specify the exact plugin in the Enable dropdown of the Link to AMA File(s) dialog.
Remember to unmount AMA volumes in Media Composer before unmounting them in the operating system.
AMA uses the Source field to identify the files. Beware of third-party applications that use the Tape Name field instead as they will not be able to relink in Media Composer 5.5 and below. A common workaround is to export an EDL of your sequence and then reimport it and relink. If you are using MC 6, be sure to select Allow relinking between tape and file based media in the Relink dialog.
If you change the tape name or other metadata after transcoding / consolidating, you may be unable to reconnect to the AMA linked clips. Either don't modify the tape name or modify it before transcoding / consolidating.
Using AMA will limit your options when exporting. If you want to export an AAF you will need to transcode to DNxHD. To do this, right-click on your sequence and select Transcode / Consolidate, select the desired DNxHD flavor and tick Create New Sequence. You will now be able to AAF export the new sequence.

Weekend Reads - 8-24-12

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 23:18:27 +0000

In Search of the NLE or How I Love the Search Tool
Strypes reveals the reasons he misses FCP 7's search tool.

5 Reasons to Use Resolve
Clay Asbury gives his main reasons for using DaVinci Resolve instead of grading within your NLE.

WaveTap snags audio on your Mac with a keyboard shortcut
WavTap is a free open source application for recording audio with a keyboard shortcut.

Sony Sound Forge Pro coming soon to the Mac
Sony's great Windows audio software is now coming to the Mac.

Dongles vs software activation
Arguments for and against using dongles in Avid Media Composer.

Closing Multiple Gaps in a Premiere Pro Timeline
Lots of steps but a nifty trick if you've got many gaps to close.

Why it Pays to Submit to Hackers
Behavioral economists analyze why most people don't backup or choose strong passwords.

Camera shutter speed synchronized with helicopter blade frequency [video]
This is apparently what happens when you shoot a helicopter with a fast enough shutter speed.

Bugs of the Week - 8-24-12

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 22:28:32 +0000

One again we've hunted out important, unusual or interesting bugs that you should be aware of.

Avid

MC 6.0.3.1 released to fix issue where Marquee wouldn't launch

Line at edge of video with Use Avid Codec selected

Incompatibilities with stereoscopic AAFs imported into Resolve

AVCHD 50 and 60 unsupported by AMA

Various workarounds for disabling a drive in Avid

Consolidation may not work with NTSC-formatted drives on the Mac

FCPX

Break Apart Clip Items corrupts XML files

Keyboard layout export broken in 10.0.5

OS X

OS X 10.8.1 released but some users still reporting reduced battery life compared to OS X 10.7.4

Greyed out .MOV

I wasn't sure what was causing this so I asked on Twitter and got a variety of replies including camera failure, a full card, ejecting the card too early or an interrupted Finder copy operation. No-one seemed to know for sure so if you've seen this before, please let us know by leaving a comment.

Adobe Dynamic Link troubleshooting

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:54:14 +0000

Dynamic Link is a key selling point of the Adobe suite that many people rely on for their workflows. Here's what to do if it doesn't work as expected. This article is mainly aimed to dynamic linking between After Effects and Premiere but many of the suggestions will apply to the other applications in the suite.

Make sure your compositions have unique names

If you have multiple After Effects projects dynamically-linked in your timeline, Premiere can get confused if the same comp names exist in multiple projects. It's important to name your comps something unique rather than choosing the default "Comp 1" name.

Don't add trailing numbers

Adding trailing numbers to a filename such as "01" or "v02" can interfere with After Effects' Increment and Save function. This can result in the wrong project appearing in your Premiere timeline.

Check your firewall

Your firewall may be preventing the dynamic link process from communicating with the other applications. Make sure your firewall is set to allow all Adobe applications and also the dynamiclinkmanager application located at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/dynamiclink/[CS suite version]/dynamiclinkmanager.

Disable simultaneous frame rendering

Dynamically linked projects do not support the Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously option. If you run into problems with it switched on, switch it off in the Memory and Multiprocessing tab of the preferences window in After Effects (it is off by default).

Clear caches and render files

If you find that the wrong project or composition is showing in your timeline, you may need to trash render files or your media cache in order to get it to display correctly. You can trash the render files by going to Sequence > Delete Render Files and the media cache by going to the Media tab in preferences or by using Pro Maintenance Tools.

Render as a movie file

If you still have problems after trying the steps above, render out the comp to a movie, import into Premiere Pro and replace the linked composition. This will of course remove the dynamic link and the advantages it offers, however you can right-click and choose Edit Original to relaunch the After Effects project if you need to re-render any changes.

Bugs of the Week - 8-17-12

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:10:46 +0000

Once again we've trawled the NLE manufacturer forums to find the serious or just plain weird bugs of the week. Know about them in advance so they don't slow down your workflow.

Premiere

Features and Sequence Presets are missing from Premiere Pro CS6

Bins have to be named twice after dragging clips onto the New Bin button

Cross-dissolves on multicam footage sometimes show the wrong angle

Interesting discussion about clip marker behavior in CS 6

Avid

Marquee is not functional on OS X 10.8 and prevents Avid from shutting down properly

After upgrading to OS X 10.8, Media Composer gives Interplay errors at startup

Reports of lag with new Blackmagic drivers

Interesting discussion about changes to cross-fade behavior

Preference Manager best practices

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:41:30 +0000

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.

Weekend Reads - 8-10-12

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 04:54:24 +0000

50i-to-50p (or 60i-to-60p) double deinterlacing
Interesting workflow for deinterlacing in FCP 7. Instead of FCP's default method of choosing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc fields, it allows you to force the 2nd, 4th, 6th.

Tools Spotlight Interview: Digital Rebellion
I gave an interview with Splice Vine about Digital Rebellion and our new cross-platform strategy.

Adobe promotional pricing about to end
The $29.99/month introductory offer for Adobe Creative Cloud expires at the end of this month.

Making Lion and Mountain Lion more like Snow Leopard
This article details many of the options in OS X 10.7 and 10.8 for restoring 10.6 functionality.

Put colorful Finder icons back in Mountain Lion
Here's how to get rid of the grayscale icons in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Random tweets from Edit Fest LA 2012
Scott Simmons summarizes some of the more interesting aspects of Edit Fest LA.

What's the best way to count clips in my bin?
Lots of different ways of counting clips in an Avid bin.

Bugs of the Week - 8-10-12

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 04:21:52 +0000

Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across in the past week.

Premiere

Audio repeats until the end of the clip if conforming is interrupted

Hover scrub previews appear inverted and upside down

Cannot scroll unless thumbnails have been generated

Orange lines on rendered video (Windows)

Avid

Avid has released Media Composer and Symphony 6.0.3. There are lots of changes including an I/O hardware toggle switch, performance improvements and bin names can now be up to 64 characters in length.

It also supports OS X 10.7.4 and 10.8. It is still not Gatekeeper-compatible so Avid recommends switching off Gatekeeper, installing Media Composer and then switching it back on again. It's also worth noting that ISIS and MediaNetwork don't support OS X 10.8 at all yet.

EuCon boards seem to work better with a router in between than a direct connection

Workflow for relinking AMA files that lose their links

Slow database access can be caused by too many files in a folder

Final Cut Pro X

Various issues with Mountain Lion

"Cannot allocate memory" error can be caused by NTFS drives

Over a billion plugins installed

OS X

Mountain Lion users reporting poor battery life

Some users reporting improved NLE performance and stability in 10.8 (most likely due to OpenCL improvements)

Weekend Reads - 8-5-12

Sun, 5 Aug 2012 17:39:26 +0000

Here are some interesting articles we discovered over the past week.

Final Cut Pro X and Mountain Lion â€“ now thatâ€™s interesting!
Philip Hodgetts tests out Mountain Lion's new dictation feature with FCPX.

Avid Mountain Lion test thread
Avid have provided an official thread for people to discuss issues with OS X 10.8.

Make your sound editor love you
Best practices for recording sound.

Six, (er) Seven New Features in Resolve 9
Alexis van Hurkman summarizes his favorite new features of Resolve 9.

Animate Chapman
Adobe is holding a competition to animate old Monty Python sketches for a new film about Graham Chapman.

Switching to Premiere Pro: Days 2-5: A Few Problems in Premiere
More on Michael Murie's switch to Premiere.

Free legal documents for freelancers
Docracy is a resource for boilerplate legal documents.

Installing QuickTime Player 7
How to install QuickTime Player 7 on Mountain Lion.

Mountain Lion bugs: Chopped battery life and nonsensical 'Save As' behavior
I really don't understand why providing a proper Save As function is so difficult for Apple.

Stability - At Last
Andy Jenkins details how he managed to get Premiere Pro CS 6 running smoothly.

Hacked iCloud password leads to nightmare
A horror story about what can happen if someone gains access to your iCloud account. It later turned out that the hacker had convinced Apple Support to allow him to reset the password.

Bugs of the Week - 8-3-12

Fri, 3 Aug 2012 21:24:27 +0000

Here are some of the more interesting bugs we came across this week.

Adobe Premiere

Final Cut Pro X

Many people have been unable to Share with 10.0.5
Negative render progress
Several threads documenting issues after installing OS X 10.8