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Weekend Reads - 10-20-13

Do you really need to buy Compressor when you can export from Final Cut Pro X?

FCP 7's export functions were traditionally poor and FCPX's are much better, but here's why you still need Compressor.

Prepare a Mac for OS X Mavericks the Right Way

Mavericks will be out soon. Here's how to prepare for it, although you probably don't want to upgrade your production machines on day one.

RED editing? Dedicated controllers? Could this be a tablet that professionals can use?

The Microsoft Surface 2 tablet looks interesting as a potential post production tool.

Some Power Titling Tips in Premiere Pro

Very useful tips for dealing with titles in Premiere Pro CC.

5 QuickTime Player Secrets

Power tips for playing video in QuickTime Player X.

Where did the light go in the waveform monitor?

FCP 7's waveform brightness function may help you to see hot spots that don't show up under the default settings.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 21 2013 to Weekend Reads
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Bugs of the Week - 10-20-13

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

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 21 2013 to Bugs of the Week, Video Editing, Software
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Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.17 released with OS X 10.9 compatibility

Yesterday we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.17, a minor update to our suite of tools to maintain, optimize and troubleshoot your editing system.

The changes in this version are as follows:

  • OS X 10.9 compatibility
  • Housekeeper - Support for trashing FCPX share cache
  • MC Repair - Fixed an issue that could cause it to erroneously say there more than 5000 media files in a folder
  • Plugin Manager - Fixed an issue where FCPX plugins with version numbers in the title may not appear
  • Plugin Manager - New icons for Motion Template plugins
  • Plugin Manager - Stability improvements
  • Preference Manager - Logic Pro X supportUpdated Crash Analyzer definitions
  • Various other bug fixes, tweaks and polish

We've also updated the error message database in Crash Analyzer and you can view a list of all supported NLE error messages here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential maintenance and troubleshooting toolkit for every editor. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 17 2013 to DR News, Front Page News, Utilities
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Post Haste no longer available from the Mac App Store

As of today, Post Haste will no longer be available from the Mac App Store. Due to Apple's App Store sandboxing restrictions, it can be difficult to deliver a good user experience from file management apps like Post Haste that need to read from and write to a variety of locations on your hard drive.

In addition, we've known for a while that features on our future roadmap (e.g. scripting) would put us in direct conflict with Apple's App Store policies, despite being highly requested by our userbase. We knew that at some point in the future we'd need to make a decision about Post Haste on the store but hadn't expected it to happen quite so quickly.

We are unable to provide future updates to the current version nor offer a cut-down version without making what we consider to be unacceptable user experience changes, so we have made the decision to remove Post Haste from the store completely.

To be clear, development of Post Haste is alive and well for both Mac and PC, and the software will continue to be available for free download from our site. Most customers won't be affected by this because the majority have downloaded directly from us, but we apologize to those affected and encourage them to download a more up-to-date version of the app from our site.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 15 2013 to DR News, Utilities
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How to sync metadata between QuickTime movies

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.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 14 2013 to Tutorials, Software, Video Editing
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Preference Manager 4.1 released with Logic Pro X support

We've just launched Preference Manager 4.1, a major update to our free preference management tool for Mac.

Logic Pro X support

Preference Manager now supports Logic Pro X, allowing you to trash, lock, backup and restore Logic Pro X preferences, channel strip settings, key commands, patches and plugin settings.

OS X 10.9 compatibility

It's also been modified to be compatible with OS X 10.9 Mavericks, which will be released later this month.

Mavericks makes some significant changes to the preference system in OS X, meaning that simply trashing .plist files in your Preferences directory may not be enough. Preference Manager works around this, so what some already consider to be an indispensable tool just became even more indispensable because the manual methods may no longer work reliably.

We've made a variety of other tweaks and you can read the list of changes here.

Preference Manager is an essential part of video and audio post production workflows around the world. To find out more, view the feature list, watch the video overview, read the user manual or download the app free.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 10 2013 to DR News, Utilities, Front Page News
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CinePlay 1.2 released - Kollaborate Synced Sessions, CDLs and more

Earlier we launched CinePlay 1.2, a major update to our professional iOS video player.

Kollaborate Synced Sessions

You can now take part in Synced Sessions directly in CinePlay. This allows your CinePlay playhead to be controlled by someone else so you can take part in collaborative viewing sessions with multiple people on your project.

Note: CinePlay can only act as a guest and cannot currently host a session.

Kollaborate Color Decision Lists

You can now upload a Color Decision List to Kollaborate and have CinePlay color correct a video file according to the values in the CDL.

Here's how to do it:

1. Grade the video and export a Color Decision List from your grading software.

2. Upload the ungraded video to Kollaborate.

3. Upload the CDL to Kollaborate.

4. On the Files page, click the arrow to the right of the CDL and select Relationship Editor.

5. Click New Relationship.

6. Select the video, then set the relationship type to CDL.

7. Play the video in CinePlay and you will see the new grade. If you already had the video open, go back to the menu and select it again.

CinePlay will not apply the CDL if the movie's timecode does not fall within the bounds of the CDL clip start and end points. What this means is that you can use one CDL to apply different grades to different videos, or set the in and out points high to make it apply to multiple videos.

Kollaborate comment alerts

Like Cut Notes, CinePlay will now show an on-screen notification when someone else makes a note on the video you are watching.

Architecture overhaul

We've significantly overhauled the playback architecture which provides a base for many additional new features in future. We've also optimized the app to improve memory usage and performance and made it iOS 7-compatible.

You can read the full list of changes here.

CinePlay is an essential tool for video professionals, especially when used in conjunction with our Kollaborate cloud workflow platform. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the video overview or buy on the App Store.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Oct 2 2013 to DR News, Front Page News, Kollaborate
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Kollaborate Server 1.0.3 released - simpler installation and greater customization

We've just released Kollaborate Server 1.0.3, an important update to our in-house version of the Kollaborate workflow platform.

As well as the great new features of the cloud version, we've made some big additional changes.

Simpler installation

We've revamped the installation process to be more straightforward and require fewer steps. Kollaborate Server can now be configured directly from the installer, or at a later date, from the admin console.

Licensing is much simpler too - simply sign in with your kollaborate.tv login then copy the file it downloads to the location it tells you to.

Email Routing

Email has traditionally been the hardest feature to setup properly because you need to do a lot of things to make sure that the emails don't end up in recipients' spam inboxes.

We're now simplifying that by offering an Email Routing service. For a monthly fee of $10-20 (priced according to the Kollaborate Server package you chose) it will route emails through our servers to make sure they appear valid to email clients.

Not only does this simplify installation, it also makes Kollaborate Server cheaper to run because you can now run it through a dynamic DNS service without penalty instead of paying for a fixed IP address.

Greater customization

You can now modify the site logo and color scheme from the Tools > Customize Style section of the admin console.

Also, per user feedback, we've also made departments and positions modifiable from the admin console.

Windows support

Kollaborate Server is now supported on Windows, and we have provided Windows installation instructions and installation scripts.

The full list of changes is available on the Kollaborate Server page after logging in.

Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform that keeps getting better. To find out more, view the feature list, read the Kollaborate Server documentation or sign up for the free 15-day trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sep 25 2013 to Kollaborate, DR News, Front Page News
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Kollaborate app storage for non-subscribers

Today we made some changes to our private storage policy on Kollaborate. Now anyone involved in a project created by a trial user or active subscriber can make use of app storage, a feature previously only open to subscribers.

This opens up lots of great features to invited users including:

Non-subscribers get 100 MB of app storage, which should be more than enough because the files are typically a few kilobytes each. This is free additional storage and does not come out of subscriber storage space.

We've also made some improvements to Synced Sessions too. The sync indicator now changes colors to indicate the buffering status of all clients. Orange means one or more clients are still loading the video and green means everyone's ready to start.

Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform centered around the Digital Rebellion app ecosystem. To find out more view the feature list or sign up for the free no obligation 15-day trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sep 23 2013 to Kollaborate, DR News, Front Page News
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Major Kollaborate update - Synced Sessions, sharing improvements, marker export overhaul and more

We've just launched a big update to Kollaborate with many new features and tweaks based on user feedback.

Synced Sessions

You can now watch movies in a group with one person in charge of the playhead on everyone else's computer. The remote systems will update as the host plays and navigates the timeline.

To use Synced Sessions, click Sessions in the navigation bar and then click New Session. Give the session a name and pick people to invite to it. The green bar means you are currently in a session and you will be alerted when others join. Select a file and it will be loaded on everyone's computer. To view another file, go back to the Files page and select it, at which point everyone else's screens will update with the new file. The session remains open until the owner ends it.

Synced Sessions is currently in beta so please report any issues or feature requests to us.

Sharing

You now have control over whether or not to require a password to access a link and can customize the random password to make it easier to remember. Emails can now include a custom message.

View counts can be reset, which is important because you will now be notified the first time your link is viewed. So if you check the link to make sure it works, remember to reset the view count so you'll be notified when the recipient views it.

Comment Exporting

Comment exporting has been overhauled. You can now choose from a range of applications or export a plain-text list of markers. We've added Edius CSV support too.

You can also choose to ignore replies or combine notes at the same timecode position into a single entry, which is useful for applications that ignore multiple markers at the same position.

Avid users also have a choice of the video track to place the markers onto.

Revisions

You now have more control over revision management. You can turn revisions back into independent files or combine independent files into revisions.

Tasks

You can now specify the exact time that a task is due. This is automatically converted to the correct timezone which simplifies working with people around the world. Just remember to set your timezone on the Profile page.

Kollaborate Transfer

We also updated Kollaborate Transfer to 1.0.4. It can now upload larger files and add pre- and post-roll to encoded movies, which is useful if you need to add slates or copyright information at the beginning of a clip.

Other Changes

  • The maximum file size limit has been raised from 2 GB to 4 GB
  • New comment emails now show the timecode position
  • Video and audio files can be made download-only
  • Aliases can be automatically relinked to the latest version
  • Fixed an issue that could cause thumbnails to appear enlarged

Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform that is fully integrated with Digital Rebellion products. To find our more visit the features page or sign up for the free 15-day trial.

Posted by Jon Chappell on Sep 18 2013 to Kollaborate, Front Page News, DR News
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