4 Things You May Not Know About the After Effects Render Queue

Useful tips for speeding up your AE rendering.

Six Questions Apple Needs to Answer in 2013

Six questions for the post-Jobs Apple (#7 should be the future of the Mac and whether Apple has a long-term strategy for courting video pros).

Steven Soderbergh’s State Of Cinema Talk

Steven Soderbergh on the state of cinema.

Danny Boyle Claims 'Pixarification' of Movies is Killing 'Adult Movies'

In a similar vein, Danny Boyle laments the departure of sophisticated writing from cinema to TV.

My biggest concern. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Interesting discussion on the pros and cons of buying vs renting Adobe Creative Suite.

Offline Bounce or How I Learned to Stop Worrying & Love Native Processing

Detailed overview of the new offline bounce function in Pro Tools 11.

Linear Workflow in Cinema4D and After Effects

Brush up on linear processing now that After Effects CS Next integrates with Cinema 4D.

Autodesk Smoke 2013

Extremely detailed review of Smoke 2013.

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

We've just released another major update to our cloud workflow platform Kollaborate with some much-requested features.

Custom user permissions

You now have more control over the individual actions of users in the project. You can override the permissions set by the user's department position to assign or deny admin status, and can control whether the user can upload, view or delete files.

Custom file permissions

As well as department-level sandboxing, you can now set permissions on a file-by-file basis. You can approve or deny access to individuals, departments or everyone. You can combine permissions to deny access to everyone except certain people, or deny access to a department except for certain people in that department.

Kollaborate continues to advance at a rapid pace (we make daily updates) and we're about 75% through our list of tasks to complete before the beta status can be removed. We are working on integrating the cloud with all of our applications (we currently support Cut Notes, CinePlay and Post Haste) and are actively working on a local server edition that will be released in a few weeks.

There are many digital asset management and workflow tools nowadays but we've taken a different path and roadmap to everyone else and the response so far has been extremely positive. Try it out today at kollaborate.tv.

We've just released a beta of Post Haste 2.5 for Mac.

This version has basic Kollaborate integration. To set it up, go to the Kollaborate tab in preferences, enter your login information and click Authorize.

Now whenever you create a new project on your local hard drive, a copy will be created in the cloud. You can choose to recreate the entire folder structure or just create an empty project. Note: you must be logged into a Kollaborate trial or subscriber account for this to work.

We're keen to hear feedback on the best ways to integrate Kollaborate functionality into your existing Post Haste workflows so contact us with your requests.

Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.14, a minor update to our flagship suite for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system.

As well as the usual bug fixes and updated Crash Analyzer definitions, we've also introduced a new feature to Plugin Manager. It is now possible to print a list of plugins to refer to when reinstalling your operating system. You could also use it to compare plugins between computers, but it is much easier to do that with Pro Admin.

You can see the entire list of changes here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for post production professionals that is used worldwide by freelancers and studios alike. To find out more view the full feature list, watch the video overview, read the user manual or download the free trial.

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

Today we released a major update to our Kollaborate cloud workflow tool. As well as bug fixes and tweaks, we also introduced some important new features and changes.

Aliases

Aliases are shortcuts to a file, much like symbolic links in OS X. Aliases are a useful tool in managing user permissions because they behave like self-contained files, allowing you to to separate comments and other metadata between departments.

For example, an editor uploads a new cut to the Post Production department. The producer views the cut and gives his/her notes. The editor then wishes to give the client access to the file but without them seeing the producer's notes, so he creates an alias to the file, moves it to the Clients department and the client makes their notes effectively in a sandbox away from everyone else.

To add an alias, click the arrow at the right of a file and choose Create Alias, then click the arrow next to the new file, click Move and choose the department or folder.

Sharing overhaul

We've overhauled the Sharing pane to make it easier to share links with people who are not directly part of the project.

You can now email the link to people directly from the web interface and they can leave comments on the file without needing to be part of the project.

Storage statistics

Clicking the colored storage indicator in the bottom right corner now takes you to the Storage page, allowing you to see exactly how much space you're using and what the largest files in each project are.

Misc

Other minor changes include frame-by-frame navigation in the player using the left/right arrow keys, the ability to create a task from any comment, the ability to export all tasks as a calendar, UI tweaks and much more.

Apps

Kollaborate Transfer, our batch encoding and uploading tool, has been updated to allow uploads to private storage areas, folders and departments, among other changes and tweaks.

CinePlay has been updated to 1.1.1 to allow video playback from private storage areas and departments. We've also improved compatibility with iOS 5.

Cut Notes has been updated to 2.0.1 to allow note taking from video files stored in departments or subfolders, alongside various Kollaborate sync improvements. We've also made it so that it will stay in manual note-taking mode until you specifically exit it, as well as making the Export dialog clearer for new users.

These are just a few features on our ambitious Kollaborate roadmap. To find out more, visit www.kollaborate.tv and sign up for the free trial.

Why Apple's secrecy is frustrating Mac Pro customers

This fits in with my own belief that uncertainty about future Mac hardware is a much bigger issue for video pros than FCPX and the demise of FCP 7.

Interesting job posting

Hints of future improvements to audio mixing in FCPX.

Service, Replacement Parts and Support for Active Storage Installations

Vicom Systems is offering service and support for Active Storage customers now that the company has gone out of business.

PREMIERE PRO NEXT - ( Unlike FCPX ...I like it )

Mike Nichols goes through his checklist of CS 6 problems to see what's been improved in CS Next.

Avid announces Avid Media Composer 7 at NAB 2013

Quick overview of the new features in Avid Media Composer 7.

Sorenson Squeeze 9 updates the old encoding standby

Summary of the new features in Squeeze 9.

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

We're pleased to introduce our new white-label service for business customers. This allows you to customize our applications with your logo and branding for use with your clients.

It will be especially useful with the upcoming local server feature of Kollaborate, allowing you to completely customize the end-user experience for clients and keep them coming back.

The service is available on an annual subscription basis and we can do basic branding or feature customization depending on your needs and requirements. Contact us for more details.