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CinePlay
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Preference Manager
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We're back with more serious and unusual bugs in your NLE.
Workaround for Avid bins opening off screen
Cannot change bin capitalization
New iMacs qualified for MC 6.5.2
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
Performance issues with the new 27" iMac
Workaround for flash frames in FCPX 10.0.6+
Embedded Premiere chapter markers can sometimes cause an Encore burn to fail
Certain frame sizes with a watermark make jobs fail
Typing a specific text string can crash almost any app on OS X 10.8
We're proud to introduce our latest product - CinePlay for iOS. CinePlay is a professional video player for iPhone and iPad devices running iOS 5.0 or higher. It is ideal for dailies, portfolios, client feedback and mobile note taking.
CinePlay can play back H.264 movies you've shot with your camera, synced from iTunes, stored in Dropbox or located at a direct web URL (e.g. http://www.example.com/mymovie.mp4). Remote web files can very easily be downloaded directly to the device, which is something that's always been difficult on iOS.
All timings are specified in timecode notation and you can frame-accurately step through the movie or jump to a specific timecode position. CinePlay will read the timecode stored in a file or otherwise default to 00:00:00:00.
You can show a draggable timecode overlay on top of the movie and add 4:3 and 16:9 safe areas. You can also mask and crop to common aspect ratios, making it very useful for previewing full-frame dailies that will be masked at a later date, or to hide burnt-in timecode and other distracting information.
If you have an iPad, you can also add markers and jump between them. The iPad version will also recognize any chapters in the file and display them as markers. You can then export them to a range of common marker / locator / chapter list formats. (Many of the formats require the free Cut Notes Marker Import tool to import into your NLE.)
We've also integrated it well into our existing apps. You can remotely control playback with Editmote (including gestures) and output timecode to Cut Notes for easy note-taking. Because we develop these applications, the integration is far more seamless with CinePlay than with third-party apps.
CinePlay is a useful tool for filmmakers, post production professionals and clients, and we have an exciting roadmap in place for the future. If you have any questions, we have an extensive FAQ and a comprehensive user manual and we're also keen to hear feedback on how well it integrates into your workflows.
Start your project with post so we don't have to fix it later
I'm a big advocate of planning in advance and Post Haste is a great free tool to help with this.
The uphill battle TV manufacturers will face to convince people 4K TV is worthwhile.
Useful database of technical details for popular movies.
Essential online security tips.
Editors choose Dell over Apple Mac Pro
One of the advantages of owning a PC is that you can mix and match components, so I would encourage people considering a Windows machine to build and design their own where possible to fully fit their needs, instead of buying off the shelf.
Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is still available for purchase from Apple
You can still purchase Lion from Apple but it's complicated.
Where to place sound absorbing panels in a studio
Tips for sound-proofing your studio.
Another installment of serious, useful and bizarre bugs in your NLE.
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
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
Several Blackmagic users reporting playback issues
Premiere does not allow Firewire output when hardware MPE is active
Final Cut Pro X hangs when loading a project
Tips for color correcting with dual viewers
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.
This is the most detailed analysis I've read on why high frame rate (HFR) doesn't work for The Hobbit.
Why do we blink more than we need to?
Scientific evidence for Walter Murch's theory about using blinking to mentally separate thoughts.
Great trick to make high-speed audio understandable in Premiere Pro.
When to Scale to Frame Size in Premiere Pro CS6
Interesting comparison of Scale to Frame Size in FCP7 and Premiere Pro CS6 and when using it can sometimes degrade the image.
Tip: Multichannel Audio Sequences
Tip for taking the tedium out of mapping audio channels to tracks in FCP 7.
Proposal for better display and organization of fonts in Adobe applications.
Looking ahead to 2013 in post production
Amusing and slightly cynical take on some of the trends in post production.
After a little hiatus, Bugs of the Week is back with more serious, interesting or unusual bugs for your NLE.
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
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
Thunderbolt devices can be disrupted by mobile phone signals (apparently this can also affect FireWire)
We've just released the second beta of Preference Manager for Windows. This is a Windows port of our popular tool for managing preferences and settings for your editing system.
We've listened to your feedback and this version contains fixes for several issues including improved Windows 8 compatibility.
Preference Manager for Windows is compatible with Windows 7 and 8. This is a pre-release version and we recommend caution when using it in a production environment. You can download the latest beta here.
Please use the built-in links within the app to give us feedback or contact us here.
We just released Editmote 2.0.1, a minor update to our iOS app for remotely controlling your NLE. Existing users will need to update to the 2.0.1 versions of both the app and preference pane to obtain the new features.
We've added a Zoom Timeline to Fit button and Connect and Append buttons for Final Cut Pro X users. These buttons are not in the default layout but can be accessed in the button layout editor. These commands can also have gestures assigned to them.
You can now assign a command to be executed when shaking your device in the gesture interface. By default this is set to Undo, but you can assign it to anything you like.
We've also fixed several bugs and you can find the full changelog here.
Editmote is a useful app to have in your toolkit for client screenings. It is available on the App Store and requires the Editmote Preference Pane available here.
2013 is now upon us so here's a look back at the past twelve months.
It was a big year for us with our customer base expanding by 50% and us welcoming many new corporate clients and broadcasters.
We launched six new products: Pro Versioner, Post Haste for Windows, Video Space Calculator for iOS, Video Space Calculator for Mac, Film Terms for iOS, Film Terms for Mac.
In addition, we released major updates for Editmote, Cut Notes and several other products. In total we released 7 major updates and 53 minor ones in 2012.
Our most popular free app was FCS Remover and our most popular paid app was Pro Maintenance Tools. Our most popular iOS app was Video Space Calculator.
Our site traffic was up significantly with over a million more pages viewed and over 6 million more hits compared to 2011.
The most popular blog posts of 2012 were:
Making Lion and Mountain Lion more like Snow Leopard
How to export chapter markers from FCPX
Avid AMA best practices
Adobe dynamic link troubleshooting
Things you may have missed:
Looking forward, we predict 2013 will be our biggest year ever. We have several big releases planned and we'll be exhibiting at NAB in April for the first time. I can't say more than that but definitely watch this space.
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator