We've just released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.13 - a minor update to our flagship suite for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system.

We have significantly improved the repairing of corrupt Adobe Premiere Pro projects in this update. Premiere is one of the few applications to use an XML project format instead of binary, making Premiere projects much easier to repair.

In addition to its previous capabilities, Project Repair 2.0.13 can now strip Warp Stabilizer data (a common cause of corruption), reset scratch disks and strip workspace information. These new capabilities have enabled the application to successfully repair corrupt projects in our test suite that were previously unrepairable.

Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.13 is a free update for all existing customers. To find out more, see the features page, watch the overview video, read the user manual or download the free 15-day trial.

We've just launched the Digital Rebellion app for iOS.

This is a free app that allows you to get news and support about Digital Rebellion products on the go.

The main page lists our applications and allows you to easily view product information, documentation and support. You can filter it to only show apps currently installed on the device and it can even act as a launcher for installed apps.

You can download the app free of charge from the iOS App Store.

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

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.

4K in the Home

The uphill battle TV manufacturers will face to convince people 4K TV is worthwhile.

Shot on What

Useful database of technical details for popular movies.

Welcoming the New Year

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.

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

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.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Masterclass in Why HFR fails, and a reaffirmation of what makes cinema magical

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.

Trick I Found By Accident

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.

Font Folders

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

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)

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.