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.

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

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 Avid…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.

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 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.
  

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.

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

Avid

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

Keyboard layout export broken in 10.0.5

OS X

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.

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

Don't add trailing numbers

Check your firewall

Disable simultaneous frame rendering

Clear caches and render files

Render as a movie file

Here are some of the interesting post production articles we found over the last week.

New MPEG standard cuts video bandwidth requirements in half

MPEG has released a draft of its new H.265 encoding video standard. The new standard requires half the bandwidth of the existing H.264 standard so you have the choice of halving bandwidth for the same visual quality or increasing visual quality while keeping bandwidth the same. This is especially useful for 3D TV.

The Smoke Learning Channel now on iTunes

Autodesk has released a new podcast on iTunes for learning more about Smoke 2013.

Anatomy of a Grade - Node by Node Breakdown

Interesting breakdown of a bleach bypass look in DaVinci Resolve 9.

Is there a way to do 'precision dragging' a la FCP?

Interesting discussion about the lack of 'precision dragging' in Adobe Premiere and various workarounds.

Arri Alexa - Legal vs Extended

Very detailed description of how the Arri Alexa handles color and how to work with it in post.

ProRes Faceoff

Interesting comparison between ProRes LT and HQ. I've found LT looks great by itself but when you place it side-by-side with a higher quality flavor of ProRes (4444 in my case) the difference is definitely noticeable to the human eye.

Working with multicam in Adobe Premiere Pro CS6

Scott Simmons gives a detailed tutorial on working with multicam in Adobe Premiere.

This is the Job

Director Joe Carnahan reveals his Daredevil concept trailer.

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