I'm currently working on a feature film that will be my last Final Cut Pro 7 project. I'd just finished implementing a custom solution to automatically log and sort clips as they are brought in, when it suddenly occurred to me that a lot of what I was doing would not be possible in the future with a competing NLE (at least not on the Mac; Sony Vegas has great scripting capabilities).

Here is a summary of things we can do with FCP 7 that is impossible or less smooth with its replacements:

(Note: we don't develop effects plugins so this post does not delve into plugin-related differences between the apps. But it's a post I'd be glad to link to if someone else writes it.)

Controlling the NLE

Developers can use Apple Events to perform such tasks as programmatically saving and loading projects, highlighting items in a bin and searching. None of the competing apps are able to do this.

We can also communicate with Final Cut Pro over MIDI, which we put to good use in Cut Notes, but Premiere and FCPX unfortunately lack this feature.

XML Interchange

It is important to be able to easily get data in and out of the editing application. There is mixed support for this among competing apps. Avid has XML output via FilmScribe but this is not as fully-featured as FCP XML and I have found the FilmScribe app to be unreliable. FCPX XML exports do not include all of the information within the project or event. Premiere gets full marks for including FCP 7 XML interchange support.

Avid does get some bonus points for being able to import and export marker lists though, which none of the others can (it's even better than FCP 7 which was limited to export only). Some people would say this feature is unnecessary if you have XML input, however it's very useful for applications that don't need or cannot access the underlying project, such as our own Cut Notes app.

Manipulation of project data

Probably the most useful feature is the ability to change data within the project. You can add new clips, batch modify metadata and sort clips into bins. It's very powerful and you can specify various options when importing a clip or bin such as only adding clips that do not currently exist or making copies of existing clips.

More importantly, it can be done on the fly without needing to close the project or modify any files on disk. Quick Bins, FCP Versioner and several of our other apps make use of this feature.

Avid doesn't support this at all and Final Cut Pro X and Adobe Premiere only support this via manual XML import / export.

Premiere wins extra marks for basing its project file format on XML but it then loses most of them by not documenting the project file format nor encouraging development of it.

These are all great features that we're putting to good use in our apps and it's a shame to lose them. We've developed workarounds for most of them but these often require additional manual work by the user, which we're keen to avoid.

Apple created third-party developer ecosystems with FCP 7 and FCPX that simply don't exist with other NLEs (and FCPX's developer features still need some more work, as noted above). We're putting this post out to encourage NLE manufacturers to increase their focus on third party developer-friendly features. Fostering third-party development helps end users, developers and the manufacturers themselves. Everyone wins.

We've just released the second public beta of Post Haste for Windows. Post Haste is a free app for keeping project folders organized. It's targeted at video editors, musicians, photographers, designers and anyone who needs to organize project assets consistently and reliably.

This version features a software updater that will automatically notify you when future betas are released. Other changes include the ability to clear history, a function to restore the default templates that ship with the app, and the ability to reset a field back to its default value by using the Backspace key. We've also improved stability and fixed several bugs.

Post Haste 1.0 B2 is a free download and requires Windows 7 and .NET Framework. We're expecting bugs in this beta so please use the links within the Help menu to report any issues you find in this build.

Earlier this week we released Cut Notes Marker Import 1.1, which now offers the ability to import marker lists created by Cut Notes into Final Cut Pro X.

Here's how to do it:

1. Click the Action button in Cut Notes and tap Email FCP Marker List.

2. Email the marker list text file to yourself.

3. Download the file on to your Final Cut Pro X system.

4. With the project selected in the Project Browser of FCPX, go to File > Export XML and save an XML copy of your sequence.

5. Launch Cut Notes Marker Import and open the marker list text file exported from Cut Notes.

6. Click Open Project and browse for the exported XML copy of the FCPX project.

7. Click Send to Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro X will automatically open a duplicate of the existing project with the new markers added.

Cut Notes Marker Import 1.1 is a free companion app for Cut Notes and can be downloaded from the Cut Notes section of the site.

Earlier this week we released Video Space Calculator 1.0.1, which offers several new features based on user feedback.

Audio support

You can now calculate audio sizes as well as video. Swipe to the left to set the number of audio channels and bit-depth. Currently it assumes you are dealing with 48 KHz PCM audio but it is likely that we will add further customization in future versions.

New formats

We now support H.264 at various bitrates and also several Phantom high speed cameras.

Calculate time from disk space

You can now enter a MB or GB total and find out the maximum length of the specified codec that will fit into that space.

Video Space supports over 75 different codec variations and is available on the App Store. We appreciate your suggestions so please use the Leave Feedback link within the app to let us know what you think.

Post Haste is a free app for keeping project folders organized. It's targeted at video editors, musicians, photographers, designers and anyone who needs to organize project assets consistently and reliably.

Simply create a template for the project directory structure using the built-in template editor (or import the structure from an existing project) and Post Haste will copy that folder structure when you create a new project, ensuring that subsequent projects are named and organized consistently.

You can enter parameters such as project name, client and date that will be added to the directory name and template project. These parameters are customizable and can be used to enforce common naming conventions in a corporate environment.

We've had a lot of requests for a Windows version of Post Haste and we're proud to introduce the first public beta of Post Haste for Windows.

This version is a beta and is not recommended for production use. It requires Windows 7 and .NET Framework 4.0. You can download it from the link in the yellow box here.

It's worth noting that the template format is identical to that of the Mac version, meaning that you can easily import your Mac templates into the Windows version.

We're expecting bugs and other problems to crop up so please use the Bug Report link within the Help menu to report all issues to us. This version doesn't yet have an built-in updater so please keep an eye on this blog to be alerted to future updates.

QuickTime Player 7 can be very useful for quickly trimming a clip or outputting different sections of a movie to separate files. This can be accomplished by setting the in and out points, going to Edit > Trim to Selection and then exporting the file or doing a Save As.

However, if you accidentally hit Save instead of Save As and then close the movie (this happens more often than you'd think), the movie will be permanently trimmed.

Luckily QT Repair in Pro Maintenance Tools can fix this. The repair assumes that the trimmed data still exists in the file and that the movie is capable of being opened in QuickTime Player and played back, albeit at a shorter length.

1. First of all, check that the trimmed data is still in the file. Open the file in QuickTime Player and press Cmd+I to view the Info window. Compare the Data Size section to the size listed by the Finder - if the size on disk is significantly larger, that means the data is still within the file.

2. Launch QT Repair and open the movie clip.

3. In the Quick Start dialog, choose the option to restore trimmed edits.

Once the backup is complete, processing should be very quick.

Last week we released Pro Media Tools 1.1.2, a minor update to our suite of tools for managing and optimizing media workflows.

New QT Edit Quick Task to create timecode tracks from timecode metadata

This Quick Task will add a new timecode track from timecode metadata stored in the user data section of a movie file. This can help solve issues where timecode from Adobe Media Encoder is incorrect.

Improved metadata support in QT Edit

QT Edit now supports additional metadata types and several issues with updating modified metadata have been fixed.

Edit Detector range selection

By popular demand you can now select a range of edit points and delete them or export them to a marker list.

Video Check printing

You can now print the results from Video Check, which is useful for creating QC reports.

The full changelog is available here.

Pro Media Tools is an indispensable suite of applications for editors, assistant editors and post production professionals. To find out more, see the features page, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.6, a minor update to our suite of tools for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system.

Significant QT Repair improvements

We made significant improvements to QT Repair, particularly when removing edits from trimmed QuickTime movies. It's now considerably faster at repairing edits, performs better on large files and we fixed an issue that could cause out of sync audio on larger files.

We also added an option in preferences to not backup the file before starting a repair. We don't recommend this as a general rule but it's useful to avoid lengthy copying times if you already have the file backed up.

Improved FCPX support in Plugin Manager

Plugin Manager has had significantly improved FCPX support. It now displays the proper plugin names for FxFactory plugins and installs Motion templates and plugins you drag in to the correct directories based on their file type.

Motion projects can now be repaired

Project Repair now has the ability to repair corrupt Motion projects.

We also added an option to strip keyframes from Adobe Premiere projects when repairing them. This is useful when a project fails to load at startup and mentions keyframes as the cause.

The full changelog is available here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an indispensable suite of applications for video editors. To find out more, see the features page, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Yesterday we released Editmote 1.1 - a major update to our iOS app for remotely controlling your editing system on a Mac.

We've listened to your feedback and are now offering the ability to customize the buttons. Editing the buttons is simple - just go to the Actions menu and tap Edit Button Layout. Tapping a button presents a list of potential actions to assign to that button. To hide a button, set its action to (none). When finished, tap the Done button to finish customization.

We've added several more button types including marker navigation, but we've also added 10 custom user-defined buttons that you can set to whatever keyboard shortcut you like in the Editmote preference pane.

Another major new feature is native iPad support. This has been a long time coming because we felt that simply having the same fixed layout with bigger buttons wasn't particularly useful, so we wanted to wait for button customization before implementing native iPad support. The iPad has significantly more buttons slots than the iPhone version so you can have a lot of controls at your fingertips.

Editmote is available on the App Store and 1.1 is a free update for existing users. Please note that you will be unable to connect to the new version until you have upgraded your Editmote Preference Pane to version 1.1.

Post Haste is our popular application for organizing projects. It creates project folder structures from customizable templates and has been very useful at keeping freelancers and small production houses organized while enforcing naming and organization conventions for larger companies.

However, we are video guys and so is Paul Conigliaro, the original creator, so Post Haste has been video-centric. The app itself is very versatile and can be used by anyone in any industry, but we realized that it was very daunting for people who are not in the video industry to launch the app and see default presets that didn't apply to them. This gave the false impression that Post Haste would not be able to serve their needs.

Earlier today we released Post Haste 2.0.6 and with it we added new presets for Photography and Web Design, as well as changing the wording on our site to be more general-purpose. We will be adding more default presets over time and you can of course create as many custom presets as you like.

We are not changing the Post Haste application at all, we are just changing the marketing and will still be serving the needs of video professionals as always. We're excited about the future of Post Haste so stay tuned for more announcements.