Today we released Post Haste 2.1 simultaneously for both Mac and Windows 7, marking the end of the beta period for the Windows version.

Post Haste is an essential project management tool that makes it easy to create new projects from customizable templates.

It's suitable for photographers, video professionals, audio professionals, graphic designers, web designers and anyone who needs to keep their projects and assets organized.

This version adds a Kiosk Mode available from the View menu. This hides the template editor and preferences to prevent users from adjusting settings. This is great for corporate environments.

Now that the Windows version is up to date with the Mac edition, they will be developed in tandem with releases for both platforms happening at the same time.

Post Haste can be downloaded here. For more of our useful tools, see our Products page.

Today Adobe announced the full feature set of Creative Suite 6. Here are the features that stood out at me:

• Open CL - Mac laptop users do not get a choice as to which brand of graphics card they use so it's great to see GPU acceleration extended for people with ATI graphics cards.
• Full-screen playback - Premiere Pro can now play back your sequence in full screen on your primary monitor, which is great if you're on the move.
• New trim mode - This one seems to be aimed at Avid users with dynamic trimming via JKL.
• Adjustment layers - This is something I've wanted to see in an NLE for a long time. You can add a Photoshop-style adjustment layer and it will affect all clips beneath it. This is great for applying global effects to a sequence.
• Combine mono, stereo and multitrack clips into a single audio track - One big point of confusion for Final Cut Pro switchers was the way Premiere Pro CS 5.5 dealt with audio tracks. Instead of having one audio track per channel, Premiere can create mono, stereo or surround tracks, which means that mono clips can only be added to a mono track and stereo clips have to be added to a stereo track. These limitations are now removed in CS 6.
• Big thumbnails that can be "hover-scrubbed" - This looks to be almost identical to skimming in Final Cut Pro X. You can even set in and out points from the thumbnails.
• Ability to toggle Work Area off - The Work Area was another point of confusion for FCP users. It allows you to set a certain area of the timeline for rendering and exporting which can also be achieved by setting in and out points. If you don't plan to use this feature, it can now be switched off in CS 6.
• Markers can now be assigned a color and duration - I've always felt the marker implementation in Premiere was poor so this is great news. There is also a marker window that provides a summary of all markers in the sequence and you can quickly jump to them. No word yet on whether you can import and export marker lists.
• Unlimited multiclip angles - I was disappointed with the four-angle multicam in CS 5.5 so this is a big improvement.
• Uninterrupted playback - You can now adjust effects on-the-fly without pausing playback.
• New apps - Prelude and SpeedGrade
• Prelude has an SDK - Adobe's new tool for ingesting file-based media has an SDK to allow production houses to integrate it into their custom workflows.
• Ray tracing, extruding and 3D tracker in After Effects - Adobe is really aiming at the higher end of the visual effects market with these features.
• Variable mask feathering in AE - I've never been keen on AE's mask tools so this is a big improvement.
• Automatic Duck integration - Pro Import AE is now bundled with After Effects and allows you to import Avid projects into AE.

What's clear from this release is that Adobe is aggressively targeting a broad range of users. There are features in the new release that will be familiar to Avid, FCP7 and FCPX users. Since the demise of Final Cut Studio, Creative Suite is the only suite in town and this release fixes many of my complaints with CS 5.5 (although no word on new developer features yet). I don't think it will change my plan to use Avid for long-form and Premiere for short-form but the wide-open nature of the NLE market right now is something that is clearly producing great results for editors.

Post Haste is a Mac and Windows app to organize your projects from customizable templates. You can setup various parameters to include in the folder name such as project name, client, date, etc.

In the recent rewrite of Post Haste we added a new feature called folder breaks. Folder breaks can be set on a per-parameter basis and tell Post Haste to create a new folder at the start of that parameter. This allows you to create folder hierarchies and is best explained through example.

Folder breaks can be added by ticking the relevant checkbox next to a parameter in the preferences window.

Here are some examples of how folder breaks affect the destination path of the project, using the parameter values shown in the screenshot below.

If all folder breaks are switched off, Post Haste will create a single folder with each parameter separated by an underscore (or whatever separator character you have chosen).

If a folder break is added for the Project parameter, Post Haste will create a new folder and all subsequent parameters will be appended to the project name with an underscore.

If a folder break is added for the Project parameter but the parameter value is left blank, Post Haste is smart enough to apply the folder break to the next valid parameter value.

If a folder break is added for Project and Editor, Date is appended to Project and Editor becomes a new folder.

If a folder break is added to all of the parameters, it looks like the following:

Post Haste allows filename conventions and project organization to be largely invisible to the end-user. Folder breaks make it easier to fit the app into existing naming conventions and are very useful for corporate environments.

Post Haste is a free app for Mac and Windows and is available here.

We've just updated Film Rate Calc 1.1 and Aspect Ratio Calc 1.1.1 for compatibility with the new Retina iPad.

As part of the update we also overhauled the interfaces of both applications to bring them more in line with our other iOS apps.

We're working to update our other apps right now. Some have already had Retina updates and others will be coming very soon.

We've just released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.7, a minor update to our suite of tools for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your system.

One important change in this version is that it now requires OS X 10.6 or higher. OS X 10.5 users can obtain an older version from the sidebar here.

We've made many improvements to Plugin Manager, including greater compatibility with FxFactory and various bug fixes.

By popular demand, one big new Plugin Manager feature is the ability to create plugin installers. This is aimed at plugin developers who need a quick and easy way of installing their plugins on end users' systems. Installers are self-contained and users do not need Pro Maintenance Tools installed in order to run the installer. A tutorial for creating installers is available here.

These new features are in addition to the hundreds that already existed in the suite including the ability to analyze crash logs, locate corrupt clips, repair corrupt projects and movie files, clear caches and much more. A full changelog for this version is available here and an updated list of error messages supported by Crash Analyzer is available here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential suite of utilities for post production. To find out more, visit the features page, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the 15-day trial.

If you are a plugin developer, Plugin Manager in Pro Maintenance Tools can be used to create installers. These provide an easy way for end-users to install plugins quickly and easily with very little setup required from the developer. Installers are completely self-contained so end-users do not need Pro Maintenance Tools installed.

To create an installer:

1. In the main plugin view, select the plugins or groups that you would like to add to the installer. You can have more than one plugin in an installer.

2. Go to Tools > Create Plugin Installer.

3. In the window that appears, specify a name for the plugin or group or plugins, the version number and author.

4. The code signing pane allows you to sign the installer to show that it hasn't been modified by an unscrupulous third party. This is necessary for running the installer on OS X 10.8 or higher.

Signing is optional for users on OS X 10.7 and below but it is recommended if you have access to a valid certificate. Visit Apple's developer site for more details on creating and installing a Developer ID certificate.

Once the certificate is installed, select it from the list in the Code Signing tab.

5. Click Create Installer and you will be prompted for a location.

6. Test the installer by moving the plugins you added to the installer to another location such as the Desktop, running the installer and then checking in Plugin Manager to see if the plugins were installed correctly.

7. Users can choose the Install button to install plugins to their default location or they can click Send to Plugin Manager to import with more options.

Plugin Manager is a comprehensive tool for managing your plugins. It is available as part of Pro Maintenance Tools.

Sometimes your NLE will throw up a cryptic error while you are editing, such as "General Error 41" (Final Cut Pro) or "BAD_MAGIC" (Avid). Such errors are often meaningful to the application's developers but not its users.

Luckily Crash Analyzer in Pro Maintenance Tools has a comprehensive error database. Click the Error Lookup button in the toolbar and you will be presented with a searchable list of all supported errors (over 200 at the current time of writing).

Selecting an error presents an explanation of the cause with suggestions on how to overcome it. This can be a real timesaver when a cryptic message pops up on a deadline.

A full list of supported errors is available here and we add new ones in every software update. If you receive an error message that is not supported by Crash Analyzer, you can submit it for inclusion in a future version from the Actions menu.

Crash Analyzer is available as part of Pro Maintenance Tools. We also have an iOS app called EditCodes that uses the same database.

Working with tapeless media requires a robust organization and backup policy to ensure your footage remains safe.

One key area of concern is memory cards and readers, as cheaper ones can sometimes behave erratically when they get hot, causing data corruption. Worse still, OS X's Finder will not always show an indication that footage is corrupt when you copy it to your hard drive.

If your camera shoots to QuickTime movies, you should at the very least browse to the copied location and scroll through the directory to spot movie clips without thumbnails, as this may indicate files that are unreadable.

Another potential issue is directory structure. While it may be tempting to copy just the movie clips to your hard drive, some applications and Log and Transfer plugins are expecting the files to exist in a particular place within the directory hierarchy. Not maintaining this structure can lead to files being imported without metadata and timecode or sometimes not importing at all, depending on the application or plugin.

Auto Transfer is a tool for simplifying these problems. It can automatically copy the contents of your memory cards to multiple locations for safety. It also performs checksums on the copied files to ensure they are exactly the same as those on the card.

If a file fails the verification check, Auto Transfer allows you to try copying the file again. The Info pane keeps a record of how many times a failure occurs when copying from a particular card, which is a very useful indicator of a card that's potentially faulty.

Auto Transfer copies the full directory structure from a card, which ensures that it will be able to be read correctly by your NLE and companion apps. It can copy multiple cards simultaneously.

You can also specify additional metadata which can be used to create a custom directory structure, similar to our project management app Post Haste. For example, you could instruct Auto Transfer to create a new folder for each shooting day and put the relevant day's card contents in that folder. Alternatively you could create a directory structure based on the reel, project name and date. It's very customizable and is great for businesses that wish to have a consistent naming convention.

The metadata can also be added to a spreadsheet. There is one spreadsheet per project and each card is added to a new row at the end of the sheet. This allows you to have a printable record of any data you wish to track such as the reel number, scene information, description and more. The columns are customizable.

Various actions are available upon a successful transfer including Growl notifications (see our tutorial for sending Growl notifications to an iOS device), playing a sound effect, ejecting the drive, showing the files in Finder and much more.

Auto Transfer is an essential tool for DITs and anyone who deals with tapeless media. It is available as part of Pro Media Tools and there is a 15-day trial available here.

We've just released the third 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 drag and drop reordering within the template editor, reorderable parameters in preferences, and folder icons in the filename preview field. There is also the option to set a template as the default, meaning it will be selected every time you launch the app.

You can also now drag Post Haste templates into the template list to automatically import them, which is an easy way of importing your templates from the Mac version. We've also improved stability and fixed several bugs.

Post Haste 1.0 B3 is a free download and requires Windows 7 and .NET Framework. You can either download it from the site or use the software updater built into Beta 2. 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.

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.