This month marked the first time that OS X 10.7 Lion users of our products have been the majority. In total, 91% of our users are running OS X 10.6 or 10.7. OS X 10.5 users make up less than 7% and this number is falling steadily.

With the changes Apple is making to its developer tools, it's getting harder and harder to provide features to users on the latest operating systems while maintaining backwards-compatibility with Leopard and PowerPC users.

We are therefore announcing that we will be withdrawing support for OS X 10.5 Leopard within the coming months. This also means that we are withdrawing support for PowerPC computers, as 10.5 is the latest OS they are capable of running.

All new products will require OS X 10.6 or higher and existing products will be gradually transitioned. Leopard users will always be able to download the latest 10.5-compatible version of a product but they will need to upgrade to OS X 10.6 or higher to access newer versions.

We'd been planning this announcement for a while but with the unveiling of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion today it seemed to be the right time. Overall we think the new OS is a positive thing that provides many useful tools under the hood and we're keen to take advantage of its features.

Editors spend a lot of time rendering and exporting, and it's very useful to know when a render is complete if you are not currently at your computer.

Render Watcher in Pro Media Tools can watch for renders and then perform various tasks when a render is complete. It supports Final Cut Pro 7, Compressor 3 and 4, Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder.

Render notifications are not supported for Final Cut Pro X because it has background rendering and the alerts would be going off constantly, however you can get export notifications via Compressor or by adding your export folder to the Watch Folder pane. This also works for other apps not natively supported by Render Watcher.

There are three ways to get render notifications from Render Watcher on your iOS device - text message, email and push alert. (Compressor has email support already, however it is impractical for most users because it requires you to run an SMTP server on your computer.)

Push alerts are the most flexible option because you can customize them independently to make sure render notifications don't get lost in your regular email and SMS alerts.

Here's how to setup render and export notifications on your iPhone / iPad:

1. Download and install Pro Media Tools.

2. Launch the Render Watcher application and tick the boxes for all of the render notifications you wish to watch. If desired, add watch folders for applications not natively supported.

3. Go to the Actions tab and select all of the actions you wish to perform when a render is detected. There are lots of options here including playing a sound effect and showing the exported file in the Finder.

4. If you want to send an email or text message, tick the relevant checkbox and enter the destination email address or phone number (selected carriers only).

If you want to only setup push alerts, skip to step 5.

4a. Go to Preferences and enter the details for the account you wish to send email from. Presets have been included for common email providers but you will be able to get the relevant SMTP server information from your email provider's website. In most cases you should leave the Port field blank.

Note: Your email address and password are not sent to our servers and are stored on your computer in encrypted form.

4b. Click Send Test Email and if your settings are correct you should receive an email from Render Watcher in your inbox.

If you don't wish to setup push alerts, skip to Step 13.

5. To setup push alerts, make sure Display Growl notification is ticked in preferences and then download Growl from the Mac App Store for $1.99. If you don't want to pay for it or are running OS X 10.6 or lower, older versions are available here free of charge.

6. Download Boxcar for iOS. We favor Boxcar because it is free (with ads) but this feature should work with any push notification service that supports Growl, such as Prowl.

7. Sign up for a Boxcar account here.

8. In the Boxcar iOS app, sign in and tap the icon in the top left corner that looks like a grid of nine squares. Then tap Add Service.

9. Scroll down the list (it's not alphabetically-ordered) and tap the entry marked Growl. Setup the notification settings as desired and then click Save.

10. Download the Boxcar plugin for Growl. Unzip the .growlView file and double-click it to install. When prompted, select Yes to open the Growl preference pane or alternatively launch System Preferences and open it manually. If you are running the Mac App Store version of Growl on Lion, the preferences dialog is accessed via the menu bar icon.

11. Go the the Display Options tab in the Growl preference pane (called Displays in the Mac App Store version) and set Default Style to Boxcar. This will send all Growl alerts to your iOS device.

Alternatively, if you only want Render Watcher notifications sent to your device, go to the Applications tab, select RenderWatcherHelper, click the Configure button and then set Application's Display Style to Boxcar. RenderWatcherHelper will only appear in the list when it has displayed a Growl alert at least once.

12. In the Display Options tab, select Boxcar in the Display Styles list on the left and select the option to display notifications using Smoke (or whichever theme you prefer).

13. Enter your Boxcar login information below this and click Verify Login. If your login is accepted, click Preview and you should see a Growl alert on your desktop and iOS device.

14. Start a short render and wait for it to finish. If everything is setup correctly, you should see a Render Watcher alert on your computer and then your iOS device. If you don't see this, double-check that you followed the above steps correctly and that the name of the application is ticked in the Applications tab in Render Watcher or that you are exporting to a directory listed in the Watch Folders tab.

Render Watcher is just one of ten useful tools for editors, assistant editors and post production professionals in the Pro Media Tools suite. To find out more, see the features page, watch the overview video or download the free trial.

Much has been written about the missing features in Final Cut Pro X when compared with FCP 7. One particular missing feature that has been causing workflow problems for some people is the inability to add chapter markers to an exported QuickTime movie for displaying on an iOS device or Apple TV.

There are several workarounds, such as adding chapter markers in Compressor, but these can be quite tedious as you need to create them manually. Luckily QT Edit in Pro Media Tools can automatically create chapter markers directly from the markers in your Final Cut Pro X timeline.

Here's how to do it:

1. Add markers to your FCPX timeline where you would like the chapters to occur.

2. Share your timeline to Compressor and use one of the Apple Device presets to create an m4v file.

3. Click on the filmstrip icon in FCPX to go back to the Project Browser and then highlight the project name in the list.

4. Go to File > Export XML to create an XML copy of your timeline.

5. Open up the exported movie with QT Edit.

6. Go to File > Import > Chapters.

7. Select "Final Cut Pro X XML (.fcpxml)" in the file type dropdown and browse for the XML file you created earlier. Click Open.

8. The markers will be imported and automatically added as chapters which can be viewed in the Chapters tab. You can edit the chapter positions and modify their names in this tab. Click on a chapter in the list to jump to that point in the movie.

Important: You must have a chapter on frame 1 in order for iOS to detect the chapter list. If your imported markers do not already have a chapter marker on this frame, set the playhead to the start in QT Edit and click the + button in the Chapters tab.

9. Save the movie in QT Edit and sync it to your device.

You can now play the movie on an iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or Apple TV and the markers will be recognized. QT Edit can also import Final Cut Pro 7 marker lists, Avid locator lists, DVD Studio Pro chapter lists, CSV files, text files and chapters from other QuickTime movies.

Update: Chapter markers will now also be recognized by iDVD, Compressor and DVD Studio Pro in QT Edit 1.1.6 and higher.

Today Apple released Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 which offers several new features such as multicam and broadcast monitoring (beta) that were previously missing.

Looking through the details, it's hard to find anything that would appeal to consumers and it is clear that this is an attempt by Apple to appease at least some of the pros. My first reaction (and the reaction of a lot of people on Twitter) was that this was the version Apple should have released back in June.

Here are some of the features I found interesting:

• Multicam - 64 angles are supported and lots of options for syncing, including PluralEyes-style analysis of the audio waveforms. In comparison, Adobe Premiere Pro supports 4 angles and Final Cut Pro 7 supports 128.
• Media Relink - You can now reconnect to files, which is useful if you need to swap out VFX shots or FCPX for some reason loses the link. This really should have been a 1.0 feature.
• XML 1.1 - As mentioned earlier on this blog, the previous version of FCPXML didn't support audio levels so you'd lose your levels if you transferred the project elsewhere. This is now supported in FCPXML 1.1, although it's worth noting that Apple's developer documentation still says XML is not a perfect copy and does not contain everything that a project file does.
• Broadcast monitoring - Apple's description is vague about which devices are supported but today AJA released new drivers that support FCPX output from SDI. There is no word yet from Black Magic Design or Matrox but I would assume new drivers are coming soon. It's worth noting that broadcast monitoring is only supported on Lion.

That doesn't make it a perfect tool for the professional broadcast / film industries of course. I really can't see EDL support ever being added, nor support for broadcast tape capture. But over time I think this will matter less and less. Case in point: I'm working on a feature right now and was very surprised when the post house asked me to deliver the Final Cut Pro 7 project for grading / mixing instead of EDLs and OMF.

I think Apple is very much gambling on the future here and I am definitely considering looking into it for short form work.

Update: Larry Jordan offers more info on the differences between FCP7 and FCPX's multicam implementation. Thanks Larry!

FCP 7 would LINK up to 128 cameras in a multicam clip, however you could only view 16 of them. FCP X links and allows you to view up to 64 clips at once, by switching between up to four banks of 16 cameras each. Also, edits can be made in real-time or by positioning the playhead.

Due to excessive spam levels, we have shut down our mail@digitalrebellion.com email address and now encourage customers to contact us using the contact form on our site.

This won't impact the majority of our customers, but anyone who has registration difficulties with an old license should ignore what it says on the registration email and use the contact form instead (after first looking at our support page on common registration problems).

We apologize if these changes inconvenience anyone.

Update: There was a little bit of confusion so just to clarify - the only account that has been taken down is mail@digitalrebellion.com. All others remain active.

We've just released our latest iPhone / iPad app, Video Space. Video Space allows you to calculate the disk space taken up by various codecs at different resolutions and frame rates.

It supports a wide range of codecs including ARRIRAW, AVCHD, Cineform, DNxHD, DPX, ProRes, REDCODE and XDCAM.

The interface is very simple - enter the total duration of the video, then select a codec, frame size and frame rate at the bottom and the total space will be reported at the top.

Video Space works natively on iPhones, iPods and iPads running iOS 4.2 or higher and can be downloaded directly from the App Store. We also have several other iOS post production tools available here.

We're always keen to hear feedback on our products so feel free to use the feedback link within the app or contact us directly.

Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.5 and Pro Admin 1.5.3, which are minor updates to our troubleshooting tools for video professionals.

These updates fix several issues with Plugin Manager, update Crash Analyzer definitions and improve Pro Admin stability.

You can read the full list of changes in the Pro Maintenance Tools changelog and Pro Admin changelog.

The full list of error messages now supported by Crash Analyzer's lookup function is here.

Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for video editors that allows them to maintain, optimize and troubleshoot their editing systems. Pro Admin extends Pro Maintenance Tools to allow you to remotely manage and troubleshoot over a network.

To find out more, see the Pro Maintenance Tools and Pro Admin pages, where you can view screenshots, user manuals, videos and much more.

Last week we released Pro Media Tools 1.1.1, a minor update to our suite of tools for improving media management.

The most significant changes in this version were made to Video Check, our tool for checking a video file is broadcast-safe.

In response to user feedback, instead of just showing the maximum value that's out of range, the latest version now also shows the percentage of pixels within the entire image that are outside broadcast range. This allows you to see how large an error is.

We've also added support for detecting long frames. These are frames that play for an extended amount of time, which is usually an indication that frames were dropped when capturing from tape.

If your company has a policy that requires content to begin at a certain timecode, Video Check can now be used to flag up movies that don't match.

We've greatly extended the Video Check section of the user manual so it's worth looking at if you need more details on how to interpret the results of a scan.

In Pro Media Tools 1.1.1 we've also fixed a couple of issues with QT Edit and added the option to create timecode tracks from the date embedded in the metadata or the creation date of the file on disk. I've found that the two dates don't match on several of my test files, with some having the correct date in the metadata and some having the correct date in the Finder, so it seemed best to provide both options to choose from.

The full list of changes in Pro Media Tools 1.1.1 is available here.

Pro Media Tools is an essential toolset for video professionals that can save a significant amount of time in post production. To find out more, visit the Pro Media Tools site, browse the features list, watch the video overview or download the 15-day trial.

We've just released Post Haste 2.0.5, a minor update to our tool for organizing your creative projects.

There's a new List parameter type that allows you to specify a fixed list of values for the user to choose from. You can specify these in the Default Value field in preferences, with each individual value separated by commas (e.g. Alpha,Beta,Gamma).

The user will be forced to choose one of these values and cannot type their own.

We've also added a new option allowing you to specify that a parameter is not allowed to be left blank. If selected, Post Haste will not let the user create a new project unless this parameter is filled in.

For more details on the new options, please see the user manual. Post Haste is a free download available here.

We've just launched a brand new section of our site dedicated to support. Here you can find user manuals, uninstallers, answers to common questions and more information about Digital Rebellion software.

On our feeds page there are various RSS feeds you can subscribe to for certain applications or categories you may be interested in. You can subscribe to these in your browser or a third party feed reader and you'll be notified when a new support article is posted or updated.

We've added some of the most common support questions so far and we're planning to build up the knowledgebase over time. If there are any specific questions you'd like to see answered or you feel that one of the existing support articles doesn't go far enough to help, please let us know.

Note: it may take a couple of days for the new section to be indexed by Google so right now the search function is only searching inside user manuals.