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.

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.