Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 P2 import issue solved?

I posted a thread last week about some of the issues being experienced with the new Final Cut Pro patch.

Well, Shane Ross was one of those people experiencing problems. He did a complete reinstall and managed to narrow down the problem (at least on his system) to FX Factory plugins. This is probably not an issue with the plugins themselves but with Apple's FXPlug plugin system.

It is recommended that you temporarily disable all custom FXPlug plugins until a patch is released to fix the issues.

Shane's complete blog post is here.

Steps for disabling the plugins:

1. Click on Effects in the top menu and scroll down to Effect Availability. Select All Effects.
2. Go to the Effects tab in the browser.
3. Scroll sideways to the column marked Effect Class. There you will see the type of effect it is. If this column is not visible, control-click on the column bar and select Show Effect Class.
4. You will then need to go to the Finder and browse to /Library/Application Support/Final Cut Pro System Support/Plugins and remove the FXPlug plugins that you identified via the Browser in step 3.
Note: for safety, you are recommended to move them to another folder instead of completely removing them.
5. If you are going to remove them, try checking for an uninstaller program before you do so. Also make sure that you have the necessary installation discs and serial numbers to successfully install them again.
6. If this is too complicated or risky, or you can't do without a particular plugin, just downgrade to 6.0.1 until a fix is issued by Apple. Apparently they are aware of the problem and are fixing the issue.

Harry Potter HD DVD contains "Community Screening" feature

High-Def Digest has an article about a new feature on the Order of the Phoenix HD DVD (not the Blu-ray version).

Live Community Screening allows you to play the movie at the same time as other people with the disc and talk to them about it via the text-based chat room.

One user starts the session and invites the other viewers to it. This user can control playback (play, pause, etc); no-one else can. It is unclear at this stage how you invite other people - presumably they must register with a central database.

I think this is an experiment more than anything else, which is why Warner released it without much fanfare. Voice-based interaction might make it more viable but it's simply more enjoyable to watch a movie with other people in the room.

However, with that said, it might be useful for people who are separated by long distances.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 issues

I personally haven't experienced any issues but some people have reported the following bugs with the latest 6.0.2 patch:

* P2 import function not working
* Significantly increased render times
* Unable to open 6.0.1 projects in 6.0.2

Couple that with a list of 6.0.1 bugs here and there are some serious problems.

The 6.0.2 patch is worth it for the Color fixes alone and the Color patch can in fact be applied independently of the others, but if you like an easy life I wouldn't recommend it.

I'm sure these issues will be fixed in the next patch or two but they are a little annoying in the meantime. It feels like Final Cut Studio 2 was rushed out a little early.

Better bookmark the Final Cut Studio Feedback page. Apple never replies to feedback, but by all accounts they do listen.

A quick note on Feedback

We've been getting a lot of feedback recently about the site which has enabled us to improve it significantly based on your suggestions.

The feedback form at the bottom of every page is intended to be anonymous. The only thing we log is your IP address in order to prevent abuse, but this cannot be directly linked to a person (well, it can but only to law enforcement officials and not mere mortals). So if you report a problem or ask a question, there is no possible way for us to reply or assist you directly, as we have no way of contacting you. If you have a question or problem that would require a reply, please include your email address in the message so that we can contact you.

I'm writing this post because this has happened a LOT and I don't want to give the impression that we have poor customer support - it's just that we physically have no way of getting back to you unless you specifically provide it.

Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback.

New site feature: Glossary

We've now got a Post Production Glossary up and running at the site. This is intended as a reference for our clients and we hope it will give people more of an insight into the post production process and any complex terms we may use. We will be updating it regularly.

If you can think of anything we're missing or spot a mistake, please click on the Feedback link at the bottom of the page. As always, your views are highly appreciated.

Apple software updates

Apple posted a LOT of updates today (or yesterday; I'm a little jetlagged and don't really know what day it is right now). We've got Final Cut Studio updates, plus patches for Leopard AND Tiger.

Mac OS X
Leopard 10.5.1 - The most important fix is the Finder data loss bug, whereby data could be completely lost when moving files from one volume to another.

Tiger 10.4.11 - Safari 3 is no longer in beta - it is now part of the operating system. This may cause issues for some people, as a lot of add-ons are incompatible with the latest version. It also increases compatibility with third party wireless routers and improves reliability when mounting USB hard drives, both of which are very much appreciated by me, having experienced both problems recently.

Final Cut Studio 2
The most important update here is OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility. I was unaware that it was previously incompatible, having not upgraded yet. It's normally pretty safe to install so-called "point updates" that fix minor issues.

Color 1.0.2 - Better format support, greater roundtrip reliability from Final Cut Pro to Color and back again, better image quality, greater control surface compatibility. All very useful things to have. I have had a LOT of problems with FCP roundtripping (e.g. clips being offline, clips being replaced with the ungraded originals) so I hope this will fix these issues.

Motion 3.0.2 - New format support and improved Master Template performance in FCP. The latter is very welcome for me.

Compressor 3.0.2 - Color space options for certain formats, in addition to the aforementioned Leopard support.

Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 - Sony XDCAM EX support (with a plugin from sony.com), Sony HVR-H1 support, Sony HDV camcorder hard drive support, improved AVCHD support (Full HD and spanned clip support), AVC Intra support (must be transcoded to ProRes and requires a plugin from Panasonic), DVCProHD 720p50 support, new HDV easy setups, 60fps drop-frame support, improved 50p support, Sony BWF metadata support (iXML), and extra interface options.
Please note that Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 projects are not backwards compatible with version 6.0.1.

Soundtrack Pro 2.0.2 - 50 and 60fps support, various effects issues resolved.

DVD Studio Pro 4.2.1 - Native support for extra HDV and H.264 formats for HD discs, improved still image processing.

Cinema Tools 4.0.1 - Pull lists show correct lengths for speed changes, messages included in exported lists, PDF format support for change lists, AL files now match sound timecode, reel and roll names now sort more predictably.

Pro Applications Update 2007-02 - Improved HDV 50 and 60p support, performance improvements for IMX codec, various bug fixes.

Seems like a good set of patches there. Based on the issues reported with Leopard, I'm not planning to upgrade production machines until around 10.5.3 or 10.5.4 which is normally around the time that all of the major issues are resolved and the operating system is finally stable and able to be trusted in a production environment.

If you do have Leopard though, it is advisable to install that patch.

Note: Tiger users must first install OS X 10.4.11 in order to see these updates. I would imagine that Leopard users have to install 10.5.1 in order to see them too.

Offline tools

We've had a lot of requests for this, and it took a while but your wishes have now been granted: we are now offering offline versions of our tools.

This means that you can use them in the field even when you are not near a wi-fi point. It's very easy: you go to the resources section, click the "Offline version" link for the tool of your choice and then bookmark the resulting link in your browser. You can then access the page and all of its functions without needing to be connected to the internet.

Please note that we are constantly updating and improving our tools and often times the changes will not be immediately obvious, so it is advisable to update your bookmarks regularly to make sure you are not running an outdated version.

Footage Calc (offline)
Film Rate Calc (offline)

New tool features

We've updated our online tools to allow you to link not just to the page but specific settings as well. This is great for showing friends, clients or colleagues the results of the calculation without having to get them to give them settings to enter manually.

Just click the "Link to this calculation" link at the bottom of the page you can then copy the location from the address bar on your browser and pass it on to someone else.

The updated tools are here:
Footage Calc
Film Rate Calc

And their mobile equivalents are here:
Footage Calc Mobile
Film Rate Calc Mobile

As always, use the feedback function at the bottom of the page to give us your suggestions.

Moby offers royalty free film music to non-commercial films

Moby is offering royalty-free film music to "independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short."

If you are using it for commercial use, you can apply for an "easy" license with all proceeds being given to the Humane Society.

This represents the third example this year (that I can think of, let me know if I missed anything) of a major artist bypassing a record label. The first was Prince, who released his album Planet Earth for free in a UK newspaper, then Radiohead released their album In Rainbows on the internet for whatever price downloaders were willing to pay.

Life is getting harder for the record labels because the viral nature of the internet means that some established artists are questioning the need for a middleman.

[via HDForIndies]

Alsoft DiskWarrior

Now this is a piece of software no Mac user should be without. I can't count the number of occasions that this has saved my life.

There are a lot of occasions where an external hard drive will become corrupted and refuse to mount or appear in Disk Utility. If it doesn't appear in Disk Utility, you can't use the Repair Disk function to fix it so you might think that your only solution is to wipe the whole disk, losing all of your data in the process.

DiskWarrior can detect disks that Disk Utility can't and it will scan them for errors (you'd be surprised how many errors even an operational hard drive has) and repair them, bringing the drive back into operation again and saving your data. The only times that the software has failed to work for me were when drives had physical damage and obviously the software can't do anything about that.

It's not free but you have to ask yourself how much you would lose if your data was destroyed. It is available here for $99.95 and it is well worth it.