Black Friday 2025 Is CANCELED!

 This year 2025, Black Friday is canceled! There are very few deals on good items, only loads of crappy stuff you do not want, who cares about the price of useless items.

 Only 1 page of "deals" on external ssds, almost all being a single Crucial or Lexar product (good products at least.) The price is the same as a few months ago though, so where is the deal?

 Internal SSds? FOUR products and that's it. Again Crucial leads the way. At least these can claim to be actual deals, meaning they cost less during Black Friday week than they did before.

 Asus ProArt monitors? More expensive for most models on "Black Friday Deal" than they were a few months ago! Dell monitors? Barely discounted by a meager 10%. LG monitors? Same price as a few months ago.

 Almost no Apple computers deals, MacBook Air same price as early November. Apple Watch 10% discount at best on an overpriced item.

 Cameras? Lenses? You'll be lucky to find a 10% discount. Again Black Friday Deal is nothing more than the same price as a few months ago. Since then, the price was artificially jacked-up, and look, magic 10% off deal! Wow, really? Nope.

A few good deals on audio items. DJI Mic Mini combo wireless microphone 45% off at $66. Presonus Eris E7 XT Active studio monitor 16% off at $118. No deals on JBLs, no deals on Kali Audio. Universal Audio interfaces on "Black Friday Deal" are more expensive than they were for most of last year. No deals on MOTU, Mackie, Focusrite.

On the software front, at least Waves is having its usual Black Friday discount sale. A good time to grab the Gold Bundle for $99, or useful plug-ins, like Clarity Vx, or Vocal Rider, for $29.

PluginBoutique has some good deals by FabFilter, SSL, Celemony among others. Cyber week sale ongoing at Plugin alliance. As always with plugins, watch for EOL, or frozen in time not so useful items.

 Anyway, we are broke! Our groceries are 25% more expensive than last summer. Which was already 25% more expansive than after Covid. 

 So this feels like an encouragement to not spend any money. Although we've been on economic blackout for a while, so it's not like we're gonna perform just for Black Friday week, Cyber whatever.

DaVinci Resolve Version 20.2 Update

DaVinci Resolve 20.2 is here!

With all the training you need to get up to speed and more.

What's new in DVR 20.2 in 8min.

Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension Ads X-OCN Media Importing And Raw Processor Settings To Final Cut Pro Compared to DVR and PP

 In addition to permitting Final Cut Pro to recognize and import X-OCN clips, the Nablet Media Extension offers media clips based Raw Processing Settings in FCP.

Accessible under the inspector window when the clip is selected, you will now see the active Media Expensions: nablet X-OCN Decoder, and nablet X-OCN Processor.

The below button "Edit RAW Properties", opens the RAW Processor Settings:

It is set by default to the Original Camera Values i.e. the recorded camera metadata.

You can at any time revert to: Initial Values, Original Camera Values, or Neutral Values.

You can adjust Output Color space between: Scene/Linear 2020, S-Log3/S-Gamut3, or S-Log3/S-Gamut3Cine

In Raw Image processing: Color Temperature is adjustable between 2000 and 15000 degrees Kelvin. Tint is adjustable between -100 and +100. ISO is adjustable between 50 and 32000. Exposure Offset is adjustable between -1 and +1. Sharpness is adjustable between -300 and +500.

In Camera VFX is greyed out for Burano footage as it is exclusive to certain Venice footage.

Skimming and playback of 8K X-OCN LT footage is smooth on modestly specced media storage. It plays fine off my TG Vulcan Sata SSDs. For 8K X-OCN ST and XT you need beefier media storage speed. Sata SSDs cannot keep up. Skimming and playback is fine with a USB-C Samsung T7 as media storage.

In DaVinci Resolve, Camera Raw settings under Decode Using Clip has all the adjustments for Color Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Sharpness, and also Shadows, Highlights, Color Boost, Saturation, Midtown Detail, Lift, Gain, and Contrast. Plus Decode Quality and White Balance adjustment.

Other decode modes are: Sony Default, Camera Metadata, and Project.

In Premiere Pro, Color Space is assignable within the Source Settings. Rec 709, S-Gamut/S-Log2, S-Gamut3/S-Log3, and S-Gamut3Cine/S-Log3 are available. On import it correctly identifies S-Gamut3Cine/S-Log3.

Then there is the case of Modify/Interpret Footage/Color window. Use Media Color Space is selected and stamped as Rec 709, which is puzzling.

The Source Clips Settings is also available under the Lumetri Color Settings tab:

The footage appears desaturated in this case:

Changing the settings to Override Media Color Space and to S-Gamut3Cine/S-Log3 as it should be, then the footage looks nice.

Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension Allows Native Sony's X-OCN Media Workflow In Final Cut Pro (And System Wide)

 We saw in my previous post that both Resolve and Premiere could deal with X-OCN clips without plug-ins or add-ons.

Final Cut Pro on the other end, as of version 11.2 and ProVideo Codecs v3.0, needs Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension to load X-OCN clips. So we downloaded and installed it.

Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension, ready to install.

According to the user manual, minimum supported configuration is macOS 15.6, Pro Video Formats 3.0, and FCP 11.1 or 11.2

After installation, we need to manually turn the Nablet extension(s) on. To do that, go to System Settings, General, Logging Items and Extensions, scroll down to Extensions, Media Extensions and click on the ⓘ

You are then presented with Three Media Extensions: Nablet X-OCN Decoder, Apple ProRes Raw Processor, Nablet X-OCN Processor. Turn them all on.

Clicking on the respective ⓘ, brings you to the location of the extensions. In this example in the Applications folder, under tablet Media Extensions.

Click on done, and you are done with installing the Nablet extensions.

And now Final Cut Pro can read and import X-OCN footage.

Also, since the extension is system wide, Quicktime now recognize and plays the clips as well, including in the Finder previews.

Without Nablet X-OCN Extensions, no preview.

With Nablet X-OCN Extensions installed, preview is available.

As well as QuickTime Player playback.

In the next post I will look into the X-OCN settings within Final Cut Pro, and compare them to Resolve and Premiere settings.

Sony's X-OCN Media Works In DaVinci Resolve And Adobe Premiere Pro, But Not In Final Cut Pro. At Least Without The Help Of Nablet's Media Extension.

 DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro can open Sony's X-OCN Media, but Final Cut Pro cannot... At Least Without A Media Extension.

Resolve, OK.

Premiere, OK.

FCP sees and import the XAVC clip just fine, but does not understand and cannot import the X-OCN clips.

X-OCN clips are a no go for FCP (v11.2) as-is.

 X-OCN (eXtended tonal range, Original Camera Negative) is yet another codec developed by Sony in their high-end camera line. Here is Sony's X-OCN page for more details.

It supports up to 16bit video in a variety of compressions, and playback is not computer intensive, so it checks all the boxes, or so it seems.

See this article by Newsshooters.com for a detailed explanation of X-OCN.

Sony's own Catalyst software opens X-OCN, but I don't like Catalyst, and one would use it to convert the X-OCN footage to something FCP understands, say ProRes. But really it's an unnecessary step considering the nature of X-OCN.

X-OCN Clips open as expected in Sony's Catalyst Browse (the free version)

Note that, as deplorable as it is, for Sony Catalyst to read XAVC H-I HQ, it requires activation with a Sony Camera Model + Serial Number. Remember that all three NLEs read and Import the XAVC Clip just fine... As an editor I find this move pretty stupid.

But Catalyst Browse does not want to open the XAVC clip... ???

Camera serial number required. Yeah, sure Sony, I'm an editor.

Anyway, back to what we are trying to achieve, import X-OCN into FCP.

A not so useful chart by Sony of "X-OCN / AVC H Supported Products by Alliance Partners" does not list any solution for dealing with X-OCN media in FCP. It does not specify that a camera serial number is required to open XAVC H clips in Sony Catalyst Browse either.

Resolve and Premiere are perfectly happy with X-OCN clips, and open, import, and work with them just fine. Final Cut Pro on the other end does not understand the codec.

Supposedly there used to be a Calibrated{Q} Sony RAW Decode plug-in that one could buy that allowed FCP to understand X-OCN, but it was back in the F55 days, and it looks like it is not being updated, or it has been discontinued.

Enters Nablet Gmbh and their X-OCN Media Extension for Apple macOS. Currently in version 1.1. It's downloadable here, and is free for the time being. 🙌

Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension downloaded and ready to install.

Read this FCPCafe article detailing how it works.

And here is the Apple documentation about Media Extensions if you are interested.

I will be installing and testing it in incoming posts, and I will try to show the similarities and differences between DVR, PP and FCP+NME. Stay tuned!

Apple's Safari Download Is Execrable

 Safari 18.6 is downright execrable, unreliable, slow.

 I today wanted to download a 7GB file from Wetransfer, Safari first told me it needed 350h to complete. Huh? What?

 I cancel that shit, tried again and it went through an hour of downloading at not so great speed, until it got stuck at 6GB. No progress after that. Super!

 Third time is a charm... You'd think. Nope. 4 hours needed at 400KB/s to download the file at stupidly slow download speed. And the estimated time is not even real as an hour later it's still showing 3h43min needed...

 All right,enough with Safari, Firefox to the rescue. Boom! Downloading at 7.7MB/s. Steady does it. 17min. later the file is on my computer. First try, no fuss.

 Apple, get your shit together with Safari, it's a disgrace.

How To Export An Archive Of Your Gmail Mailbox, And Open It "Offline" With Thunderbird On Mac - PART TWO - Thunderbird Setup

 Allright, in PART ONE of this saga I showed you how to export your Gmail data.

Now in PART TWO, we setup Thunderbird to open and browse the data.

1. Google exported a zip file that we've downloaded on our computer. In my case it's called: "takeout-20251103T234620Z-3-001.zip", and is in my Download folder.

2. Move the file to a location of your choice, in my case I put it in my Documents folder, inside a subfolder that I renamed "Gmail Takeout Zips". Open the zip file, and the following is decompressed: "Takeout" folder, "Mail" subfolder", "Work/Moviola.mbox" folder. All the messages/data is contained in the ".mbox" folder. Remember I elected to export only one of my labels/Gmail folder, so my dataset / .mbox folder is small. If you were to export your entire Gmail data, the size of the .mbox will likely be way larger, and possibly will come in multiple parts due to the file size option/constrain imposed by Google. I previously exported a Work-DVDList folder, so the corresponding Takeout and decompressed .mbox is also present.

4. Create a new Folder in Documents, and name it "Thunderbird Read Gmail Archives". Copy the ".mbox" files in it. You can then eliminate the remaining emptied Takeout folders. Your setup should look like this:

5. Launch Thunderbird. When presented with the Welcome screen / "Setup your existing email address", Click on Cancel.

6. "No email account configured" pops up, check "Use Thunderbird without an email account" and click "Exit Setup".

7. Thunderbird opens on the Privacy Notice page / tab.

8. Go to: File / New / Feed Account

9. Give the account a name, I choose "Mail Archives - READ ONLY", and click Continue.

10. Thunderbird pops a Feed Account Wizard confirmation window, click Done.

11. You now have a "Mail Archives - READ ONLY" feed in the list. Right Click on the name to reveal a pop-up menu.

12. Click on Settings.

13. For the Message Storage  / Local Directory, Click on Browse

14. Select the "Thunderbird Read Gmail Archives" containing the .mbox folders, and click Open.

15. Thunderbird needs to restart pop-up, click Restart.

16. Thunderbird restarts and now in the local directory points at the correct folder:

17. Click on the Mail Archives - READ ONLY feed tab, and the mailboxes show up:

18. You can now browse, search, export individual messages:

And that's a wrap!