Adobe Encore (CS6) on macOS High Sierra

 If you are like me and need to produce DVDs and Blu-ray discs from time to time, Adobe Encore is your friend.

Of course it's been discontinued, but Adobe still offers a download from Adobe CC.

• Go to CC Manager, scroll down to Premiere Pro CC.
• Click on the little arrow at the right of the Open button.
• Here lies the installer for Premiere CS6, it will install Encore as well.

Now, on the Adobe site it says that you can uninstall Premiere CS6 and keep Encore CS6. Well NOT IN MY EXPERIENCE. Using the Premiere CS6 Uninstaller deletes Encore as well. Be warned.

So far Encore launches fine on High Sierra, will report after a real job.

NOTE: For simple DVD/Blu-ray (with very limited features), Compressor is also your friend.

Installing macOS High Sierra Onto MacPro 5,1 (cMP5,1) Patience Required!

Retracing all my steps to install a fresh macOS HighSierra on my cMP5,1 2012.

Bought a new SSD, stuck it into the Optical bay and connected it to the second Sata cable.

Emptied internal x4 Drive Bay, 16GB RAM, Radeon 5770 stock, nothing else connected but Apple Keyboard + generic mouse.

I made a USB High Sierra installer and started the computer, zapped the PRAM, it started from the USB and loaded the installer fine.

I went into Disk Util and erased the SSD using APFS. [***Do not do this! Read on!***]

Got the Firmware Update Required window:

Clicked onto Shut Down button... Nothing happened.

Went to the Menu Bar, clicked onto the Apple Logo and Shutdown from there.

Pushed and held Mac power button, LED flashed, got the long Beep, computer restarted, but no Firmware update happened.

Again got the Firmware Update Required window... What the f*^%$?

Again clicked onto Shut Down button, nothing happened.

Again went to the Menu Bar, clicked onto the Apple Logo and shutdown from there.

Again pushed and held Mac power button, LED flashed, got the long Beep, computer restarted, this time it went into Firmware Update (fat update bar instead of thin one.)

After 5 min. the computer restarted by itself, Sierra installer loaded.

Clicked Continue, then got a window "To download and restore macOS, your computer's eligibility will be verified with Apple". What???

Went back to macOS Utilities and turned on WIFI and connected to the internet. Came back to the same point...

I canceled, restarted, clicked again on install, this time it didn't show this window, go figure. Went to the installer, but it DIDN'T LIST MY SSD in the disk selection for install... !! Arrghl!

Hence do not format your SSD to APFS prior to install.

Went to macOS Utilities, Disk Utilities, tried to erase/reformat the drive to no avail (could not unmount it, and I could not see it to force unmount it.

Shutdown, removed the SSD, went to a second computer, erased the SSD, this time formatted GUID/macOS Extended.

Put it back into the computer, started again, into the installer, and bingo!

Selected the SSD and started the installation at last!

15min. later, booting into High Sierra. Success at last!

Disk Util confirms that the SSD has been erased and reformatted to APFS as part of the installation.

Premiere Pro Export Media How to Set the Proper Folder for Output Via Media Encoder (Queuing)

When I export multiple Media from Premiere, it remembers my Preset, but when I hit Queue, Media Encoder Output stubbornly points to the wrong Folder, over and over again.

Its a freaking pain having to click onto the Output Name in AME and setting the proper folder here EACH TIME as it does not remember the previous setting for some reason.

Instead, click on the Output Name in the Export Settings Window BEFORE hitting Queue.

From there, select the proper folder you want to output to. Next time you Export Media from Premiere IT WILL REMEMBER the correct Folder as the proper Output in AME.

It only sticks in AME if you set it first in the Export Setting Window. Doing it in the AME Window doesn't stick when Exporting from Premiere, unlike when you are dealing with a file.

Kind of counter intuitive, but at least this works.

Premiere Pro - Generating Peak Files & Workspaces Aggravation

I wish Premiere would not generate f*&^# Peak Files constantly. What does it even have to do this? Modern NLEs should be able to deal with this shit behind the scenes with no impact on performance.

Why on earth does PP need to do this? I worked all day yesterday onto the same project, didn't add any Media whatsoever.

Now let me tell you, the way PP manages Workspaces / Windows / Tabs is at least as arcane as the way Avid manages Workspaces and Windows. I wonder if I even prefer how Avid does it.

Adobe, this is a LAME way to deal with this, it's 2018! This is all too convoluted, we spend way too much time dealing with these freaking Windows / Panels / Tabs / Docking / Undocking / Workspaces / Layouts; find a better way already!

- And now to all NLEs manufacturers: why is it that we cannot control simple things with our VOICE? "Open file", "Get selection tool", "Cut", "Play", "Stop"? We can control our houses with our voice damn it! Why not NLEs?

FCPX Audio Meters

 FCPX has a particular audio metering. It scales from minus infinity to +6dB, with intermediary marks at -50dB, -40dB, -30dB, -20dB, -12db, -6dB and 0.

FCPX audio meters showing a 1kHz tone played at -20dB.

FCPX audio meters showing a 1kHz tone played at 0dB.

According to Apple:

"The audio meters show the audio levels of clips in Final Cut Pro and warn you if a particular clip or section of a clip reaches peak levels, which may result in audible distortion.

When an audio clip is approaching peak levels during playback, the level color changes from green to yellow.

When an audio clip exceeds peak levels, the level color changes from yellow to red, and the peak indicator turns red for the respective audio channel or channels. The peak indicators are reset when you stop and start playback.

To avoid having clip volume exceed peak levels, adjust the volume. Although the proper level for a clip depends on the mix, it’s important to make sure that the combined level for all concurrent clips doesn’t exceed 0 dB during the loudest sections."

The Zero being the actual 0dB MAX FULL SCALE. In other words, FCPX has a +6dB buffer up there. Obviously, the absolute loudest sound in your program should not go above zero, even though we have this +6dB buffer for occasional - to be dealt with, or not - incursions.

For film work the median level for dialog is -23dB Full Scale (EBU) or -24dB Full Scale (ATSC-85), on the FCPX meter this translated to a position in-between marks as seen below:

FCPX audio meters showing a 1kHz tone played at -23dB.

A specialized meter display like the YouLean Loudness Meter has  different display for film work, here marking -23dB (the marking can also be set to show -24dB.) Note the YouLean meter has no headroom above zero. That's the absolute max.

YouLean audio meter showing a 1kHz tone played at -23dB.

In practice FCPX meters are fine. Note that they are the PPM kind, not the VU kind. Meaning they show instant Peak values, as opposed to averaged values. For a constant volume sound (like the tones shown above) it's all the same. For dialog which is inherently varying in volume all the time, that's a different story. See below for the same speech displayed on FCPX meter and on the YouLean meter.

FCPX (PPM) meter showing speech played at an average of -20dB.

YouLean (VU) meter showing values for the same speech played at an average of -20dB.

FCPX meters are much more "alive" jumping up and down with huge variation. The YouLean is more tame and tranquil, with limited incursions. Same signal, PPM vs. VU representation.

Starting with a proper range will make the transition into mixing easier. While editing in FCPX it is good practice to have most dialog levels in the -20 to -6dB range, visually "dancing" most of the time in the -12dB vicinity.

macOs Sierra Public Folder/Drop Box Resetting Original Permissions and Shared Public Folder Name Change

I deleted my Public folder from my User account, then I had to re-create it, with the Drop Box folder inside it. But it didn't behave properly.

1) First the permissions for the Drop Box were different from an original Public folder onto another computer. Namely the "Custom" permission was missing.

After a short Google search, I was able to bring back the Custom Permission using Terminal: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6496223

DO AT YOUR OWN RISK

Open Terminal and type: cd ~/Public/

Make sure the Drop Box folder is present in there: ls

You should see: Drop Box

If you see nothing there, make a new Drop Box folder: mkdir "Drop Box"

Change the permissions: chmod 733 "Drop Box"

Change the permissions again: chmod +a "$USER allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit" "Drop Box"

You now should see "You have custom access", Privilege "Custom" for the Drop Box Folder.  (Apple + I, or Right-click /Get Info.)

2) Second, the Public folder shows as "Public" on the network as opposed to "User's Public Folder" which is more convenient.

After a second longer Google search, I found these:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1712801

http://mac-os-x.10953.n7.nabble.com/Wrong-name-for-Public-folder-td25419.html#a25424

I am not going to reproduce what's already there, again DO AT YOUR OWN RISK. For me the process worked beautifully! Cheers!

iLok Manager, Server Unavailable March 13, 2:30pm Pacific Standard Time

Never a dull moment with iLok crap tech:

"Server Unavailable
The server is currently unavailable. This may be due to a scheduled maintenance or a service outage of some kind. There is no estimate for when the server will be available."

iLok Manager Version 4.0.3 GM (b1095, r40330) on Mac 10.10.5 Yosemite

A scheduled maintenance at 2:30pm PST? Service outage of some kind? What are you? F$%* amateurs?

Lovely! Great! Thank you so much Avid for using iLok lame tech.

UPDATE1: Upgraded to version 4.1.0 GM (b1159, r40974) SAME CRAP!
UPDATE2: Tried to launch iLok Manager on my other two computers, SAME THING!
UPDATE3: Tried connecting via my second ISP: NOPE!

The best part is: it was working yesterday.

iLok/PACE you are a disgrace to the world of audio and tech in general. Instead of getting your act together and making it work flawlessly (you've had DECADES to do so), this is what we have to deal with again and again.

UPDATE4: it's 2:55pm and iLok Manager is working again. Back to work.

Adobe Creative Cloud 2018 Price Increase Getting Closer

Got a nice (sic.) email reminder from Adobe this morning about CC price increase. 

The tools we need DIFFER. We film editors do not need most of the tools in the All Apps CC plan. I've already talked about this in a previous post.

I strongly feel Adobe should make us a better offering than these four current (non) choices.

I mean the only interesting offers are the Photography or the All Apps, period. No such luck for non photographer types.

But then they probably would sell a "Design" Package with Illustrator and Photoshop and a "Film" Package with Premiere and After Effects for $29.99 each and that would not be worth it anyway.

One single choice, take it or leave it. We'll see in the future how often and how much they raise the price on us.

BHphotovideo website is crippling Safari 11.0.3

This is what happens on my system trying to surf bhphotovideo website on Safari:

I noticed Safari going way too slow, to the point of total STOP with BeachBall to go with it.

Opening the Activity Monitor revealed Safari Networking sucking-up all the memory available and overwhelming the CPU resources.

No such slow down happens with Firefox. Puzzling...

How to create a bootable High Sierra Flash USB installer

Download High Sierra from the AppStore. When prompted to install, CANCEL the installation: Quit High Sierra Installer.

In your Application folder you will see a "Install macOS High Sierra.app" that's in my case 5.18GB in size.

Get a Flash USB drive that's 8GB or more. Mount it on your Desktop. Rename it "MyVolume" (or change the name of the volume in the command below to reflect the name of your device.)

Open Terminal, type:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

It will ask for your password and if you wish to erase your "MyVolume" device.

Let it rip! It will takes several minutes to complete.

Enjoy your new installer!

Apple support page for making USB installers with various OSes:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

MacPro 5,1 Sierra 10.12.6, Radeon 5770s and 7950 FCPX, BruceX, Compressor, AME Speed Comparison

II just swapped the CPU from a quad core 3.2GHz to six core 3.46GHz on my MacPro 5,1 main machine. I will soon install macOs High Sierra and FCPX 10.4, but need to run some test first.

Also I'm looking towards buying a Radeon RX580 in the near future (when the prices are down), but in the meantime I still rely on my trustworthy Radeon 7950 Mac edition.

Also just for kicks I installed two Apple Radeon 5770s to run some processing comparisons, see results below.

A) The machine is a MacPro 5,1 mid 2012, Quad Core 3.2GHz, 16GB RAM running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. No other app than FCPX is opened, saving to the internal system SSD.

FCPX BruceX, Share ProRes4444QX
One 7950: 53sec.
Two 5770s: 45sec.

Compressor BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube "Up to 4K" h264 Preset
One 7950: 75sec.
Two 5770s: 61sec.

Adobe Media Encoder BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube 4K h264 Preset (GPU acceleration OpenCL)
One 7950: 13sec.
Two 5770s: 29sec.

B) The machine is a MacPro 5,1 mid 2012, Six Core 3.46GHz, 16GB RAM running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. No other app than FCPX is opened, saving to the internal system SSD.

FCPX BruceX, Share ProRes4444QX
One 7950: 53sec. (Same speed as quad core! That wasn't expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Compressor BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube "Up to 4K" h264 Preset
One 7950: 42sec. (Faster than quad core, as expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Adobe Media Encoder BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube 4K h264 Preset (GPU acceleration OpenCL)
One 7950: 9sec. (Faster than quad core as expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Google Finance is changing

For whose of you using Google Finance to track stocks and more, it's getting a facelift:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-finance-as-you-know-it-is-going-away-here-is-what-will-remain-2017-09-27

In my case the new page starts BLANK. What? None of my lists translate to the new Google Finance!? Bad move Google.

If you want to save your info in a spreadsheet before it's gone for good, the old page is still available (for how long?) at: finance.google.com/finance/portfolio

I guess we have to rebuild our portfolios, such a waste of time. And what will remain of the tools? I'll report when I have time to try the new Google Finance.

FCPX 10.3.4 to DaVinci Resolve 14.3 Observations

I just downloaded DaVinci 14.3 and out of curiosity exported a fcpxml of my current FCPX project to see how well things translate. I'm currently using FCPX 10.3.4.

Let's start with audio and then we'll look at picture:

1) My FCPX project starts at 23:59:57:00 to allow for a 3 sec. preroll and then start the first image at 00:00:00:00. Well Resolve handles this differently and continues playing Timecode at 24:00:00:01 and counting... What?

What is this BMD?

Fairlight counts correctly to 00:00:00:00 pass 24hr., but does not like crossing over and plain STOPS there. Even signifies its refusal with a "T" mark in the time bar. And trying to click further down the time bar doesn't do anything.

You won't go pass that 00:00:00:00 point.

Changing the Timeline Starting Timecode to 00:00:00:00 or 01:00:00:00 effectively removes the "T" mark, or better it's out of the way, and Fairlight plays happily.

2) The Disabled Clips in FCPX Timeline are correctly Disabled in Resolve/Fairlight Timeline, EXCEPT for clips grouped into a Secondary Storyline, see below, thus creating chaos.

3) Stereo clips are brought in as Mono L/R. Why we still have to deal with this ancient mode in modern NLEs are beyond me. Are you listening engineers, programmers? We want proper multi channel audio track handling.

3) The order in which Resolve brings audio clips seem very random, and in any case doesn't take Roles into account in any way.

4) Audio grouped under a Storyline in FCPX translates into Resolve as "Secondary Storyline_L/R clip instead of the proper audio clips name. Thus creating additional chaos.

5) Some audio grouped under Storylines are NOT PRESENT in Resolve Timeline. I don't know why some audio is being dropped. That's wrong.

I guess we cannot use Secondary Storylines for audio for this workflow or we have to take all audio clips out of Secondary Storylines before exporting fcpxml.

6) Gain (a Logic Pro Effect) is ignored. Alex4D Sound Only (a FCPX/Motion Transition) is ignored.

7) Volume is ignored.

8) Fades are ignored.

So all in all, not a very satisfactory first impression audio wise  I mean we live in times where we must keep as much as possible of the information from system to system, and this is clearly not a good example of that. Sending fcpxml to X2Pro to ProTools via AAF is a much more advanced workflow. As far as Audition goes, it still can't open fcpxml, you have to roundtrip through Premiere and loose most of the info there. Audition cannot open AAF, so cannot make use of X2Pro either. Then there is Logic, but I don't have any info at this point. If you do, please leave a comment.

As for picture:

a) Basic Titles with single formatting/font translate correctly. All others do not.

b) Speed changes have been working correctly for some time now, and still do.

c) Stills translate correctly, but not the Ken Burns Effect which is IGNORED. Stills in Secondary Storylines translate as "Secondary Storyline" instead of the name of the still. Plus some seemingly random stills are discarded, and I cannot figure the reason why. That's WRONG.

d) Fades and Cross-Disolves still translate correctly.

e) Effects (Vignette, Color Correction, Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow) are discarded.

f) Transform and associated keyframes do translate, but appear quite shifted, so adjustment will be necessary.

g) Generators are not understood and continue to be replaced by Roundtrip Dummies.

At this point all the known limitations are still in action, we continue to be in "Bake everything into QT before exporting to fcpxml" mode, or too much is lost in translation. Secondary Storylines are still a no-go and a cleaned-up FCPX timeline is your friend.