Adobe Premiere Rush on macOS First Impressions

My first impressions on Adobe Premiere Rush on macOS.

GOOD
- It's fast and relatively intuitive: drag, drop, move things around, click on icons do do specific things, keyboard shortcuts for most things.

- Good for quickly putting together a short video. Journos will love this.

- It uses the superior FCPX Magnetic Behavior (only works for video clips, not audio clips), and Connected Clips behavior (for both video and audio.) 

- 4 Video Tracks (video + synced audio), 3 Audio Tracks (mono or stereo.) Enough for small projects.

- Fast and feels good scrubbing in the Project Assets Panel (= FCPX Browser), and in the Timeline.

- Share (= Media Export), by the way this is the wording as FCPX, is possible to the local computer, in addition to direct publish to Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Behance. Not for me but since this is geared towards Youtubers, makes perfect sense.

- Selectable frame rates (?)

- Wide selection of Titles.

- Basic transitions available. Duration Editable.

- Color tool with: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Temperature, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation, Faded Film, Sharpening, and Vignette. Build-in Presets, and ability to Save Your Own Presets.

- Audio Tool with: Volume, Mute, Auto Volume, and single Channels mutability. Selection of Type of Audio (Voice, Music, Other) opens specific tools for each. Auto Duck for Music, and for Voice Balance sound, Reduce Background noise, Reduce echo and enhance speech (with Male / Female options.)

- Transform tool with Horizontal and Vertical positioning, Rotation, Scaling with or without maintaining proportions, Cropping, Opacity (YEAH!) and Edge feathering. Scaling goes BEYOND the frame, up to 200%. Much better than iMovie which is pretty terrible in this department.

- All tools have on/off buttons.

- Preview quality selectable between High/Medium/Low.

- Full screen playback available. Monitor size is adjustable.

- Expand Audio button to see waveforms better.

- Mute, Lock and Hide track controls.

- Has access to Audio In/Audio Out Mac devices, including USB interface.

- Pre-rendering ON/OFF turnable.

- Media Import folder selectable (on Local computer.)

- Media is either imported "in place" or copied to the Media Import Folder (if the Copy Media box is checked before adding the Media to the Project.)

- Open Premiere Rush Projets into Premiere Pro, no problemo. Only the PP Project panel is the same unorganized mess as it is in Rush.

BAD
- I assume it saves Premiere Rush projects files in the Cloud ONLY (?) I cannot find a file corresponding to my Project. I hate this. But wait, when I turn off Syncing, I can still open my project, so it must be stored locally. Only not as a common file. WHY? I don't like this Adobe.

- Cannot rename Clips in the Project Assets Panel.

- Cannot organize the Project Panel: no folders, no bins, nothing just a bunch of clips. Can only Sort by Names and Filter by Type of Clip/Media. Cannot resize Clips in there. Sequences are stored in this Project Panel as well... They look like Clips. What a mess!

- Cannot organize the Your Projects Panel either as far as I can tell. I mean Youtubers? They make tons of videos, it will quickly be a sorry mess in here!

- Media Import Folder has no subdivision, all imported Media go in there, no matter what project it's for. Oh boy!  Hold on! There is also a Manage Media Folder.  Hmmm, not sure how these work, some digging to do.

- Setting Clips I/O is a weird two/three steps: Open the clip, then set I/O, drag to the Timeline if you wish from here, but then click on Back to Grid View to close and go back to the assets... Pfff, pfff, too many clicks. FCPX is superior here.

- Cannot drag Clip from Timeline to the Project Assets Panel. Another FCPX behavior, not my fav actually.

- Share has only MP4 available, and only Facebook and Youtube Settings. Pretty basic, maybe on purpose. I'm sure this will grow in the future.

- No Title Safe. Who cares anymore?

- No Timecode, only a counter. Timecode? Whats' Timecode anyway?

- Open Premiere Rush Projets into Premiere Pro ONLY via Cloud Syncing? What?? Really Adobe? Really?

WRAP UP
- It's a work in progress, not bad for a first version.

- Feels fairly stable and reactive. Fun and fast, I might say better than iMovie! I will try it on iPad, if it works just as good it will surely get some traction.

- Project Assets Panel is sorely missing in features.

- Hiding Project files, not explaining how this works, Cloud only saving - all deal killers for me. NO WAY Adobe!

After Upgrading Adobe Premiere Pro CC Version 13.0 (October 15, 2018), Do Rescan and Enable Audio Plug-ins

For those of you upgrading to the new Premiere CC available today Oct 15, 2018, remember to Scan and Enable your Audio Plug-ins.

I use Audio Filters bundled with Premiere and I also use a bunch of Audio Units plug-ins from macOS (AU) and plug-ins from different vendors (AU, VST.)

When updating Premiere, all non-Adobe plug-ins are disabled by default, which might lead to a "Audio Filter Missing" message on loading a previous Project:

I had a missing Audio Filter in my Project, showing as "Offline".

Turns out, the missing Filter is the AU Multiband Compressor, which is a macOS Audio Filter. (I still have the previous version of Premiere and I opened my original Project to see what was missing.)

With this confirmation, this is how to turn these plug-ins back on:

 Go to Premiere Pro/Preferences/Audio. Click on Audio Plug-in Manager.

Click on Scan for Plug-ins, and then click Enable All (or select plug-ins individually) and Click OK.

That's it! Now all your "external" audio plug-ins will appear in Premiere Pro Audio Filters Menu.

Adobe Encore CS6 still works on macOS 10.14 Mojave

Event though DVD Studio Pro is deprecated, Adobe Encore CS6 is still kicking on Mojave and with it the ability to author (relatively simple) DVD and Blu-ray Discs.

Check this previous post for how to download Encore CS6. You cannot install Adobe Media Encoder CS6 anymore though, so you are loosing the ability to encode Dolby AC3 audio with Adobe. Fortunately for us Mac users, we have Compressor for that!

And by the way DVD Player is still there on Mojave, only buried under: System/Library/CoreServices/Applications.

macOS How To Migrate Your Fonts and Fonts Collections

I do not migrate my complete user profile when I upgrade to a new macOS, I prefer to start clean. Less problems this way, less trouble shooting.

One thing I find annoying is I have to lug my Fonts from the previous OS to the new one. I have over 700 Fonts in my FontBook and they are all ORGANIZED into Collections.

I'll show you how to bring in all your fonts AND your Fonts Collections into your new system, follow along.

Obviously you keep a copy/clone of your old OS boot drive just in case something does not work in the new one and you need access to a specific app: boot from the clone and  PRONTO! You're in business.

1) Start your computer from the new OS boot drive. Mount your old OS boot drive.

2) Go to your previous OS home folder / Library / Fonts. Copy all the Fonts content from that folder and Paste it into the new OS home folder / Library / Fonts.

3) Go to your previous home folder / Library / FontCollections. Copy all the FontCollections content from that folder and Paste it into the new OS home folder / Library / FontCollections.

Copy from old OS boot drive / Users / "your user" / Library / Fonts

(And then do the same with FontCollections)

Paste to new OS Home folder / Library / Fonts

(And then do the same with FontCollections)

4) Open Font Book and check that everything is in order.

5) Enjoy!  You are welcome!

Note: if you do not see the Library folder, select your Home folder in the Finder Sidebar, then Select View, Show View Options, check the box "Show Library Folder".

Apple macOS 10.14 Mojave is up and running!

Mojave is now running on cMP 5,1 Intel 6 core 3.46GHz, Radeon 7950 (Metal compatible), 32GB RAM. It needed a firmware update prior to install.

After that was done, Mojave installed just fine. I made sure to disconnect all RAID and single media drives just in case. 

Done installing.

Firmware has been updated to Boot ROM Version 138.0.0.0.0

Only thing not working is Airdrop sharing. Apparently cMP 2012 are not compatible. 

AirDrop system requirements

To share between a Mac and an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you need any of these devices and operating systems:

• Mac from 2012 or later (excluding the mid-2012 Mac Pro) using OS X Yosemite or later 

That's a real drag Apple!

Working on a short and small multicam project in FCPX 10.4.3 with 4K footage in a 1080p Timeline. I'm letting FCPX transcode the XAVC Long GOP and h264 originals to ProRes422.

Slowly working with the originals until all the transcoding is finished in the background. I can perform basic editing in Multicam mode without much problem although it is pretty sluggish each time I stop/play or try to scrub.

After transcode and waveform generation is completed, everything is very responsive. Moving quickly through the first cut. No weird behavior, no hangs to report.

Exporting a h264 one pass TC screener via Send To Compressor was at first about real time: 15min. Timeline compressed in 15min. After the second and third export for screener 2 and 3 the time went down to 8-7min so half real time. Not too bad.

Just tried a few BruceX exports and got 44sec. Not great, not too disgusting either.

Random "Modified File" message in FCPX - Offline Media.

I'm being hit by a random media getting offlined by FCPX. The Clips show the Message: "Modified File", even though nothing changed to my knowledge.

Relinking doesn't work, weirdly. FCPX shows the proper file name, but trying to reconnect to the actual media does not work.

I thought of re-importing and manually replacing the clips, but what seems to miraculously work is to actually drag the offending media file from the Finder into the Browser.

All of a sudden the media gets recognized and the clips are re-linked and online again.

Quid?

Getting Stuck With Apple's iOS "Apple media terms and conditions have changed" Blank Page / Nothing Happens

This stupid bug has been going for a while now, tracing back to iOS 8, people -me included- are still facing this with iOS 11.

At some point Apple updates its Terms and Conditions and forces you to accept them in order to download new apps from the App Store.

But again and again when the user clicks the OK button she is faced with a BLANK SCREEN. Nothing happens. And after quitting the App Store and trying to download again, same scenario. BLANK SCREEN nothing happens.

Like other users I've tried everything: quit the App Store, log-out, log-in, restart the device, wait for 5min., wait for 10min., in any order, NOTHING WORKS.

- This is the ONLY THING THAT WORKED for me - WARNING you must have access to an Apple Computer.

Create a new account, open App Store on your Mac, log-in WITH THE SAME CREDENTIALS you use on your iOS device.

Download a random App. At which point Apple will flash the "Apple media terms and conditions have changed" message. Click OK, log-out.

DONE!

Now if you go back to your iOS device, the message WILL NOT SHOW since you've already accepted the terms on your computer. Is this STUPID or what?

Really Apple, really?