Avid ProTools and Media Composer Pricing 2019

I'm seeing the new prices for ProTools and MC on Avid website. They are leveling the offer for ProTools and Media Composer "vanilla" at $34.99 per month on a month to month basis.

There is still a $10 pricing difference though between ProTools ultimate at $84.99 and MC Ultimate at $74.99 Avid figures it can still milk sound editors and mixers for more money.

I'm using the month to month as the only relevant $ figure. At the end of the day all the yearly, multi-year, advance payments schemes are just discounts. These guys (Avid, Adobe...) model of software as subscription is not to be fully trusted anyway.

Every Time I Quit Premiere

Every time I Quit Premiere... It does not quit and instead it hangs.

I have to Force Quit, and every single time...

Thanks for nothing Adobe.

Huge macOs 10.14 System Folder Size Difference Between Finder and About This Mac/Storage

I am puzzled by the discrepancy between the amount of space left on my system drive and the space taken by each folder as displayed by the Finder.

Let me explain: my system disk is a 480 GB SSD (479.89 GB to be exact.) Under Finder it shows 130.39 GB available. If I add all the content sizes (Users Folder size + Application Folder Size + Library, etc.) it all adds up to 242.61 GB.

242.61 GB minus 480 GB, I should have 237.39 GB of space left and available. But I only have 130.39 GB. That's 107 GB of space missing. What the heck?

Examining the About this Mac/ Storage shows an even more puzzling story:

Here the System takes a whooping 173.5 GB of space!! On the Finder screenshot above, the System folder is a meager 10.12 GB. That's a 163 GB difference!! What gives Apple???

I searched the internet for an answer, and stumbled upon this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8084507

In there a reader suggested to look for Time Machine local snapshots - invisible files that can take a lot of space on the system drive. Only.... I do not use Time Machine. Nethertheless I was curious, maybe I turned it on at some point and forgot about it, I wanted to be sure and entered the command "sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots /" in Terminal. And I got this result:

Ah ah! I do have local snapshots, only they are not generated by Time Machine but by Carbon Copy Cloner, a (great) Bombich software.

Lo and behold, there is such a feature in the software since the introduction of macOs High Sierra and APFS- formatted volumes, and in my case... snapshots is turned on! Ah ah! We're getting somewhere.

Snapshots in CCC Preferences, is enabled.

And looking at my system drive in CCC I can indeed see the nine snapshots, with one that's 39 GB. All right, that's a start. But it's only a portion of the 107 GB not accounted for.

Hmmm. Since these snapshots are old from last year, at this point I will experiment and just delete them to see what happen. I should get back at least 39 GB, then we'll see where the rest is hiding.

So I selected the snapshots and deleted them all. CCC went on a re-reading of the volume and...

 Bingo! I now have 246 GB of free space! CCC snapshots were taking all these 107 GB of unavailable space, much more than the apparent 39 GB something.

Back to normal!

All right, so if you do have a discrepancy between the available space on your system drive and the space occupied by the system and your user files, chances are snapshots have been created by Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, or another backup app.

You might want to keep them, or you might want to delete them to free the space for other files. I wish Apple would list them properly in the About this Mac/ Storage as SNAPSHOTS! Is that too much to ask?

Final Cut Pro and Davinci Resolve Scopes Compared

 Resolve scopes: hard to read, distorted, not showing out of range values.

FCP scopes: easy on the eyes, clean, showing out of range values.

Now, Resolve is the reference color correcting software. Reflect on this for a moment.

Premiere Pro 13.0.2 Random White Lines on Program Window and Output When Using Metal

Premiere Pro 13.0.2 shows random flashing lines on the Program window and it also shows on the Blackmagic Design output when selecting Metal in Project Settings/General/Video Rendering and Playback/Renderer.

In this case, I need to click on the wrench in the Program window and select "High Quality Playback". All tears and white lines are gone.

If I select "Open CL" in the Project Settings, all is fine no matter if "High Quality Playback" is turned on or not.

Metal on my machine because it exports 1min. of HD material in 25sec. Open CL exports the same 1min. in 28sec. so a little slower.  Software only is terribly slow at 1min.42sec.

I do not "Enable Display Color Management" as it makes Premiere crash all the time.

My RED Camera Final Cut Pro X Workflow

My RED Camera Final Cut Pro X Workflow

Read this Apple White paper:
https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/docs/RED_Workflows_with_Final_Cut_Pro_X.pdf

Install RED plug-in for FCPX:
https://www.red.com/downloads/options?itemInternalId=16135

While you're at it, install RED CineX:
https://www.red.com/downloads/options?itemInternalId=16144

Keep the media external to FCP Libray: Library Properties/Storage Location/Modify Settings/Media/ Choose a Folder on your HD. All Media Links/Optimized Media and Proxy Media will live in this folder, making it easy to track at the Finder level.

Make sure to Import the RED clips without Transcoding them. In the Media Import Window, make sure Transcoding Create Optimize Media and Create Proxy media are turned OFF.

The operation can be done at a later time, after you have tweaked the RED RAW Settings in the Inspector. All Transcoded Media is deleted as soon as you modify the RED RAW Settings.

Selecting the Clip(s) will show a skimable, properly adjusted image in the Import Window.

After Import, Show the Inspector, and Show the Info. At the bottom you will see the "Modify RED RAW Settings Button. It automatically reads all Camera settings and adjust settings, but if you want to tweak the look, this is where the magic happens.

For smooth Playback, depending on your machine/hardware, make sure you are on Better Performance Playback settings, which plays at 1/4 resolution.

After you are happy with the RED RAW Settings, selects the clips and Transcode. Create Optimized Media will generate ProRes 4444 Full Res files, and these are quite large. Create Proxy Media will generate ProRes 422 Proxy Half Res files and these are small. Depending on the space you have available you will want to skip Creating Optimized Media and work on your edit exclusively in Proxy mode. Switch Playback Quality from Original (R3D) / Optimized (ProRes 4444) to Proxy (ProRes 422 proxy.)

With Proxy skimming and playback are super fast and snappy. The timeline is very responsive, and I'm on a classic Mac Pro.

Exporting 1min. of Proxy Timeline to ProRes Proxy takes about 45s on my old system. Exporting 1min. of R3D originals to ProRes 4444 takes about 5min. That's also the time needed to Transcode to Optimized ProRes 4444 if you choose to do that upfront. When exporting from an Optimized Prorez 4444 Timeline on the other end, the export time is cut in half, 2.5min. for 1min.

I edit with Proxy and I don't bother with Optimize Media. Especially when finishing in Resolve, there is no need. Now if I finish in FCP, then yes I must Transcode to Optimized ProRes 4444. I will only Transcode a locked cut Project, and only the clips used in the Project. That usually saves space, although FCP will Transcode the entire media, not just the I/O section of clip used in the Timeline.

Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD Crashes Audio MIDI Setup When Unplugging Headphones...

Behringer U-PHORIA UMC204HD crashes Audio MIDI Setup when unplugging headphones from the headphone jack...

What is this Behringer? Apple?

This is quite remarkable, anybody has experienced a similar problem with Behringer USB audio interfaces, or other vendors USB interfaces? Let me know in the comments.

Premiere Has A Ongoing Problem With Direct Export (PP CC 13.0.2)

Premiere still has a hard time exporting just a few seconds of program via Export/Media/Export. This has been a real plague for a long time and it is a PAIN.

Of course it Freezes! I Force Quit Premiere, it stays open. As seen in the Activity Monitor, it's definitely crashed. Finally I Force Quit, Re-Open the project, nada. It is stuck there with black empty windows, doing nothing.

Alright time to TRASH Premiere preferences, super. Starting PP holding "Option"...
Open Project, going back to yesterday's version. Finally it opens. Great, trying to export a few seconds worth of program, AGAIN.

... Estimated Time Remaining: 44 seconds. 44 seconds once... 44 seconds twice... 44 seconds three times... NOTHING HAPPENS, Premiere is STUCK! I'm now spending half an hour trying to export a few seconds, do you see the problem Adobe?

Force Quit again, "Sorry a Serious Error Happened" fucking message. Launching premiere AGAIN, trashing Prefs AGAIN. Opening the project AGAIN. See the project is not corrupted, it opens fine. OK I'm making this export a whole minute, I'm exporting to another hard drive. Same thing, stuck there doing no export whatsoever. Fuck it.

Exporting and sending to AME via Queuing... WORKS JUST FINE.

Adobe, please fix this.

Premiere Crashing on Checking "Enable Display Color Management" in the Preferences

Premiere is crashing when I check the "Enable Display Color Management" in the Prefs.
And then I get a black empty Program window and a black empty Viewer window on trying to re-open my project. Second try, all I get are BLACK WINDOWS. Nothing loads.
Super Premiere, really cool. OK third time is a charm, re-opened finally. "Enable Display Color Management" has turned itself OFF. I guess it will stay that way.

(Mac Pro 5,1 with Sapphire AMD Radeon 7950 for Mac.)

"This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with..."

Update!

Grrr... This creepy message is back again, I'm sick of it Apple!

"This mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with..."

"Open iCloud preferences to fix this problem"

Grrr... Apple, I've had this problem for weeks now, I've reset the password, nothing works, each time I start again, here comes the message.

Finally today I was able to get rid of it by doing the following:
1) Start the Mac,
2) Go to System Preferences Panel, iCloud and Sign Out,

3) Make sure you are keeping things local if you need to, else all the iCloud related files will be erased from your computer, be careful here, when you are logged out of iCloud,
4) Restart the Mac,
5) The stupido message should not appear this time -duh! You are logged out of iCloud,
6) Go to System Preferences Panel, iCloud and Sign In,
7) Restart the Mac to see if you finally made it.

For me that did the trick, pfff.

Update: Nooooo! It's back!!! What a pain this is.

Adobe CC April Updates + Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve 16 Teaser Page!

Adobe updates CC Apps ahead of NAB 2019.
https://theblog.adobe.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-spring-2019-releases/

Refinements, refinement. Automation galore. If you want to replay the Live Video of Today, head over to: https://www.facebook.com/adobecreativecloud/videos/801757826867284/

Sidenote: Adobe, please time to ditch Facebook for Live events, I can't stand it anymore. You have your own Cloud System; make Live vids on your own.

Whoa! Blackmagic is teasing us ahead of NAB 2019 with Resolve 16!

A revolution in editing has been promised for April 8th 2019 at 9am.

Tune-in to see what it's about.

Down under is stealing the show!

Adobe Encore, AUDIO_TS Folder Build ISO

Believe it or not I am still making DVDs with Encore in March of 2019.

One annoyance I encountered recently is that Encore does not make an empty AUDIO_TS folder when Building an iso file from the current project.

I know this has always been the case. Previously I did not make an iso directly, I created a DVD Folder, manually added a AUDIO_TS folder, and then used Toast to make the iso. Only I a not using Toast anymore. What to do?

Well I actually found a workaround:
1) Build the project as DVD Folder from Encore (Output=DVD Folder, Source/Create Using=Current Project.)
2) From the Finder add an empty AUDIO_TS folder to the newly created DVD Folder as usual.
3) Back to Encore! Select Source/Create Using=DVD Volume instead of Current Project. Select the newly created DVD Folder from the Finder.
4) Select Output=DVD Image instead of DVD Folder.
5) Build!

Voilà, new iso file that includes the empty AUDIO_TS, using only Encore.

FCPX Youlean Meter

A note re. the use of the Youlean Meter, (possibly other meters as well, to be tested), when using it in Final Cut Pro.

The way I do it, I bring my stems in FCP (VO/Dia, Music, Effects) and I group them into a Compound Clip. I apply Youlean Meter to the Compound Clip.

Now that's all fine and dandy, you will notice though that adjusting the level of the CC does not change the reading of the YLM.

So if the volume of the CC is anything other than "0dB", you could have too hot/too low levels on output while YLM shows everything is fine. Watch that one!

If you want to adjust the levels, you must do it on the Stems, inside the CC. Then the YLM actualizes accordingly.

How to delete a color from the Apple Color Picker custom swacth?

The custom color swatch drawer is a great way to store custom colors that I repeatedly use in projects.

But how to delete colors from it? Click and delete does not work, click and drag it away doesn't work either... 

Only way I found is to click and drag the pot of color to the Trashcan! Simple enough... When you know it.