Blackmagic UltraStudio Monitor Not Working With Apple Sonoma 14.1.1

 Desktop Video 12.7.1 is not yet compatible with Sonoma, so no UltraStudio Monitor output is possible at the moment for FCP or DaVinci, or Premiere, or anything.

It's actually an Apple thing introduced in Sonoma 14.1:

"Starting in macOS Sonoma 14.1, cameras and video output devices that don't use modern system extensions won't be available to use unless you restore the legacy settings."

Apple offers a workaround: https://support.apple.com/en-jo/HT213969

Although some users seem to be having a hard time: https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=191101

I don't think I will even try this, as I'm just testing Sonoma et the moment, and I have no intention of using it for production just yet. My problem is that I will no doubt forget about this restoring legacy video device workaround, so I'd rather wait for BMD to come up with a updated software.

Adobe Premiere, Why on F#$%^#* Earth Do You Put A Black Frame At The End Of My Video????

 Adobe Premiere is such a piece of garbage.

I export a h264 video selecting an In and an Out points. The Out point is 1sec into a graphic, the same graphic continues for a whole 10seconds after the Out point. On export the resulting h264 file last frame is black.

Why is it not showing my graphic? WHY??????

I mean ADOBE? What do you have to say? It's been documented FOR YEARS! Just Google "Adobe Premiere puts a black frame at the end of my h264 export". It's a BUG!!! 🪲🪳🦟 BUG, BUG, BUG!!! Fix it already.

If I Send To Adobe Media Encoder instead of direct exporting from Premiere, SAME THING!!! By the way, selecting Hardware Accelerated or Software Only doesn't not make an iota of difference, same fuckup. So now I have to export a ProRes version, that works just fine, and then encode a h264 with AME? Nope! Doesn't work either. 🖕

Apple Compressor to the rescue. APPLE COMPRESSOR, works just great with h264, Adobe???

 What a mess. Premiere "Pro" Uh???? It would be laughable if it wasn't disgusting.

!!!UPDATE!!!

Adobe Media Encoder 24.1.1 SEEM TO BE WORKING FINE NOW.

I tested Export on Premiere 24.1, and the bug is FIXED with Premiere as well! No more black frame at the end of h264 exports. Yeah! Finally.

Thanks Adobe!

Adobe Premiere Pro 2024 (24.0.0.58) Error code -1609629690 Exporting h264, And Solution

Premiere Pro throws an error compiling movie on exporting a h264 file:

Error compiling movie.

Render Error

Render returned error.

Writing with exporter: H.264

Writing to file: /Volumes/G Vulcan 4TB/[2152] MCV OpenHands/MCV OH Chuck/ Masters/Masters Web/CP_OHC_Chuckwild_01.mp4

Writing file type: H264

Around timecode: 00:00:02:00 - 00:00:02:05

Rendering at offset: 0.000 seconds

Component: H.264 of type Exporter

Selector: 9

Error code: -1609629690

 The media / clip itself is h264, editing into a default Timeline.

Other people have been reporting the same error, and for them turning off "Hardware Encoding" seem to work, albeit slowly.

For me, it's turning off "Use Maximum Render Quality" (leave it unchecked) that does the trick. 

If I check the "Maximum Render Quality" box, it leads to the error, no matter what. It's perfectly happy with "Hardware Encoding" always on.

Mac M1, macOS Ventura 13.6, Premiere 24.0.0.58

Apple Abandoning Core Audio Over Firewire With macOS Ventura

 Starting with macOS 13 Ventura, Apple is stopping compatibility and development for Firewire Core Audio. So Firewire audio devices will no longer work.

Apogee Digital article.

Presonus announces EOD for Firewire products.

That's a blow to Firewire audio interfaces owners, and renders such devices obsolete overnight.

Some manufacturers were clever enough to incorporate a dual connection: Firewire + USB, and I salute them for that. Hopefully if you have a Firewire audio interface, it also has USB connections.

On the other end, good old IEEE1394 is now 37 years old now!

I had plenty of FW drives of course, and DV video would have not been possible without Firewire connections and protocol.

By the way, DV is now deemed an obsolete format. Time to go through your DV tape troves and digitize everything before it's too late.

The Peculiar Way DaVinci Resove Handles Interlaced Footage

 DaVinci Resolve has a weird way to deal with interlaced footage.

First with Resolve, you better pay attention to what kind of media you are bringing in, and how it is recognized. In particular with legacy footage (NTSC, PAL) the Pixel Aspect Ratio is sometimes unrecognized, or recognized as Square. You will have to manually switch to NTSC or PAL Pixel Aspect Ratio. Same with Anamorphic or 4:3 footage. Check your footage for squashed looking image.

Second, the Field dominance is usually recognized properly via Auto, but best to double check against your actual footage anyway and make sure it matches. If not, again modify it by hand, and use the correct settings for your footage, Upper Field or Lower Field. Using the incorrect field will produce unwanted artifacts.

Then, when creating a new Timeline for exporting screeners, make sure the frame rate matches the footage. Ex. 29.97 for NTSC or 25 for PAL. It's counter intuitive, but do not check "Enable Interlace Processing" box. The effect will be to double the frame rate, resulting in a 59.96fps Timeline for NTSC or a 50fps Timeline for PAL. In most cases you do not want to enable interlaced processing.

Resolve User Manual p131:

• Enable interlace processing: Interlaced media is supported throughout DaVinci Resolve. The “Enable interlace processing” checkbox forces DaVinci Resolve to process all operations internally using separated fields, in order to properly maintain the field integrity of interlaced clips in your program. In addition, each clip in the Media Pool has a Field Dominance drop-down menu in the Video panel of the Clip Attributes window that lets you specify whether clips are upper- or lower- field dominant; an Auto setting makes this choice by default.

  There is also a corresponding checkbox in the Render Settings panel of the Deliver page, named “Field rendering,” that lets you enable and disable field rendering when you’re rendering file-based output.

  There are two instances where you want to leave this setting turned off:

  • —  If you’re working with progressive-frame media, it is not necessary to turn this checkbox on. Doing so will unnecessarily increase processing time.

  • —  If you’re using interlaced clips in a progressive-frame project and you’re intending to deinterlace those clips using the Enable Deinterlacing checkbox in the Clip Attributes window, then you must keep “Enable video field processing” off. Otherwise, the Enable Deinterlacing checkbox will be disabled for all clips. For more information about deinterlacing clips,
    see Chapter 22, “Modifying Clips and Clip Attributes.”

    If you’re working on a project with interlaced media that you intend to keep interlaced, then whether or not it’s necessary to turn field processing on depends on what types of corrections you’re applying to your clips. If you’re mastering your program to an interlaced format, and you’re applying any adjustments that would cause pixels from one field to move or bleed into adjacent fields, then field processing should be enabled; effects requiring field processing include filtering operations such as blur, sharpen, and OpenFX operations, as well as sizing transforms that include pan, tilt, zoom, rotate, pitch, and yaw.

    On the other hand, regardless of whether you’re outputting interlaced or progressive-frame media, if you’re not filtering or resizing your clips, and you’re only applying adjustments to color and contrast, it’s not necessary to turn on field processing for interlaced material, and in fact, leaving it off may somewhat shorten your project’s rendering time.

You will not be able to go back to the original frame rate after you choose to Enable Interlace Processing. All outputs will be at double the frame rate. Even if you are applying resizing and other pixel shifting prone processing, you might still want to not enable it in order to maintain the original frame rate.

The other problem with Resolve is that not all formats/Codecs allow for interlaced output. For example Quicktime h264 is always progressive. There is no checkbox for interlaced rendering when selecting h264 or h265. Apple ProRes on the other hand has a checkbox and allows for interlaced rendering.

h264/h265 are mostly for delivery of files to web/computers. But they are also widely used for making screeners, and when the original footage is interlaced (legacy NTSC, PAL), it sometimes is a problem outputting either a progressive file, or worse a 59.94/50fps file.

Let's say the editor uses your files as temp clips into his/her cut, it will be a problem down the line when it's time to online with the original clip. The timing won't match, or the clip will be wrongly stamped as progressive.

Having to export first to ProRes out of Resolve, then convert the ProRes interlaced files to h264 interlaced using Compressor or AME (both allow for interlaced h264 outputs), is not an acceptable workaround, too time consuming and it adds opportunities for errors.

Granted, legacy formats are not much in use these days, except in documentary work as archive footage. And there are tons of archives recorded as NTSC or PAL interlaced. If you are moving your cut between NLEs, and/or when it's time to online, problems will arise. A good online editor will be able to flag and deal with these mismatches properly, but still.

Now if you are using the original interlaced footage in a progressive Timeline and finalizing in Resolve, then as described in the manual, just de-interlace the footage and you are in business. Just make sure all the clips settings are correct as discussed earlier.

It's odd to me that the proper interlaced workflow when dealing with screeners / temp outputs is so lacking in Resolve. Again Apple Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder are perfectly fine with interlaced h264 outputs.

Why is interlaced only possible with some codecs and not others in Resolve? To me it feels like a random decision on the part of BMD.

Hello Apple?! Final Cut Pro is 2x SLOWER at Exporting than Premiere or Resolve! Do something!

 I'm upset because I thought I just discovered that Final Cut Pro 10.6.10 on Ventura was exporting slower than usual, and I wanted to blame the updates.

So I went back to Monterey and Final Cut Pro 10.6.8, and guess what? Slow as well!!

If you read my previous post about Final Cut Pro being TWICE AS SLOW as Premiere or Resolve on export, this is more bad news.

I did the same test exporting a 75min ProRes file to h264 on Monterey and Final Cut Pro 10.6.8, it took 20min as well, just like Final Cut Pro 10.6.10 on Ventura. So it's not the os, or if it is then things have been bad since Monterey, and it's not the last FCP update since two generations backward is just as slow.

I wasn't aware that Final Cut Pro had become slow at exporting, and that it's been for some time. Or is it that both Premiere and Resolve have jumped forward so much they've both radicalizing Apple and are now the champs of export speed?

I guess the rapid cycle of updates from both Adobe and BlackMagic Design is not just snot and fluff, it looks like it working.

Apple it's your flagship app, on your hardware! On your os!!! Fuck Final Cut Pro on iPad, make this desktop app the fastest! It has to be faster than Premiere, faster than Resolve.

You are loosing ground at our expense, your are being lazy and complacent, I don't get it Apple.

Final Cut Pro Used to Export Fast, Now It's Slow! Premiere, Resolve - Real Life NLEs Export Speed Comparison, October 2023

 OK, I exported the same original 75min long ProRes 422 file to h264 with three different NLEs: Final Cut Pro 10.6.10, Premiere 23.6.0 and Resolve 18.6.1, on the same MacMini M1 8/8 cores 16 RAM, sporting macOS Ventura 13.6, same external drive.

I used Single Pass, VBR, same resolution, same frame rate HD 1920 x 1080 23.98fps. No cropping, no resizing, no fr conversion.

I limited the h264 Data Rate to 10Mbps, audio is dual mono AAC 320Kbps.

I added visible timecode information as an overlay with the Data Burn-in (Resolve), Timecode Plug-in (FCP) and Clip Name and Timecode Plug-ins (Premiere), as this is for screeners purposes.

Only one NLE running undisturbed as it's being tested, same conditions for all three tests. No Pre-render, no Proxies. Again, 75min ProRes 422 > Export to (/Share via Compressor setting) > 75min h264.

Here are the results:

FINAL CUT PRO = 19min.

RESOLVE = 10min.

PREMIERE = 10min.

What the fuck is going on Apple??? Final Cut Pro is slow as molasses!

FCP used to be the fastest, now it's the slowest! On your own hardware Apple? What???

Others are also finding FCP to export and render slower than before:

Export and render FCP x slowww! with 128gb Ram

Painfully slow Rendering Speed

What's your experience?

Send feedback to Apple, let them know something's up: https://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutpro/

Stay Away From Sabrent USB 3.1 to SSD / 2.5 Inch Sata Hard Drive Adapter if you use macOS Ventura

 Sabrent, shame on you. This product will RUIN your macOS HFS+ formatted SSD: 

SABRENT USB 3.1 (Type A) to SSD / 2.5 Inch SATA Hard Drive Adapter

Utter crap. I LOST ALL THE DATA on a 4TB TG Vulcan SSD just by connecting the drive to my Mac Mini using this piece of junk.

It will blink for an entire minute or two and then your SSD will become unmountable and unreadable, the entire structure will be destroyed, Disk Utility will not be able to fix it, you'll have to erase/reformat, and your data will be GONE forever.

Do not Use this Sabrent adapter on Mac mini M1 2020, macOS Ventura 13.6

I troubleshoot this by reformatting my SSD, plugging it to my regular dock, and all was well.

Then I plugged it again using this sorry device, SAME THING HAPPENS! Blinks for a whole minute, doesn't mount, corrupts the entire SSD, impossible to repair using Disk Utility. Had to reformat it once more.

I always have a backup of my data, so I didn't loose any work, but you've been warned. I will return this defective product to Amazon today.

Adobe Premiere Error Message On startup

 I'm migrating to macOS Ventura (13.5.2), and after installing Premiere I got this message on startup:

"Adobe Premiere Pro 2023.app" is damaged and can't be opened.

You should move it to the Trash.

This file was downloaded on an unknown date.

 I had to Uninstall Premiere from Creative Cloud, trash a remaining Premiere Pro app small file and the Premiere folder from the Finder, and re-install it from Creative Cloud.

After that Premiere launched without problem.

Weird, no?

Avid Media Composer, Avid ProTools, My Autumnal Reflections

 It's been a while Avid.

I know you've sold out to private equity firm STG in August of 2023, so the future is bleak.

We are likely contemplating a dismemberment in the not so distant future, and stoppage or at least a slowing down of development.

Avid you've been sick for a long time, you've been standing on the crutches of large installs, incapable of luring enough young and new editors and small businesses to insure a healthy base of users. Maybe you will recenter your business solely serving these exclusive large companies. If you get lean enough, and if you find partnership to RnD intelligently and on the cheap, you may be around for some time still.

We like to hate you Avid, but your presence is somewhat comforting. No one knows for sure how many years, weeks, days you have left, but I sure will be monitoring what's up with you old pal.

In the meantime, this is your current offering for Media Composer and ProTools (which you acquired a while ago from Digidesign for the non initiated.)

Media Composer First -Free. For new users to play around with, and old users for personal, ultra lightweight projects. I should download and install this software, so I can make more useful comments. Maybe soon, stay tuned.

Media Composer $23.99/mo. For users that are not editing fully funded projects, (yep, work can be pretty precarious for many pros), or one-off productions.

Media Composer Ultimate $49.99/mo. For users editing well funded projects, and/or in need of active collaboration.

Media Composer Enterprise -Call. For aforementioned large companies, with multi year funding and project slates.

The offer is not great, it's not too shabby either. It's just that MC is a bloated software riding on old code, old ways of thinking, and old ways of doing things. It's very hard to make such an app evolve gracefully, and even harder to make it evolve quickly.

ProTools Intro -Free. For first time users and old timers to tinker around at ProTools. Enough to do some lightweight podcast like projects, and a few other things. Not for audio post as you're on a very tight leash with this one.

ProTools Artist $9.99/mo. A very lightweight version of ProTools. Yeah it's somewhat affordable,  it's also severely limited for audio post. Maybe OK for aspiring musicians, and just fine for podcasts and the likes. But why even bother for us picture editors when you can do most things in the NLE?

ProTools Studio $29.99/mo. The new "vanilla" ProTools, for single production post work, or the indy sound post person who needs the proper tools and workflow, and is able to give more of his/her time to achieve some tasks, in exchange for a less steep sub price.

ProTools Ultimate $99/mo. The only viable option for a busy post house or post pro working on fully funded projects. The complete automation set will save time over and over again. But dawg, it's $99/mo!... Granted in this situation, most users will go for the yearly sub at $599. Still frikin' expensive man. I mean, I will mitigate my views by the fact that in this case, ProTools is THE software you spend over 80% of your time with. Unlike me nowadays.

This picture, pardon the pun, is even crummier than the MC one in my opinion. It really reflects the entrenched position ProTools is holding on our industry. Decades of Digidesign and Avid Audio accumulated RnD, and ultimately an even smaller market than the picture editing one, if that's possible. Now, is a world without ProTools even possible?

WHAT TO SAY?

What to say... I'm looking at the meager competition, the comparatively small market, the new online players in these fields, and I'm flabbergasted. Avid is infuriating, it's also solid. It's cumbersome, yet it's familiar. It's somewhat overpriced compared to the competition. It's the ultimate (sic) PRO Software. But does anybody care anymore? Does anybody need it anymore? We continue our migration from a hardware to a software world, but we still need some hardware, base hardware, specialized hardware, that plays nice with the software. We need interoperability, and lean prices. But mostly we need agile, self effacing, stable, powerful software, and we need healthy competition. And we need STANDARDS.

MEDIA COMPOSER OR...

Final Cut Pro: $299, one time fee. Own it forever. Free updates so far (10years+) Modern app with a modern way of working. Maybe does not do everything MC does, but does it way better. No PC people though, and that's why Adobe & Resolve have the biggest market.

Resolve: $295, one time fee. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Modern app with a modern way of working. Progressing leaps and bounds very quickly. The next de-facto industry standard?

Premiere Pro: $20.99/mo as a single app, or better $54.99/mo with a Creative Cloud subscription which includes After Effects, Photoshop, Media Encoder, Audition. Old app though, just like MC, but it's trying its best to evolve, and so far it's making advances that Avid has not been able to do as well as Adobe.

PROTOOLS OR...

Nuendo: $999, buy once, $299 upgrades. Nuendo is just as powerful as ProTools, It's kind of cumbersome to use and has many quirks. It's not the "industry standard" but it's a solid choice. Money wise it's less expensive as long as you don't upgrade every year. For me it does not really makes sense as I'm used to ProTools, and I often suspend my sub when work gets scarce. So not a real competitor for me. But for others, surely.

Reaper: $225 buy once. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Reaper is very powerful and relatively easy to use, but lacks import capabilities for film post work. Vordio will help with that, and more, for an extra $200. Buy once. Discounted upgrades. Lively update cycle. Definitely a viable and sleek combo. If you are in adjacent markets to cinema and TV, learn Reaper now!

Adobe Audition: $20.99/mo as a single app, or better $54.99/mo. as part of Creative Cloud subscription afore mentioned. Kind of a "vanilla" ProTools, and if using Premiere, a no brainer option as you get both MC and PT replacements for the price of MC alone.

Presonus Studio One: "Pro" $399.99, or annual subscription "+" $19.99/mo. Updates: $199.99. Now has Dolby Atmos, and DAWproject open-source file exchange format. Also "Artist" $99.99, not as well featured, not as useful.

Apple's own DAW, LogicPro: $199.99. Own it forever. Free updates so far. Dolby Atmos.

Resolve AGAIN!: $295, one time fee. Resolve does NLE and DAW - via the Fairlight page, and COLOR, and VFX!  Resolve has Dolby Atmos as well with integrated Dolby renderer.

CONCLUSION

I'm not using Media Composer or ProTools full time, so for me, I subscribe to either, whenever I need it, for the length of the project I'm working on. One month, two months... Most of the time I've been able to get by with Media Composer and ProTools Studio and avoided paying for the Ultimate versions high fees.

I deal exclusively with indy film, TV, Web, corporate and educational markets. I've invested into Final Cut Pro early, (and Motion and Compressor), and I have a CC subscription. I spend most of my time with Apple and Adobe apps. Probably 60% Apple, 20% Adobe, and 20% others, including Avid. Nothing beats ProTools for serious audio work for me, and I'm still having fun using it, although it seems I'm using it less and less year after year. Each time I open and use Media Composer though, I curse profusely, even more than when using Premiere, and I wish I could be using Final Cut Pro instead.

What's your situation?

Adobe Bridge 13.0.3 Has A Memory Leak On Mac M1 With macOS Monterey 12.6.2

 Adobe Bridge 13.0.3 is in Death Star mode on my Mac mini M1...

Look at this! Bridge is doing nothing, just sitting there in the background, gobbling 46GB of memory all by itself!

Is this a joke Adobe?

And how about Photoshop, similarly doing nothing, just being open in the background, vampirizing nearly 10GB of RAM?

In comparison, I'm actively using FCP and it is content with a mere 8GB, flying though a Multicam HD project like butter.

And by the way, I only knew about this because of the pop up window, no slow down or other weirdness while editing! Still a lot of things to improve with macOS, but we've come a long way.

In any case, please fix this Adobe!

Adobe CC Free Sound Effects Library Download

 If you are like me, you always need more and more varied sound effects for your editing. Adobe gives away a small but useful collection of sound effects. I downloaded it in 2015, and I don't think it's been updated since.

Go to Adobe download page, or click on individual links below.

https://www.adobe.com/products/audition/offers/AdobeAuditionDLCSFX.html

The sounds are conveniently grouped by theme and the total space for each is indicated.

Ambience 1 (1.3 GB)

Download now >

Ambience 2 (1.16 GB)

Download now >

Animals (95 MB)

Download now >

Cartoon (83 MB)

Download now >

Crashes (80 MB)

Download now >

Drones (1.3 GB)

Download now >

Emergency Effects (180 MB)

Download now >

Fire and Explosions (490 MB)

Download now >

Foley (121 MB)

Download now >

Foley Footsteps (128 MB)

Download now >

Horror (108 MB)

Download now >

Household (311 MB)

Download now >

Human Elements (203 MB)

Download now >

Imaging Elements (273 MB)

Download now >

Impacts (727 MB)

Download now >

Industry (94 MB)

Download now >

Liquid and Water (585 MB)

Download now >

Multimedia (180 MB)

Download now >

Noise, Tones, DTMF, and Tests (213 MB)

Download now >

Production Elements (866 MB)

Download now >

Science Fiction (73 MB)

Download now >

Sports (81 MB)

Download now >

Technology (166 MB)

Download now >

Transportation (1.4 GB)

Download now >

Underwater (974 MB)

Download now >

Weapons (53 MB)

Download now >

Weather (396 MB)

Download now >

iZotope False Advertising: Everything Bundle Advertised at $199, In Reality Is $499

 iZotope is misleading users by falsely advertising prices in email campaigns.

Here is iZotope email to me, advertising the Everything Bundle for $199:

And when I click on the link, the actual price of the Everything Bundle is $499:

What gives iZotope?

My Final Cut Pro Vertical Videos Exports Look Blurry! Why?? It Has To Do With Custom Destinations

 I was using a previously created custom settings preset to export a vertical video in FCP and my export was really blurry.

 I just updated to Monterey 12.6.7 and immediately thought the update broke my custom presets/destinations.

It only happened with vertical / portrait videos, in this case 1080x1920. Horizontal / landscape videos were unaffected.

See for yourself:

On the left, blurry export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default) and how it should look: crisp. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

This shit happened on FCP Share/any previously created custom presets/destinations, and in Compressor as well if I used any of the previously created custom presets.

Creating a new custom preset worked just fine in Compressor and in FCP as well after adding the presets as destination. Exporting to File, using h264 or ProRes was not affected, just custom presets, and only the ones that I created before (or so I thought) 12.6.7 update.

And it was not just the custom h264 presets, previously created custom ProRes presets were blurry as well, less so, but still visibly blurred.

And it was not a case of a corrupted Project. I created a brand new vertical 1080x1920 Project and the same thing happened.

Horizontal / portrait videos, ex. 1920x1080 below, were not affected:

On the left, export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default.) They both look fine. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

So to me it looked like all custom presets created in Compressor prior to Monterey 12.6.7 were now screwed when exporting vertical videos... 🤬

Or were they?

Not so fast grasshopper!! I was quick to blame Apple on this one, in fact I was the one to blame!

What was the cause of my torments then?

Simple: I created and saved custom presets that LIMITED THE RESOLUTION TO 1920x1080. 

You see the problem? My vertical video that's 1920 pixels tall was resized to 1080 pixels tall, of course it was blurred! On top of this I had modified the Quality settings of my saved presets which COMPOUNDED THE BLUR problem.

And actually, if I had looked at the Inspector within Quicktime Player, I would have seen that the video had a resolution of 608x1080... Way smaller than the Project's 1080x1920 resolution.

And so, that's why horizontal 1920x1080 videos exported just fine with the old presets still. And why creating a new preset, leaving the resolution to the default 4K, exported just fine as well.

That's it, a small thing indeed. So next time your export looks blurry, maybe it's just a setting somewhere in your custom presets.

By the way, last tip on this topic, after it's imported as a destination inside FCP, no matter how you modify the custom preset into Compressor, it will not update as a destination in FCP. You have to go to Add Destination, select the preset you want to update, click Change, and point at/select the updated preset within Compressor's list.

Modifying the preset in Compressor does not update automatically inside FCP. To update a destination, click Change. Select the modified preset and click OK.

That's it. Happy Exports!

Final Cut Pro Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx

I'm getting "Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx" on a project involving a mix of XAVC Sony A1, and AVC iPhone footage.

Impossible to export the Projects without getting errors. Duplicating doesn't work, XML round trip doesn't work.

What works SOMETIMES, is to force render the Timeline (I usually never render anything), not just once, but multiple times, because one rendering leaves non rendered frames scattered all over. And from one time to another, the frames concerned are different, and their count is different as well.

Eventually after several Render Selected AND Render All commands, the entire Timeline is rendered and the export goes through.

But then, it does not always work.. What a pain.

Please Apple, FIX THIS!!

Mini M1, macOS 12.6.6, FCP 10.6.6

Apple Pro Video Formats Gets An Update As Well

 

Apple just updated Final Cut Pro to v10.6.6, Compressor to v4.6.4 and Motion v5.6.4, and with them Pro Video Formats gets updated to v2.2.5:

Pro Video Formats

The Pro Video Formats package provides support for the following codecs that are used in professional video workflows: 

• Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ*
• Apple Intermediate Codec
• Avid DNxHD® / DNxHR® decoder
• AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
• AVC-LongG
• XAVC
• XF-AVC
• XF-HEVC
• DVCPRO HD
• HDV
• XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
• MPEG IMX
• Uncompressed 4:2:2

* Requires a Mac computer that supports Metal: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205073 

The list is unchanged from Pro Video Formats 2.2.4. And I'm not seeing a dedicated page with a download link yet, one has to go through System Preferences, Software Update to install it.

Final Cut Pro 10.6.6, Compressor 4.6.4, Motion 5.6.4 Updates

Cheers to FCP 10.6.6. update, release by Apple today. As always out of the blue, although people who follow these kind of things, like Richard Taylor at fcpx.tv, said an update was coming on Tuesday, and there it is.

Like Rich, I wish Apple put more dedication and enthusiasm into developing FCP new features and improvements, instead of branching into a subscription only iPad version. 😩

macOS Monterey 12.6, or more recent. Small update better than no update I suppose. Here is what's new (I'm skipping the iPad blah, because at this point I don't care about it.):

• Automatic HDR/SDR color management with tone mapping. This should be helpful.
• New titles, effects and generators. We'll see how nice they are.
• Color Adjustment effect with presets. Hmmm, kinda like under the previous bullet point isn't it? I hope it's not too gimmicky.
• Again falls under the second bullet point. Scene Removal Mask to remove bkg without green screen. AI powered I assume, we'll see if it's any good.
• ProRes RAW Settings window. That's good. I hope it gives access to all the tweaks available.
• ProRes RAW plug-ins from various camera manufacturers. OK.
• HEVC export up to 8K, hardware accelerated on silicon Macs. I like.
• Export to EXR with Alpha channel. I don't care, but OK.
• Handful of bugs fixed.

Compressor gets updated to v4.6.4. A few improvements: auto center crop, Copy/Paste files now allowed, improved IMF packages, auto surround channels labelling when using command line. What an obscure last entry!

Motion gets updated to v5.6.4. Nothing to get excited about really: auto color processing for better HDR/SDR workflow between Motion and FCP, HDR optimized color processing, no green screen background removal, improved playback/export times on silicon, improved Slice Scale filter, stability improvements.

All right, well I shall update soon as I am in between projects, and I'll report when I get cutting / compressing / motioning on these new versions.

Apple, it's getting boring other here in Pro Apps land... iPad version, who cares? You're getting lazy, imitating Resolve/Blackmagic design, and not leading anymore. Wake up!