Avid Media Composer | First (2)

 Media Composer is not likable, but is Media Composer First usable?

 It is slow to launch. Feels like Premiere on molasses.

 You have to be logged in with your Avid credentials.

The Welcome page opens with a huge advert, and Create Project or Open Project, with a Project Location button.

You cannot alter the Format from the Settings page, Raster dimensions and FR are greyed out.

You must first Go to Source Browser, Select Import, and a Project Properties window will pop up. 

 You can make the same Project Properties window pop up by linking to some media, and then dragging it into the Timeline.

 Available Rasters are HD 1080, HD 720 and SD. Available Edit Rates are 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, and 59.94fps.

 It has the familiar rigid, overcomplicated, over customizable UI. The same familiar cluttered workspace. Concepts and features as same old.

 I just imported my first media, dragged it to the Timeline, and... Media Composer already hangs! What a piece of garbage. Alright, force quit the fomo.

 Restarting the app, taking forever to launch. Open my project, OK things are still there. Playing the clip in the Timeline, interesting the Timecode indicator is not counting frames, it shows 01:00:09:-- 

 OK, whatever, performing a few edits, working fine.

 Now let's try to export. Output, Export to File.

ONLY AVAILABLE FORMAT: Quicktime. ONLY AVAILABLE CODECS: DNxHD (looks like crap),

or h264 (Faster, Best, or Better Quality) and THAT'S IT.

And ONLY AVAILABLE OPTION FOR AUDIO is PCM. Mono or Stereo.

DNxHD or h264 and that's it? HUGE limitation for export right there! I mean really? Avid?

I also read in the forums that THERE IS NO WAY to open MC First Projects in MC Regular. What?

OK, I have to pause right there, I'm not sure this software is worth exploring any further. 

Avid Media Composer | First (1)

 We love to hate Avid.

 Media Composer is great when you are working on a movie with a budget, and a decent post team. For anything else, I stay away. Outside of the cinema niche, the need for speed and the mixed media reality makes Media Composer a nonsensical choice. Media Composer is too slow and too temperamental for smaller projects that need to move at speed.

 You cannot throw any media at Media Composer. Example: link a 4K h264 mp4 file, drop it into a HD timeline and watch Media Composer fail and hang miserably! So you have to first convert heteroclite media to something Media Composer likes. Already you are losing momentum.

 If you are a film students working on your short film, by all means learn and use Media Composer. It's a great learning experience, you must understand formats and codecs, you have to think and prepare your media in advance, you can afford getting stuck and last minute surprises.

 Producers and directors working on your feature narrative or documentary with a decent budget and a normal schedule, please hire me to edit on Avid Media Composer. We will hire assistants and the staff needed to keep the Avid running smoothly.

 Everybody else, please stay away! Use Final Cut Pro, Premiere, or Resolve. Any of these NLEs run much more smoothly compared to Media Composer. Spend less money, less time editing, avoid daily aggravations, keep your hair and your sanity. Trust me.

 With that said, Avid needs new customers and is reviving the free version of Avid Media Composer First, version 2023, with limited features in the hopes to woo new users to the platform. Again, for most projects you will be better served with the aforementioned NLEs.

Go to Avid.com/media-composer and download Media Composer First

Sign-in, or Create an Account  if you don't yet have an account with Avid, it's free.

 Download the installer, it will install Avid Link as well. And then try Media Composer First for yourself.

 What's the experience like? My impressions and comments will follow in a series of posts. Read on!

Vimeo Is Yet Again Changing Its Offering (C) If You Are A Current "Plus" Subscriber

 If you are a current Vimeo "Plus" subscriber, your upgrade plans look like this: Pro, Business, Premium.

Pro gets you the grandfathered Pro plan (not available to new subscribers.) Business and Premium are the same upgrade offers as for Pro subscribers. At least that's consistent.

Again no mention of VOD or video subscription services, just a vague "Sell your videos to fans worldwide". For info, the grandfathered current Pro plan allows for VOD.

Vimeo Is Yet Again Changing Its Offering (B) If You Are A Current "Pro" Subscriber

 Vimeo has new plans with new names and new rules. Depending on your status, new or current subscriber, the offer differs, as does the nomenclature...

For you, current "Pro" subs, this is the current offer to upgrade: Business or Premium plans.

Business and Premium have no upload limits vs. 20GB with the grandfathered "Pro".

Total storage is 5TB for Business, 7TB for Premium, 1TB for Pro.

Premium gets live streaming / events goodies.

Pro, Business, Premium get unlimited stock photos, videos, and licensed music.

Notably, there is no mention of VOD or video subscription, just a vague "Sell your video directly to your fans". What form does this take? No idea.

Vimeo Is Yet Again Changing Its Offering (A) New Subscribers

 Vimeo keeps changing its offerings, now with new plans, and new denominations: Starter (The old "Plus", only different), Standard (Old "Pro", although not quite), and Advanced for live streaming and events. Plus the usual Enterprise, custom, talk to us service.

THAT IS, IF YOU ARE A NEW SUBSCRIBER.

If you are already a "Plus" or "Pro" subscriber, you will get DIFFERENT UPGRADE OFFERS with DIFFERENT DENOMINATIONS. See my other posts. Vimeo is so confusingly bad at this.

(A) NEW SUBS

Biggest change: these new plans are all SINGLE TEAM MEMBER. Previous plans had 3 "Pro", or 10 "Business" & "Premium" INCLUDED team members. Not anymore. You have to pay more for additional seats.

Notable change from previous plans: there is now a QUOTA OF VIDEOS ("total number of videos you can have in your account at any given point in time"): 60 for Starter, 120 for Standard, 500 for Advanced. All plans have a 2TB bandwidth per month, no change there.

Prior plans had a total storage limit of 250GB "Plus", 1TB "Pro". And also a limit of 5GB/week upload "Plus" and 20GB/week upload "Pro", without any limits in the total number of videos. These plans are grandfathered at this point for what I can tell.

Standard now has video editing tools, including text based editing, stock photos, videos, and music, and an AI script generator. Starter gains Collaboration tools.

All plans get subscription services (bye, bye OTT), only Standard and Advanced have single video VOD. Sorta like before when you needed at least a "Pro" plan for VOD. 

Blip App From Blip.net May Crash At Sign-Up On Your iPhone - Workaround

 You may want to use the Blip app from Blip.net on your iPhone.

But if it crashes on Sign-up like it did for me, here is a workaround:

1) Sign-up on your computer first.

2) Sign-in with the same email on your phone.

Blip app will not crash, it will use the same credentials you use on the computer and will recognize both devices, so that you can transfer from one device to the other.

Again in my case, the Blip app will crash systematically if you try to Sign-up on your phone first. I guess that's a bug that needs addressing by the Blip folks. In the meantime, use this workaround.

Final Cut Pro: Incompatible Audio Units Found - Force Validate Audio Units / Plug-Ins

 Mac M1, macOS Sonoma 14.3

Got an Incompatible "Audio Units Found" each time I launch FCP. In my case because of TC Electronic LM2n audio plug-in V1.1.4 which according to MusicTribe / TC Electronic is not compatible with M1.

 According to MusicTribe / TC Electronic V1.2.0 is compatible with M1s.  OK fine, I downloaded the correct version from this page. Search for LM2 and download V1.2.0, or the newest version.

I ran the Uninstall LM2n.command to get rid of the old version, and installed the new version. And I got... the SAME "Incompatible Audio Units Found" message on FCP launch! 😠

 Next I deleted Final Cut Pro Preferences (Launch FCP while holding Command + Option.) Clicked the Delete preferences button. And... SAME message. 😡 I guess this step is not useful.

Sticky, pesky message, even though I upgraded to the M1 compatible V1.2.0 of the Plug-In.

OK, so the way to do this is to force Final Cut Pro to rescan all Audio Units by clicking the "Validate on Next Launch" button in Preferences / General:

Click on Audio Units: Validate on Next Launch.

 Bizarrely when you click on this button, nothing happens or shows that it's being selected. But, on restarting Final Cut Pro, it DOES go through all the AUs and validates then. In essence it's instructing FCP to perform a force validation of AU audio plug-ins.

 And this time, lo and behold... They PASSED! And now I can use them in FCP, no problem.

 So if you believe you have the correct version of an audio plug-in, but FCP is flashing the message, do try the force validation as it might fix the problem as it did for me.

Blackmagic Design Desktop video 12.8 Is Broken On Sonoma 14.3 - Fix For Now Is: Downgrade To 12.7.1

 So the saga continues with Blackmagic Design Desktop Video misbehavior on Mac M1s. BMD tech support confirmed that there is an issue with DV 12.8.

The device shows up in system Preferences, but is not outputting video with Final Cut Pro, nor Premiere, only with Resolve.

Solution: downgrade to DV 12.7.1, which works just fine.

I had to Restore legacy video device prior to installation as explained in the Apple support page.

Always uninstall before installing new software.

BMD installer / uninstaller makes downgrading easy.

FCP Video standard is populated, unlike DV 12.8

Working correctly with macOS Sonoma 14.3