Apple Motion 5.8 And Compressor 4.8 Updates

 With Final Cut Pro 10.8, Apple also update Motion to 5.8 and Compressor to 4.8.

Like FCP, Motion 5.8 gets Enhance Light and Color Filter powered by machine learning. But no sign of Smooth Slo Motion powered by ML. Hmmm. Testing soon. The rest is mostly (and welcomed) bug fixes.

Compressor 4.8 gets bug fixes, spacial video enhancements and new Canon codec support.

And that is all folks.

Apple Final Cut Pro 10.8 Update June 20, 2024

 Yoohoo! The day before summer apple releases FCP 10.8! Let's see what's in store.

Final Cut Pro release notes

Learn about current and previous updates for Final Cut Pro on Mac.

Before installing a Final Cut Pro update, verify that your system still meets Final Cut Pro system requirements. Then make sure to back up your current version of the Final Cut Pro application and your Final Cut Pro libraries.

New in Final Cut Pro 10.8

Released June 20, 2024

Final Cut Pro 10.8 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Automatically improve the color, color balance, contrast, and brightness of video or still images using the new Enhance Light and Color effect, powered by machine learning.

• Enable Smooth Slo-Mo to create amazing slow-motion visuals with an AI-enhanced algorithm on Mac models with Apple silicon.

• Stay organized by renaming color corrections and video effects in the inspector.

• Drag effects right from the inspector to other clips in the timeline or viewer.

• Use new filters in the timeline index to quickly identify clips with audio effects, video effects, retiming changes, missing media, or missing effects.

• Search in the timeline index by reel, scene, camera angle, camera name, custom metadata, or effect name.

• Search in the timeline index for user-created roles.

• Search for clips in the browser using new “Starts With” and “Ends With” search criteria.

• Enable or disable timeline scrolling using a new toolbar button.

• Improves timeline scrolling behavior during reverse playback.

• Fixes an issue where captions would sometimes flicker when timeline scrolling is enabled.

• Fixes an issue where browser items would be appear to be renamed when naming a folder.

• Fixes an issue that caused disabling the audio roles of a clip to make the video roles appear disabled.

• Accurately tone-maps HDR video content in 360° view for 360° projects.

• Fixes an issue that could cause ProRes RAW clips to be displayed incorrectly in the viewer on Intel-based Mac models.

• Fixes an issue that caused a freeze frame from a log-encoded clip to appear too bright in an HLG timeline.

• Fixes an issue that caused a disabled Color Board effect to be incorrectly enabled after exporting and reimporting an FCPXML of the timeline.

• Fixes an issue that caused the Space Designer audio effect to show presets as missing.

• Fixes an issue that could cause Final Cut Pro to stop responding when rendering with another app active.

• Fixes an issue that caused switching between the angle viewer and the video scopes to change the angle viewer selection back to “Enable video and audio switching.”

• Fixes an issue that caused Final Cut Pro to stop responding when both a folder and an enclosed item were selected in the browser.

• Adds support for sharing 8K ProRes MXF files.

• Improves support for Canon C2 AVC media.

• Adds support for Canon XF-AVC 1920x1080 59.94i/50i H.264 25Mbps.

• Removes support for disc burning.

• Updates FCPXML to version 1.12.

Get complete step-by-step how-to instructions and information on all features in Final Cut Pro. For a list of recent enhancements in Final Cut Pro, refer to What's New in Final Cut Pro.

OK, so a bunch of interesting things here. Notable to me are these three:

In YELLOW we have machine learning enabled Light and Color Enhancement, and Smooth Slow Motion. I'm very curious about these two, and I will test asap what kind of features and results we can get.

In ORANGE, search expansion, including audio and video effects, missing media, missing effects! Yes! finally Apple! It only took 9 years.

I have a 5 parts rant saga about missing effects in FCP and how extremely difficult it is to track them here: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5. So much so that I had to report this to Apple, and likely many of you did as well, maybe, just maybe, Apple listened? But come on, 9 years?... I will be reporting how useful these improvements really are. Fingers crossed.

In RED, here goes the disc burning share option. Oh well, no one burns disks anymore, and when I did I used Toast anyway. I actually never used this once. But I understand it makes some people upset, not fun to loose a tool when you rely on it in your workflow.

Apple is yet again giving us crumbles when we are hungry for a full meal. No improvements on role based mixing or anything of the sort, which to me, and to many advanced users would be the feature to propel FCP to another level. Maybe in 2033.

How To Copy The Names From A Bunch Of Files In macOs Finder, And Copy Them Into Numbers

 In the Finder window, select all the files you want to copy, and Copy (Command + C.)

If you go to Numbers spreadsheet directly and try to Paste the content of the clipboard, it might work, or it might not work. Depending on the file, it will paste the content of the file instead of the names of the files, which is what we want.

For some reason it works with this list of pdfs:

But sometimes it does not work with other files, even pdfs. In other apps, we could use "Paste Special / Paste as Text" or something similar. No such function in Numbers - Hmm, hmm, hello Apple?

So we have to use a workaround with TexEdit:

Open Textedit, create a new document, then select Format / Make Plain Text. Paste the clipboard (Command+V) and the list of names appears.

Copy the list of names from the TexEdit document, and paste it into Numbers, this time it works! The list of names is being copied as text, as we intended.

Something is up with h264 encoding on Final Cut Pro 10.4.1, Compressor 4.7

 h264 encoding using either Compressor 4.7 or FCP 10.4.1 on M1 with Sonoma 14.2.1 are showing blockiness with busy/semi busy imagery.

It wasn't like this with previous versions on FCP/Compressor/Pro Video Formats/macOS that I recall.

 h264 encoding behaves very poorly compared to Adobe Media Encoder. I tested both on the same ProRes master, Apple output is dirty where AME is relatively clean. Same data rate, using the default settings.

I tested previous versions of FCP/Compressor on the same machine: Monterey and Ventura, and results are the same: blocky, sloppy, prone to artifacts on certain images.

It was not like this before: I looked at the same h264 export I did in June 2023 with FCP 10.6.6, Pro Video Formats 2.2.5, and Ventura, it was clean throughout. Same machine.

Something happened since, and now it's screwed. What is going on Apple? Anybody seeing a similar problem on their setup?

Below are 4 frame exports of the same image:

1. ProRes export
2. h264 export from FCP
3. h264 export from Compressor
4. h264 export from Adobe Media Encoder

Superimposed to the original sequence. Opacity switched to Difference, and Midtones Exposure pushed to 100%.

1) ProRes

2) h264 Final Cut Pro

3) h264 Compressor

4) h264 Adobe Media Encoder

5) h264 DaVinci Resolve

ProRes looks the best as expected. Clearly Media Encoder h264 output looks much better than Compressor, Final Cut Pro, and Resolve h264 outputs 😵.

Final Cut and Resolve are close, both doing a sloppy job at encoding h264 compared to Adobe Media Encoder. Compressor is the worst of all 😩.

NOT GOOD APPLE!! Not great Blackmagic Design!!

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.

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!

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 10.6.5 Share h264 Video + Audio Settings, Result Is Audio Only ?! It's A🪳

 Final Cut Pro 10.6.5, Monterey 12.6.1 on Mac M1 continues to give me a hard time. Today I'm exporting (Share) a h264 preset, two projects at once.

The first Project exports correctly. The second one does not, I get a notice: Share has failed.

Resulting in a QT file for the second Project has no video in it, only audio... What is going on???

Upon restarting FCP, the Export / Share goes through no problem.

Apple Releases Final Cut Pro 10.6.5

 Oh my! The updates of FCP, Motion and Compressor are here!

FCP, Motion, Compressor, free updates.

FCP goodies

Compressor goodies. Darn! Some of them require MacOS Ventura.

Motion goodies

Nothing major, just bug fixes and acceleration. I'll take it!

Apple ProVideo Formats 2.2.1 Removes Avid Media Composer ProRes Options in Quicktime Export

It looks like the update of Apple ProVideo Formats version 2.2.1 removes Avid MC ProRes codec options in Quicktime Export.

That's not good. There are only a few options left for Quicktime export codecs in AMC now, and ProRes is nowhere to be seen:

Many more options were available in the previous iteration of ProVideo Formats 2.1.1.

It is still available as a stand alone installer on Apple: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2020?locale=en_US

But after downloading, when I try to downgrade/install to version 2.1.1, I get this message:

Of course, no way to downgrade... Then I found this thread on the Avid Forums.

It did point to this workaround for pepps who don't have FCP/Motion/Compressor installed, I do though. I went and downloaded Pacifist anyway.

I opened Apple ProVideoFormats.pkg installer (v 2.1.1.) with Pacifist and saw the five Quicktime components that are missing in my computer's Library:

I then selected only these, drag-and-dropped them into my computer's Library/Quicktime folder. Since AMC is accessing the Quicktime components for its own export settings, I thought no need to mess with the rest.

Pacifist installed them. Now I have the missing v2.1.1. Components into the Quicktime folder with the v 2.2.1. ones, and Avid's own:

I flagged them in RED just in case they start causing some problems and I need to remove them at some point. Again all the rest I left untouched, Apple ProVideo Formats v 2.2.1 is complete on my computer, I only manually added the old, missing, v 2.1.1. QT components.

Now when I Export to Quicktime from Avid, I have again all the variety of codecs, including ProRes:

Yay! Hopefully this workaround doesn't cause any conflicts down the line. I will report here if it does. In the meantime, back to exporting!

Final Cut Pro 10.4.10 Refuses to Update

Tried everything with the App Store today. It shows Updates available for FCP (10.4.10), but the Update button does not work, not for FCP, not for Motion, not for Compressor. Nothing happens. What a pain Apple.

Had to delete FCP (10.4.9) and install from the App Store (Cloud icon.) That installs the whole app to the current version, it just takes much longer.

But why? Why?

Final Cut Pro: How To Move A Clip Without Affecting Connected Clips

A very powerful modifier In Final Cut Pro, when you want to move a clip WITHOUT affecting connected clips. Because of the Magnetic Timeline behavior, any connected clip will move together with the adjusted clip, which is GREAT most of the time. Some other times I want connected clips to stay where they are.

To do that, hold down the Grave Accent (`) key and drag the clip to another location in the timeline using Select or Position tool. It also work with the Trim tool which is my favorite. Hold (`) and drag the clip with the Trim tool will modify its start/end point without moving any connected clips. FANTASTIC! Try it! It'll save you loads of time.

Check: https://support.apple.com/guide/final-cut-pro/connect-clips-ver7a77ef9e/mac

And open the submenu: Edit clips in the primary storyline without affecting connected clips.

"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.

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.

Apple Pro Apps and Apple Pro Video Formats Updates

Apple Pro Apps, Final Cut Pro, Compressor and Motion got an update on 11/15/18, showing up in App Store:

Apple Pro Video Formats 2.0.7 is also showing up in the Software Update on Mojave:

FYI here are the differences between 2.0.6 and 2.0.7:

cMP Boot ROM Version: 140.0.0.0

Mojave 10.14.1 also installs a new firmware update Boot ROM Version: 140.0.0.0
It allows for the use of NVME M2 blade SSDs! Yes!

Unfortunately for people who installed Mojave 10.14, the Firmware update is not mandatory when updating to 10.14.1 via Software Update, hence we get stuck with Boot ROM Version: 130.0.0.0 which DO NOT ALLOW NVME blades to be used in the classic Mac Pros.

MacRumors Forum and tsialex to the rescue! Here is the how-to update the Firmware.

Was real quick on my machine, now sporting 140.0.0.0.0

Groovy! Until next time for a report on M2 SSD inside cMP

Apple revamps its refurbished products website, and oversimplify things again

Apple redesigned its refurbished products pages, unfortunately Apple does not allow us to list every offer at once. One has to navigate through several pages without the possibility to see all products at once. Why?

Another even more serious limitation: Apple lists only the main specs for the machines, as in CPU and screen size, and color, that's it. And one can only filter results by model and screen size and sort by price. Excuse me?

Can you tell the difference between these two Mac Mini machines? Me neither.

How about the difference between these two MacBook Pros? Good luck.

Or these two?

My! Two identical MacPros, why the price difference?

There is no mention of the year the machine was built, which graphic card is installed, or what is the size of the RAM or the size and type of drive inside. When you buy a $3K+ machine you generally pay attention to the details. To me that's more important than the color.

These are SERIOUS LIMITATIONS Apple. There is no way to quickly assess how these machines compare to each other, something that was possible in the previous iteration of the refurb website pages. Now one has to go to each item single page to have access to the full specs. No way to compare quickly.

To me this is moving BACKWARD. Some crappy job of oversimplification here. I like to see much more filtering capabilities on this page, and more info AT ONCE. The complete Overview would be just fine. Thank you.

Final Cut Pro 10.4.4 is out, and so is a reminder that Apple is ditching legacy media

Today Apple released Final Cut Pro 10.4.4, Compressor 4.4.2 and Motion 5.4.2

As always before upgrading, wait until you are in-between projects, and backup your current apps, and your current Libraries.

On the news release page you will notice this small paragraph:

Compressor, the advanced encoding companion to Final Cut Pro, moves to a new 64-bit engine that takes advantage of all the memory in a user’s Mac for improved performance when encoding high resolution, high frame rate video. Compressor maintains support for 32-bit codecs, so editors can continue to work with key legacy formats. And the app now supports SRT closed captions, which is an important format for delivering captioned video to the web and international markets.

Nick Montgomery @Merch_Media Tweeted another notice from Apple:

Legacy media files are compatible with macOS Mojave, but they won't be with future macOS releases. Legacy media can include footage recorded with cameras like Sony HDCAM-SR cameras, footage from GoPro cameras recorded in the CineForm format, video files in the Avid DNxHD/DNxHR format created with software, footage shot with many other older cameras, or files modified with older software.

Here we are confronted with macOs Mojave being the latest of the OSes to support 32-bit apps. With the next release of macOs in fall of 2019, 32-bit no more. That includes Quicktime7.

We knew this was coming with the 2013 announcement of Apple transition from legacy Quicktime to AVFoundation. So Quicktime Player 7 will stop working, and any legacy media files will need to be converted.

For understanding this transition, here is a great article by Larry Jordan: Media Doesn't Last Forever from July 2018.

And a in-depth article by digital Rebellion: Thoughts on 32-bit codecs being phased out in macOS.

What are the concerned codecs one might ask? Apple is vague at best. Luckily Charlie Austin comes to our rescue:

Here is the list on my machine:

ApplePlanarRGB

SorensonVideo

SorensonVideo3

AppleBMP

AppleCinepak

AppleH261

AppleH263

AppleMotionJPEGA

AppleMotionJPEGA

AppleMotionJPEGB

AppleMotionJPEGB

ApplePNG

AppleNone

AppleNone

AppleVideo

AppleGraphics

AppleTGA

AppleTIFF

AppleComponentVideo

AppleJPEG2000

ApplePixlet"

Most of these are obsolete and personally I have never edited with any of these in the past. I had many esoteric codecs coming from client, but the first thing for me is to always convert any exotic codec into an editing friendly codec.

I think this ditching of legacy codecs is a necessary move from Apple in order to make and keep FCPX fast and smooth. Just like I would not edit with h264, it makes sense to me that we need modern tweaked-for-speed codecs to work with. Not to mention codecs that are capable of more bandwidth to accommodate improvements in camera capture, although that's another subject.

That means yes, we will have to do more transcoding in the future. I am not too worried: there are tools for that, and there will still be tools to convert legacy footage into modern codecs to work with in FCPX for the years to come.

Here is a newer article by the guys at Latenitefilms/CommandPost: Legacy Media in Final Cut Pro that explains the situation even better, specifically the .mov wrapping part, and it confirms what I'm thinking.

Which is faster? Mac mini 2012 vs. classic Mac Pro 2012, Encoding HD 1080 h264 comparison

Encoding a 60min. HD ProRes422 to HD h264 (Best/MultiPass Quality) file on cMP (6 cores Xeon), and on Mac Mini (quad core i7)

1) Using Compressor:

1a) cMP = 210min. Abysmal!

VTEncoder almost never goes over 400% CPU

Using only 6 cores at 70% and 6 cores at 10%. Total never goes over 40% User CPU load.


1b) Mini = 50min. Best results!

VTEncoder barely goes over 200% CPU

Using only 4 cores at 10% and 4 cores at 5%. Total never goes over 40% User CPU load.

2) Using Adobe Media Encoder:

2a) cMP = 90min. Meh.

AMEncoder goes up 750% CPU

Using 6 cores at 80% and 6 cores at 60%. Total goes over 65% User CPU

2b) Mini = 84min. Meh.

AMEncoder goes up 600% CPU

Using 4 cores at 80% and 6 cores at 60%. Total goes over 65% User CPU

3) Machines configs:

cMP 2012 6 cores 3.46GHz, 32GB Ram, Radeon 7950 3GB.

Mini 2012 4 cores i7 2.3GHz (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz), Intel 4000 1.5GB

Conclusion: Even though its specs are underwhelming compared to the cMP, the Mini wins with Compressor.

The cMP is really terrible! (x4 real time!!! What?) The Mini encodes the 60min. file in less than 50min. - under real time. 

On the other end with AME (which is much more power hungry) it's about the same on both machines and it takes longer than real time (x1.5 real time more or less.)

The Mini sports a dedicated h264 encode/decode chip, makes sense that the performance is better, it seems though only Compressor is accessing this added power. Adobe? What the heck??

Have a good day!