Everything Is A Subscription 👹 Now, Including My Services As An Editor. I'm Looking At You Sony.

 Everything is a subscription 👹  now, not only do we pay a hefty price for cameras, Sony's in particular, but now Sony wants more money from us 🥀🌸CREATORS🌷 to use all the camera's features in post. And of course it is a subscription 👹, what else!

I present to you 🙌Catalyst Prepare Plug-in🙌, a free crippled plug-in for (crippled) Sony cameras - I kid you not. Or if you fork additional extortion money, a (semi) full (semi) featured (kind of) plug-in on a subscription 👹 plan for $99/year (at the moment, I'll bet you it will increase way faster than inflation):

The price for the rip-off annual plan is determined by the rabbit in the hat, and by the way, we can cripple the software any time you won't see your money back. So long suck3r! Err, we meant to say: 🦌Dear 🥀🌸CREATOR🌷!

Brought to you by Sony 💪uber functional😵 🙌Imagine Edge Software Division🙌 . I would not touch this 💩 with a yard long stick. But we Sony offer you this gift, oh revered 🥀🌸CREATOR🌷.

The Free features of this 🙌amazing🙌 plug-in are as follow:

1) Color Adjustment (Exposure Index, LUT, ISO.)

2) Importing Shots Marks

3) Importing OK/NG/KEEP Flags.

The give me rent money or go 👆 yourself SUBSCRIPTION 👹 ONLY features are:

1) Image stabilization and Lens Breathing Compensation. (Not supported by any cameras at the moment.)

You see there is a WATERMARK HERE if you wish not to pay for the subscription 👹. Really, really we do care.

Whoa! I'm floored! Wonderful! Delicious! Oh! So pretty Sony!

Hmmmm. Hard sell Sony. Nixing in-camera IS and in-camera BC for what? More work later in post?

OK basically Sony wants 🥀🌸CREATORS'🌷 money for features every single NLE already have, and for the privilege of using a newer (crippled) Sony camera and for doing in post what other cams do in the box.

 Yo! IS and BC are available in post man!

 Not a feature Sony. Bad premises Sony. Going backward Sony. 

Only available for Premiere Pro, how about FCP? Avid MC? Resolve? Everything else? Uh?, as of now it's: 👆 yourself losers, it's Premiere or nothing. We Sony tell you 🦌Dear 🥀🌸CREATORS🌷 what to use, not the other way around.

Not looking forward to the future according to Sony.

Hey Mr Sony, how about interchangeability in post? I guess whomever bleeds for the subscription first (hey dude I bought this cool cam, look, shit I need to pay more dough to actually use all these cool features... OK I'm a suck3r already, here is more $ Sony), will have to convert all the footage with baked-in IS and lens BC. Actually it doesn't even deliver the BC part, that's for later, but we'll take your money now anyway, cause you know, F.👆.C.K Y.👆.U. 🦌🦌🦌Dear, Dear 🥀🌸CREATOR🌷.

All The Best, Have fun with our cameras!

Now we want to take over post.

Signed: 👹👹👹 Sony Imaging Division 👹👹👹

FCPX Missing Plug-in (Effect) difficult to track down - pt3

Oh the joy to open an old project on a new computer...

I ranted some time ago that FCPX dos not make it easy to find what's missing in the Timeline when the only thing that shows is a lame red rectangle with a yellow exclamation point.

Apple has one for missing Files - Well OK, this one works, and the remedy is to relink:

But then it has this one for Effects: 

And one this for Titles:

Great! But what is REALLY MISSING you ask? And there is no way to know until you click on the clip and look into the Inspector to see what can be identified there. Not much.

In this case I was missing an Adjustment Layer and the Apply Basic LUT from Coremelt. This makes troubleshooting difficult.

On the other hand, someone (Denver Riddle at CGC) has been paying attention:

Now this is useful! As it is telling you exactly what's missing!

Now I notice this "feature" is not coming from Apple, it's coming from the plug-in developer, but hey, it's proof that it's possible to flash something useful. Thank you!

Avid Media Composer 8.6.4 needs an updated R3D Plug-in

Looks like I need to update my current R3D Plug-in for MC - R3DSK v4.6, also known as Avid Media Access (AMA) RED R3D Plug-in 1.11.0

- Where to find the old one:
/Library/Application Support/Avid/AVX2_Plug-ins/AMA

It shows as: "MVP_MSP_REDR3D.avx", move it away (I keep my old AMA Plug-ins in an OBSOLETE AMA folder.)


- Where to download the new one from Avid: Red Ama Plug-in

The new one is: v6.2.2, also known as Avid Media Access (AMA) RED MVP & MSP plug-in 1.19.0.10000

FCPX (10.1.4) Missing Plug-in (Effect) difficult to track down - pt1

FCPX shows a really haiku like "something's wrong" message in the form of a road sign: yellow triangle with a question mark in the Browser.

It does not tell you what is wrong.  So you have to dig inside the project.

When it's some media missing, you finally get to where the problem lies, and you get a red screen and a line of text that tells you "Missing File", so you finally know what's wrong and you can remedy.

But in the case of missing plug-in, no explanation. I get a red screen where the plug-in is missing, but it does not tell you anything else.  Hard to know what's going on.  Granted, the red screen looks different, a strip of film with some sort of overlay layer  - hint  hint.

It would be so helpful and immediate to have at least a line of explanation: "Missing Plug-in", or "Missing Effect" would be great. Just like we get "Missing File" when some media is gone awol.

In addition, or alternatively, the question mark/yellow triangle could pop onto the missing plug-in in the Effects window, and / or in the Video Animation. (Currently nothing happens.)

That would make tracking down missing plug-ins a breeze.


Next would be to display some Metadata (Right-Click) for the plug-ins, which would give you the info as to where the hell they are coming from, say if you want to download or buy them to finalize a project.

Currently you only have the name and that's it.  Good luck tracking down the developer, especially with generic names like "Vignette"...

I can see how using many custom Effects / Plug-ins can quickly become a troubleshooting nightmare when sharing projects.

Update:
After digging into the FCPX manual, I have to say there is a pretty thorough list of alerts. 
Still it would be so helpful to have text in addition to the icon itself (like the Missing File one), so one doesn't have to learn all these...

FCPX (10.1.4) and LUT Utility and Neat Video Pro noise reduction

Got myself the LUT Utility from Color Grading Central and its working great... With (most) global adjustments to the image.

Qualifier, Power Windows... do not play nice.

What works:
- Color Match
- Color Wheels
- Primaries
- RGB Mixer
- Curves

What is ignored - as one would expect:
- Sizing
- Data Burn-in

What does not work (screws the LUT):
- Qualifier
- Power Windows
- Blur


Well it makes perfect sense since LUTs are mathematical transforms of the color space.

We are used to so making many tweaks to the image at once that it blurs boundaries.  Wouldn't it be nice if they all followed?

Anyway, make sure to disable all no-go adjustments in Resolve before exporting your LUT. And if your image looks funky... Well you know where to look.

---

Here is something else:

I also use Neat Video Noise Reduction Pro plug-in for FCPX, and when I do it must be above LUT Utility in the list of Effects.

If LUT utility is applied first, I can't select a noise profile in the Option window of Neat, the window is empty - all black or all white, no image.

I suppose it's good practice to always put LUT Utility at the top of the list of effects.

Red Giant Universe 1.3.1 crashes FCPX 10.1.4

Red Giant Universe craps FCPX out!

Knoll Light Factory EZ, be damned!  As soon as I hoover over the lame demo plug-in - shit it's just too easy!  Sure as crap FCPX gives me the dreaded beach-ball of death!

I'm Uninstalling this stupid package right now, (Universe 1.3.1 if u need to know.)

Sorry Red Giant, fix this please!