Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Apple Motion exports an animated flat background illuminated with Spot or Point light + falloff with bad banding

In Apple Motion (5.2.2) I use a Point or a Spot light with Falloff on a flat animated background. In the Canvas it all looks great, no banding. (There really is no banding on my display, unlike on this page where I can see some, thanks to crap Google conversion of my image.)
When I export to ProRes4444 or 422, whatever, and I play the file into QT or FCPX it has banding all over.
What the hell is this?

I have to add noise onto my background to get rid of the banding, but I should not have to do that with 10 bit output & Best settings. It's there no matter the color, more visible with blue.

After Effects outputs a CLEAN gradient in a similar setup: spot light on a flat bkg., CLEAN as it should be.

What's with the crappy Fallout Spot and Point lights? Apple FIX THIS please!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Lumetri

Adobe is finally giving us a proper color correction tool: Lumetri.
In CC 2015 it's accessible via the "Color" tab atop the workspace. Was it already there in previous versions in the Video Effects? It looks decent and responsive.




Monday, February 22, 2016

App Store Confusion

--- Update: As of 3-8 this issue has been fixed.

The App Store is showing an update for Motion 5.2.3 even though Motion 5.2.3 has already been installed... Annoying.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

FCPX Frame Rate Conform

From Alex Gollner (Alex4d), an extensive list on how Final Cut Pro X handles frame rates conforming: http://alex4d.com/notes/item/final-cut-pro-x-rate-conform
So useful, thank you!

Monday, February 8, 2016

Epson Draft printing mode greyed-out

When I print something to my Epson printer, I can not select "Draft" quality, it's greyed-out.  Grrr... Why? Ink costs a fortune.

As it turns out, when I installed my printer, it was set by default to use the AirPrint driver:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5245420?tstart=0
I looked into System Preferences/Printers & Scanners, and indeed AirPrint shows up:
So I deleted ("-") and then added ("+") the printer in System Preferences/Printers & Scanners, but this time I clicked on the "Use" drop-down menu and selected "Epson series" instead of the default "AirPrint":
As a result, Epson Series driver (sans "AirPrint") shows up:
Now when I print, the computer uses the Epson driver and Draft, "Economy" modes are available:
Yes!

Friday, February 5, 2016

FCPX 10.2.3 is out!


Mostly bug fixes, but hey! They are welcome as well.

Note to self:
- Update when you are in-between projects, or install and test-drive on a secondary computer.
- Duplicate old Libraries, and update the dupe to conform to the new FCPX.
- Archive the current FCPX app  before launching the update. Right-click and Compress, then save the Compressed app to a backup drive. 


Thursday, January 28, 2016

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 10.5.4 on Mac OSX 10.10.5 keeps crashing FCPX 10.2.2

It's becoming annoying, BMD Desktop Video 10.5.4 crashes FCPX at every occasion - like dragging a clip across the Timeline.
I've had it, I've retrograded to 10.5.3, and the rest of the day has been fine, no crash.

I was on Desktop Video 10.5 before and it was stable. This machine has a DeckLink Mini Monitor PCie.  I will stay on 10.5.3 and wait for the next iteration after 4.
I'm not alone: http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=44128

--- Update
DV 10.5.3 is also unstable, although less than 4.  I'm back to 10.5.

--- Update
DV 10.5 is working fine, no crash so far.

What is your experience with 10.5.4? Stable? Unstable?