DaVinci Resolve 12.5b

Kicking the tires of Resolve 12.5b:

- Much more responsive! I think BMD and Adobe are busting their chops to reduce FCPX advance, and that's a GREAT thing!

- Better playback speed, good. Although with some thingss like file overlay it chokes like before.

- The file overlay is not resized when changing frame size, not at the Project, nor at the Clip level. That needs to be fixed. Something I do often: work on the full size Timeline, insert a full size overlay, render a half size Proxy with burned-in overlay. Well the overlay does not get resized by half. Not right. By contrast, the "build-in" overlays, like Source TC, etc. do resize properly.

- And by the way, I would like to have a better preview of the output BEFORE hitting Render.  Adobe does it, one can even compare Source/Output, I would like to see this implemented in Resolve.

- Seem to me that rendering speed is improved as well, not by a lot more, but somewhere like 1.5 possibly, one and a half time real time, as opposed to real time before for a similar rendering task.

- Waveform display in the Viewer, multi Composite modes, yeah!  Full screen Playback, cool!

- The Auto-Sync works fine, I would like to be able to fine-tune the audio after it's been merged though. Except in Clip Attribute where there is a vague "Linked Audio", or in the Media Pool where it shows 4 channels (fro ex.) instead of the Clip 2 channels. I would like to be able to quickly see in the Media Browser that any Clip has synced audio, and the name of the audio clip attached.

- Fine tuning of the synced audio is possible in the Media Pool: Show the Audio Offset Column, and it will display (in Sec. and 1/100th of a Sec?) the Offset applied to the audio file.  Double click in this box, and you can adjust the value for perfect sync.

- There is also a convoluted way of doing it via the Media page, with the audio tab open, use Option Comma/Period to offset by one frame before/after, or Option Right/Left Arrows to offset by 1/10th of a second.
In my test, I can only offset one way: in advance with Comma and Arrow Left.  Period and Arrow Right seem to be non operant.  Maybe a bug?
The biggest bug is that it has no provision for appending tracks... It replaces the embedded tracks with the separate ones - Even if I first Auto-Sync to append audio...  So for appending tracks, the above Fine Tuning is the only viable one. For now.

- There is a way to add Timecode to a non Timecoded Clip (from TC less DSLR say), LTC recorded onto the camera audio track will be used to generate a Timecode track - Right-click on the clip and select "Update Timecode from Audio-LTC." I got to try this.

- Note on audio recorded without Timecode: Set the Timeline Frame Rate in the Master Project Settings BEFORE importing the audio, else just like FCP legacy, Resolve will stamp the imported audio to the FR of the Settings - and then audio will eventually DRIFT if on the wrong FR.  Double check Frame Rates for all clips in the Edit page /Media Pool.

More to come.

Premiere tips from Oliver Peters

The audio mixing part is a good read, most of the time use the same, or a similar processing chain in ProTools. You can do the same in Logic, Premiere, and even FCPX - using Compound clips.  When Apple listen to its users and implement some sort of audio bussing, FCPX will be even more powerful.
https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-tips/

How to "unstuck" Frameio uploader

My uploads to Frameio sometimes get stuck to some 88%-94% never to reach 100%, nothing moves.

When this happens, I noticed that if I click the Pause (||) and then the Play (>) buttons situated on the left of the video placeholder when you hover over with the mouse, it seems to trigger something and the upload resumes and finishes - it backtracks to 80%-90% usually and then goes to 100% from there. 

Not sure why this happens in the first place, in any case this beats having to start again a complete upload from the beginning. Do not click the Stop button (X) on the right of the video, else game over...

The World's Longest Invoice

Freelancers waiting to be paid for their services... This is slowing down the economy as a whole.
https://www.worldslongestinvoice.com
https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2016/03/28/add-your-ious-worlds-longest-invoice/
https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2016/03/29/he-went-undercover-get-scoop-serial-deadbeat-client/

How to sync mixed audio into FCPX

After the cut is locked, I export a fcpxml of the project, then run X2Pro to create a ProTools Session. (See: http://humanuser.blogspot.com/2016/04/fcpx-to-protools-via-x2pro-ironing-out.html)

Mixing is done into ProTools, and a 4 tracks mix (Stereo Dialog stem/ Stereo Music stem) is Bounced out of ProTools to sync back into FCPX.

In the Timeline, select the original Music and click (V) to mute it.  Select all the video clips, and then "Expand Audio Components" (Control+S), then select the audio portion only of the clips and click (V) to mute the audio only.

Now all your audio is muted. Collapse Audio/Video (Control S.)

Import your mixed stems, make sure to select the proper Pan Mode - stereo in this case, and sync them to the In-point. Done, now your final image plays with your final mix, ready for Share / Export.

FCPX to ProTools via X2Pro - ironing out the hiccups

1) If the ProTools session shows mono music where it was stereo in FCPX, chances are the music clips are connected to a video clip as opposed to the "empty" Primary Storyline.

How to fix:
- Select the video clip(s) and Lift From Storyline so that the connected music connects to a Gap in the Primary Storyline.
or (faster),
- Select all the connected music clips and Create new Storyline. Make sure the newly created Storyline connects to a Gap in the Primary Storyline.

2) When using L and J cuts - or overlapping audio in FCPX, X2Pro will checkerboard the audio onto multiple tracks.

How to fix:
- No need to fix this as it is a necessity going from trackless FCPX to tracked ProTools.

3) ProTools is showing the same audio clip multiple times: 2 instances on two different tracks, even up to 9 instances on 9 different tracks!

How to fix:
- The same separate audio clip got connected twice to the video clip, probably confusing X2Pro, or FCPX XML Export. Select the clip in question, Reveal In Browser (Shift F), Right+Click the Clip to Open in the Timeline.  Check the presence of dupe audio, delete the extra audio.  Now go back to your Timeline and for each instance of the clip, Matchframe (Shift F) and replace the clip in the Timeline with the "fixed" synchronized clip from the Browser.

How to fix a problem installing Frameio extension for Premiere Pro CC2015

Update:
There is a new installer from Frameio:

It came to our attention that some Windows users and some Mac OS X users running 10.10.x were having trouble with the installation. We've since fixed the issue so you should be able to download again. Please grab the new installer below. 

Mac OS X Installer 

Windows Installer 

If you're still having trouble please shoot me a message. Im happy to help! 

Best,

Thomas, Frame.io Integrations Engineer

----------
Original post:

I was trying to install the Frame.io Extension for Premiere Pro only to find out that Window/Extensions was greyed out in Premiere.

After running the Frame.io installer a couple of times, no luck. Window/Extensions stayed greyed out:

Obviously something was missing.

So I then went to Window/Browse Add-ons, which started a Safari page with Adobe Add-ons on it --- and... No Frame.io add-on there, but I got the Wipster Review Panel add-on for PP.

That synced fine to my CC and then appeared in PP under Window/Extensions - not greyed out anymore!  Cool, great...  Except Frame.io still did not show under Window/Extensions.

Somehow it looked like the Installer was not installing, so I searched for Frameio on my HD and under User/Library/Application Support I found a Frameio folder with a PremiereInstaller folder in it, and inside this folder was a install.txt with the following:

2016-04-13 18:08:52.625 Frame.io Premiere Installer[1870:197477] Launched installer
2016-04-13 18:08:55.105 Frame.io Premiere Installer[1870:197477] SUCCESS download json
2016-04-13 18:09:03.201 Frame.io Premiere Installer[1870:197477] SUCCESS download zxp
2016-04-13 18:09:03.201 Frame.io Premiere Installer[1870:197477] FAILED setting permissions for /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP

All right, we're getting somewhere, I then looked into /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions and found out that the Wipster "widget" was in there:

I also noticed that permissions for the Adobe folder looked OK, on the other end, the permissions for the CEP and extension folders looked funky:

Notice the "Fetching..." in the extension folder permissions?  To straighten this up, I went to the Adobe folder info and "Apply to enclosed items" the same permissions, and this fixed the "Fetching..." oddity, to "system".

I installed the Frameio for Premiere again, and this time it appeared in the extensions folder:

And this ultimately fixed the problem, now Frameio extension shows as it should under Window/Extensions: