Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Premiere vs. FCPX - Part1 Introduction

Since I am working on a project using Premiere Pro after months of using FCPX, I thought I could just write down my experience as am cutting, and sort of adjusting on the fly to Premiere.

- I'm comparing Premiere pro CC 2015.4 and FCPX 10.2.3.


- Note that I am on a Mac Pro 5,1 and a Mac Mini 2013 systems, both with OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite and 16GB of Ram.

- The Mac pro has a Sapphire Radeon 7950 card with 3GB VRam, the Mini has the built-in Intel graphics with 1GB VRam.

- I write these remarks as things come to my attention. The list will grow as I progress through this project, and they will likely be several posts on the subject. With that in mind, let's roll!


Man, do I miss FCPX Magnetic Timeline!  Thinking that I was angry about it when FCPX first came out!  It is an AWESOME feature. I still have to figure how to "Select from here" in Premiere. Oh boy... It's "A" tool for all tracks, Shift modifier for single track, all right. 

I'm finding out I still like to create bins and organize the footage the way I want in PP. Interestingly enough, when I work in FCPX I don't miss that. Is it just an old reflex? Oh boy! Clips just move from bin to bin instead of being duplicated. Got to Copy and Paste then.

FCPX is so much more RESPONSIVE and FLUID!  PP feels like yesterday's tech.  It constantly has to redraw thumbnails, looses random media for a few seconds before automatically relinking, it is slow to start playing the timeline, slow to move the cursor around, it sometimes misses a particular selection (think selecting a transition vs. selecting a clip), it stops doing whatever task it's doing to respond to a command, and on and on.

On the other hand, it's TOO responsive (as in not in a good way) to any zooming, resizing, moving around the tracks or the Timeline. The tweaks are too abrupt, too rough, it's annoying.

Monday, September 12, 2016

IBC 2016 Avid feel the b(md)urn!

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/release/20160909-02

So now BMD has the whole apps deal:
- A NLE (which need more work for sure) and a robust image finishing solution in an all-in-one platform: Resolve,
- A robust GFX solution: Fusion,
- The seeds for a robust audio finishing solution: Fairlight.

Are you feeling the burn Avid? Yes obviously you are! Good!
http://www.avid.com/pro-tools-hd/pricing

Get ready to lower your prices though, because I don't think BMD will offer Fairlight "Studio" software-only at $999, no, no, I think more like $450ish, but I might be wrong.

Think for a second, we''ll get a free version as well, just so it matches the rest of BMD software offering. Eh, eh, and I bet it will have 5.1 capabilities. Maybe if it does not, you can kill this sorry ProTools FirstFree of yours Avid.

Difference between Fairlight "Studio" and free? More than 48 I/O, beyond 256 tracks, 256 busses, 256 inserts; beyond 5.1 (7.1, Dolby Atmos, etc.)

Then you'll be able to buy some crazy modular Fairlight hardware: tactile mixer, I/O boxes, DSP galore, and more starting at a few thousand $.

If I were BMD, I would split Resolve and the NLE. Ala FCP "legacy" + Apple Color. But FCPX, Premiere and Avid are still big players and competitors. And after all, Apple Color got killed eventually, so... What do I know.

What to make of all this? Well, I expect Avid to do the right move and up its offering all the while lowering their prices. It won't take long for BMD to set foot into the ProTools sandbox, and if PT is not significantly more attractive it will perish. As I said you can forget ProTools First, and ProTools vanilla will quickly start to look pretty limited.

Avid has really made huge progresses with Media Composer, thanks to the pressure exercised by Adobe and Apple, maybe they will continue to push ProTools to keep competing.  I say it's good news for us users in the long run. Of course all manufacturers keep their promises more or less loosely... Right?

OK, who's next? Apple, something to announce maybe?

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

My favorite Premiere screen... Not!


Coffee time...

Merged clips are still unreliable in Premiere Pro CC 2015.4

This is an ongoing issue, since Merge Clips feature has been added, since CS5.5, what the hell is Adobe doing?

Merge a video file with a separate sound file, great, auto syncing to audio waveform works just fine.

Then slice this long merged clip into subclips in the Timeline, all is good.

But then try to Option or Command+Drag select clips to a bin, everything goes to hell!

Premiere looses the video, looses the in/out points, creates a subclip that has nothing to do with the selected clip.  It's all wrong.

It's an issue - (and many more related to Merged clips) that's been documented since 2014, CS5.5...  Hello Adobe?  When is a fix coming?

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1263571

Monday, August 29, 2016

Mac OSX 10.10.5 does not Search in Library folder? Why?

Mac OSX 10.10.5 does not Search inside the Library folder, that's a pity.

- All categories are selected in the Spotlight preferences in System Prefs.

- I tried the "System files - are included" trick, nothing.

- I tried the Search: "filename:the_actual_file_name" query trick, nothing.

Does someone know how to tweak Mac OS to perform Searches inside the Library folder???

Avid Application Manager - Pro Tools Plugins installers location Mac OsX

FYI, Avid Application Manager downloads Pro Tools Plugins installers into the following folder:

Mac HD/Library/Caches/Avid/AppManager/Downloads

After a particular installation is complete, the Avid installer removes itself from the Download folder.

So if you want to save the installers in order to avoid downloading again, make a copy prior to installing.


Monday, August 22, 2016

Avid MC 8.6.1.43430 (previously 8.5.3) rock n' roll

Updated to 8.6.1.43430 (8.5.3) without any problem, running fine on Mac OS 10.10.5 Yosemite.

One thing I've noticed: it now wants 2048 MB of GPU Memory...  I got only half that much on this machine, so GPU accel is disabled. Well...

It's loosing my Font size settings, so I get to set that again: Make a particular Window active and then go to:  Menu / Window / "Set Font..." and set them again to what it used to be... BIG! As I like them.  Unfortunately this does not apply to the Effects tab. And neither to the Info tab for that matter, though I don't care much about Info, but Effects yes I do, and that's too small for me.