As much as I like FCPX, its my to go NLE these days, it sucks when dealing with a large number of files.
Disclaimer: I'm on an old fashion mid 2012 Mac Pro, with a 3GB Radeon graphic card.
The core of FCPX is the database, well it's not a very efficient database when it starts to slow to a halt trying to deal with ~4000 files at once.
I am building my SFXs library so it's available and handy within FCPX, of course forget adding Aliases to the Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Final Cut Pro Sound Effects, it's terribly unresponsive and crashes the app with a large number of files.
Instead, create a SFX Library LIBRARY and import and organize your sounds within said Library. (Are you confused already?)
Anyway, alll this is fine, except that I have a 10,000 files in an Adobe sound library I want to import, and oh boy! is FCPX freaking out! I actually have to make it into smaller batches, else it crashes. Under 1k files is much more digestible it seems.
Then after this pain, it's time to assign roles. I want to assign the same Adobe_CC2015_Library role to these 10k files... Forget it. FCPX is totally crippled. Again, I have to do it in smaller batches, 4k or so files. Which brings the beach ball of death and oooops! I'm not touching anything, holding my breath... Nope, can't hold my breath for this long... 1min. 2min. ... All right! Finally it happens! Hooray!
Man! Just trying to select ~4k-6k files brings the beach ball of death! It finally does what it's told, but it's certainly is not responsive, got to have patience.
Switching from one Event (one SFX Library) to another takes some time... Like 4 or 5 sec. of the beach ball right there with the 10k files library. Hmmmm.
I actually have another audio library that's near 100k files... Well I might wait a little before I bring this one in.
What's your experience in dealing with a large number of files in FCPX?
---UPDATE
Best practice is to store FCPX cache on a separate drive, preferably a SSD. That will speed up things tremendously.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Monday, March 20, 2017
How to transfer the Color Picker swatch from one Mac computer to another
If you are like me, you have a color swatch full of specific colors within Color Picker.
But what if you work on a different computer and need that specific swatch? Or like me, you are now using a new Os - clean install?
Well, it's easy, the swatch leaves under: ~your home folder/Library/Colors
It's called: NSColorPanelSwatches.plist
Just copy it from your old Os User/computer and paste it to your new Os User/computer and you are done! (You might need to quit and reload apps.)
Much faster than recreating it by hand. And actually if you need different ones, you can create as many NSColorPanelSwatches#1, #2, #3 as needed. As far as I can tell, only one can be active at a given time, so some renaming has to happen.
Custom NSColorPanelSwatches.plist present
But what if you work on a different computer and need that specific swatch? Or like me, you are now using a new Os - clean install?
Well, it's easy, the swatch leaves under: ~your home folder/Library/Colors
It's called: NSColorPanelSwatches.plist
Just copy it from your old Os User/computer and paste it to your new Os User/computer and you are done! (You might need to quit and reload apps.)
Much faster than recreating it by hand. And actually if you need different ones, you can create as many NSColorPanelSwatches#1, #2, #3 as needed. As far as I can tell, only one can be active at a given time, so some renaming has to happen.
Empty Color Picker
No custom NSColorPanelSwatches.plist
Populated Color Picker
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
9:00am March 7 2016 iLok is DOWN! - 10:44am it's back ON.
9:00am
iLok License Manager unable to connect!
iLok website DOWN! What the ???
Just talked to an Avid Customer Service person, and they confirmed iLok is down, they apologize for the inconvenience, nothing else to do but wait. LOVELY!
How long? Why? What's going on? I cannot work!!!
10:44am it's back ON. Boy!
Fast, Zero Downtime. Hmm... Not quite.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
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:
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:
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!
Monday, February 20, 2017
BlackMagic Design Desktop Video continues to be a pain with FCPX...
I'm at version 10.8.4 of the Desktop Video app by Blackmagic Design, the "driver" app that allows your favorite NLE to output video to an external monitor, and it's still incredibly unstable with FCPX (now at version 10.3.2.) Like I turn A/V Output on in FCPX, and 30sec. later... CRASH!
What game are you guys playing Apple and BMD? I know that Apple allows to output video directly from Thunderbolt, yet I don't have that luxury, I use video cards. Aja does not have that instability.
I am now a year later, two major OS X upgrades, and two major FCPX upgrades from when I first posted this problem, and I'm on a different machine!
What game are you guys playing Apple and BMD? I know that Apple allows to output video directly from Thunderbolt, yet I don't have that luxury, I use video cards. Aja does not have that instability.
I am now a year later, two major OS X upgrades, and two major FCPX upgrades from when I first posted this problem, and I'm on a different machine!
Why is it still unstable. Why?
Users have to go back to version 10.4.1 of the app (released June 10 2015!) to have some stability:
FCPX Crashing w/Desktop Video + Ultra studio Mini
Really? Well thank you for making it available, but one would thing that after three full versions releases you would have fixed this pesky Desktop Video problem, why do you not care BMD?
Monday, February 13, 2017
How to adjust gain to multiple clips at once in ProTools
Now there is a clip gain feature in ProTools, but do you know how to adjust the gain of several clips at once? Easy! Select all clips you want to adjust, then hold Control+Shift (on Mac) and use the mouse scroll button up or down.
And do you know that you can keyframe the clip gain as well? Use the mouse right click on the clip, Clip Gain/Show Clip Gain Line. Then use the usual Command+Click and Option+Click to add or delete keyframes, and tweak the gain line. This is in total independence to the track volume and its automation.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
How to Relink files with ProTools 12
Things have changed a bit with the new version of ProTools, what hasn't change is how picky ProTools is when it comes to reconnecting files.
When you open a session and PT does not find the files (they have changed folder, they've been copied onto another drive, etc.) a window pops up asking if you want to relink files automatically. Usually it goes on for a few minutes and FAILS.
I find that the only way that works is to reconnect files manually. Now the thing is the default settings for manual relink is too stringent, and ProTools will find no links by itself. Sure you can go on one file at a time and reconnect manually each file, but that's a waste of time, and not doable when you have thousands of files in your session.
In order to reconnect multiple files in one go, I have to select find files by name, and only that in the relink settings. ProTools will alert you that it's not a good thing to do, well that's the only thing that works. Obviously I do not have duplicates, and all my files are inside a unique folder that I can point ProTools to.
What's your experience with files Relink in ProTools 12?
When you open a session and PT does not find the files (they have changed folder, they've been copied onto another drive, etc.) a window pops up asking if you want to relink files automatically. Usually it goes on for a few minutes and FAILS.
I find that the only way that works is to reconnect files manually. Now the thing is the default settings for manual relink is too stringent, and ProTools will find no links by itself. Sure you can go on one file at a time and reconnect manually each file, but that's a waste of time, and not doable when you have thousands of files in your session.
In order to reconnect multiple files in one go, I have to select find files by name, and only that in the relink settings. ProTools will alert you that it's not a good thing to do, well that's the only thing that works. Obviously I do not have duplicates, and all my files are inside a unique folder that I can point ProTools to.
What's your experience with files Relink in ProTools 12?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)