BHphotovideo website is crippling Safari 11.0.3

This is what happens on my system trying to surf bhphotovideo website on Safari:

I noticed Safari going way too slow, to the point of total STOP with BeachBall to go with it.

Opening the Activity Monitor revealed Safari Networking sucking-up all the memory available and overwhelming the CPU resources.

No such slow down happens with Firefox. Puzzling...

How to create a bootable High Sierra Flash USB installer

Download High Sierra from the AppStore. When prompted to install, CANCEL the installation: Quit High Sierra Installer.

In your Application folder you will see a "Install macOS High Sierra.app" that's in my case 5.18GB in size.

Get a Flash USB drive that's 8GB or more. Mount it on your Desktop. Rename it "MyVolume" (or change the name of the volume in the command below to reflect the name of your device.)

Open Terminal, type:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

It will ask for your password and if you wish to erase your "MyVolume" device.

Let it rip! It will takes several minutes to complete.

Enjoy your new installer!

Apple support page for making USB installers with various OSes:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

MacPro 5,1 Sierra 10.12.6, Radeon 5770s and 7950 FCPX, BruceX, Compressor, AME Speed Comparison

II just swapped the CPU from a quad core 3.2GHz to six core 3.46GHz on my MacPro 5,1 main machine. I will soon install macOs High Sierra and FCPX 10.4, but need to run some test first.

Also I'm looking towards buying a Radeon RX580 in the near future (when the prices are down), but in the meantime I still rely on my trustworthy Radeon 7950 Mac edition.

Also just for kicks I installed two Apple Radeon 5770s to run some processing comparisons, see results below.

A) The machine is a MacPro 5,1 mid 2012, Quad Core 3.2GHz, 16GB RAM running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. No other app than FCPX is opened, saving to the internal system SSD.

FCPX BruceX, Share ProRes4444QX
One 7950: 53sec.
Two 5770s: 45sec.

Compressor BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube "Up to 4K" h264 Preset
One 7950: 75sec.
Two 5770s: 61sec.

Adobe Media Encoder BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube 4K h264 Preset (GPU acceleration OpenCL)
One 7950: 13sec.
Two 5770s: 29sec.

B) The machine is a MacPro 5,1 mid 2012, Six Core 3.46GHz, 16GB RAM running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. No other app than FCPX is opened, saving to the internal system SSD.

FCPX BruceX, Share ProRes4444QX
One 7950: 53sec. (Same speed as quad core! That wasn't expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Compressor BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube "Up to 4K" h264 Preset
One 7950: 42sec. (Faster than quad core, as expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Adobe Media Encoder BruceX ProRes4444QX file to Youtube 4K h264 Preset (GPU acceleration OpenCL)
One 7950: 9sec. (Faster than quad core as expected.)
Two 5770s: ??sec.

Google Finance is changing

For whose of you using Google Finance to track stocks and more, it's getting a facelift:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-finance-as-you-know-it-is-going-away-here-is-what-will-remain-2017-09-27

In my case the new page starts BLANK. What? None of my lists translate to the new Google Finance!? Bad move Google.

If you want to save your info in a spreadsheet before it's gone for good, the old page is still available (for how long?) at: finance.google.com/finance/portfolio

I guess we have to rebuild our portfolios, such a waste of time. And what will remain of the tools? I'll report when I have time to try the new Google Finance.

FCPX 10.3.4 to DaVinci Resolve 14.3 Observations

I just downloaded DaVinci 14.3 and out of curiosity exported a fcpxml of my current FCPX project to see how well things translate. I'm currently using FCPX 10.3.4.

Let's start with audio and then we'll look at picture:

1) My FCPX project starts at 23:59:57:00 to allow for a 3 sec. preroll and then start the first image at 00:00:00:00. Well Resolve handles this differently and continues playing Timecode at 24:00:00:01 and counting... What?

What is this BMD?

Fairlight counts correctly to 00:00:00:00 pass 24hr., but does not like crossing over and plain STOPS there. Even signifies its refusal with a "T" mark in the time bar. And trying to click further down the time bar doesn't do anything.

You won't go pass that 00:00:00:00 point.

Changing the Timeline Starting Timecode to 00:00:00:00 or 01:00:00:00 effectively removes the "T" mark, or better it's out of the way, and Fairlight plays happily.

2) The Disabled Clips in FCPX Timeline are correctly Disabled in Resolve/Fairlight Timeline, EXCEPT for clips grouped into a Secondary Storyline, see below, thus creating chaos.

3) Stereo clips are brought in as Mono L/R. Why we still have to deal with this ancient mode in modern NLEs are beyond me. Are you listening engineers, programmers? We want proper multi channel audio track handling.

3) The order in which Resolve brings audio clips seem very random, and in any case doesn't take Roles into account in any way.

4) Audio grouped under a Storyline in FCPX translates into Resolve as "Secondary Storyline_L/R clip instead of the proper audio clips name. Thus creating additional chaos.

5) Some audio grouped under Storylines are NOT PRESENT in Resolve Timeline. I don't know why some audio is being dropped. That's wrong.

I guess we cannot use Secondary Storylines for audio for this workflow or we have to take all audio clips out of Secondary Storylines before exporting fcpxml.

6) Gain (a Logic Pro Effect) is ignored. Alex4D Sound Only (a FCPX/Motion Transition) is ignored.

7) Volume is ignored.

8) Fades are ignored.

So all in all, not a very satisfactory first impression audio wise  I mean we live in times where we must keep as much as possible of the information from system to system, and this is clearly not a good example of that. Sending fcpxml to X2Pro to ProTools via AAF is a much more advanced workflow. As far as Audition goes, it still can't open fcpxml, you have to roundtrip through Premiere and loose most of the info there. Audition cannot open AAF, so cannot make use of X2Pro either. Then there is Logic, but I don't have any info at this point. If you do, please leave a comment.

As for picture:

a) Basic Titles with single formatting/font translate correctly. All others do not.

b) Speed changes have been working correctly for some time now, and still do.

c) Stills translate correctly, but not the Ken Burns Effect which is IGNORED. Stills in Secondary Storylines translate as "Secondary Storyline" instead of the name of the still. Plus some seemingly random stills are discarded, and I cannot figure the reason why. That's WRONG.

d) Fades and Cross-Disolves still translate correctly.

e) Effects (Vignette, Color Correction, Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow) are discarded.

f) Transform and associated keyframes do translate, but appear quite shifted, so adjustment will be necessary.

g) Generators are not understood and continue to be replaced by Roundtrip Dummies.

At this point all the known limitations are still in action, we continue to be in "Bake everything into QT before exporting to fcpxml" mode, or too much is lost in translation. Secondary Storylines are still a no-go and a cleaned-up FCPX timeline is your friend.

Here we are again with FCPX cutting stills in-between frames

OK, so I imported and edited a still image in a FCPX project, all is fine. Then I need to tweak the image in Photoshop say, I save the image and it's screwed-up back in FCPX Timeline.
I mean, sub-frame editing is fine and dandy with audio, but with image? There is no sub-frame images in a progressive 23.98 Project. And yes it is visible on playback = I can see an actual jump. And it stays that way unless I re-import the image. Not right!

An image cut in-between frames ???

ProTools Playback Engine, ProTools Aggregate I/O "forgets" Inputs/outputs when disconnecting/re-connecting audio interface

This is happening all too often and it's driving me a bit nuts: when disconnecting and re-connecting the audio interface (same device, native to macOs Sierra) onto my Mac, ProTools Aggregate in the Audio Devices of the Midi Setup goes south.

The output/input gets duplicated and ProTools Aggregate gets confused, acting as if there is no device. On launching ProTools, cahoots ensues:

Duh!

In the picture below, the PT Aggregate I/O is configured normally, and everything works.

Now if I move the computer to another job location, by necessity disconnecting and re-connecting the audio interface, often there is a DUPLICATE and GREYED OUT input/output that ProTools Aggregate I/O is stubbornly set onto. Like an invisible, non-existent device. Hence it produces the Playback engine message above.

I wonder why this behavior? Is it PT? Is it Audio/Midi Setup? Is it the Mac? Anyone of you having this problem on your setup and can share some light?