Monday, March 26, 2018

macOs Sierra Public Folder/Drop Box Resetting Original Permissions and Shared Public Folder Name Change

I deleted my Public folder from my User account, then I had to re-create it, with the Drop Box folder inside it. But it didn't behave properly.

1) First the permissions for the Drop Box were different from an original Public folder onto another computer. Namely the "Custom" permission was missing.

After a short Google search, I was able to bring back the Custom Permission using Terminal: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6496223

DO AT YOUR OWN RISK

Open Terminal and type: cd ~/Public/

Make sure the Drop Box folder is present in there: ls

You should see: Drop Box

If you see nothing there, make a new Drop Box folder: mkdir "Drop Box"

Change the permissions: chmod 733 "Drop Box"

Change the permissions again: chmod +a "$USER allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directory_inherit" "Drop Box"

You now should see "You have custom access", Privilege "Custom" for the Drop Box Folder.  (Apple + I, or Right-click /Get Info.)

2) Second, the Public folder shows as "Public" on the network as opposed to "User's Public Folder" which is more convenient.

After a second longer Google search, I found these:

I am not going to reproduce what's already there, again DO AT YOUR OWN RISK. For me the process worked beautifully! Cheers!

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

iLok Manager, Server Unavailable March 13, 2:30pm Pacific Standard Time

Never a dull moment with iLok crap tech:


"Server Unavailable
The server is currently unavailable. This may be due to a scheduled maintenance or a service outage of some kind. There is no estimate for when the server will be available."

iLok Manager Version 4.0.3 GM (b1095, r40330) on Mac 10.10.5 Yosemite

A scheduled maintenance at 2:30pm PST? Service outage of some kind? What are you? F$%* amateurs?
Lovely! Great! Thank you so much Avid for using iLok lame tech.

UPDATE1: Upgraded to version 4.1.0 GM (b1159, r40974) SAME CRAP!
UPDATE2: Tried to launch iLok Manager on my other two computers, SAME THING!
UPDATE3: Tried connecting via my second ISP: NOPE!

The best part is: it was working yesterday.

iLok/PACE you are a disgrace to the world of audio and tech in general. Instead of getting your act together and making it work flawlessly (you've had DECADES to do so), this is what we have to deal with again and again.

UPDATE4: it's 2:55pm and iLok Manager is working again. Back to work.

Monday, March 12, 2018

Adobe Creative Cloud 2018 Price Increase Getting Closer

Got a nice (sic.) email reminder from Adobe this morning about CC price increase. 

The tools we need DIFFER. We film editors do not need most of the tools in the All Apps CC plan. I've already talked about this in a previous post.

I strongly feel Adobe should make us a better offering than these four current (non) choices.

I mean the only interesting offers are the Photography or the All Apps, period. No such luck for non photographer types.

But then they probably would sell a "Design" Package with Illustrator and Photoshop and a "Film" Package with Premiere and After Effects for $29.99 each and that would not be worth it anyway.

One single choice, take it or leave it. We'll see in the future how often and how much they raise the price on us.

Friday, March 9, 2018

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:

Thursday, March 8, 2018

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.