Pro Tools Not Loading, Stuck Scanning Plug-ins

A common problem with Pro Tools not loading and stuck at the "Scanning Plug-ins" level is a corrupted Plug-in or a stray 32bit plug-in.

Plug-ins are stored in System HD/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins, or in System HD/Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-Ins.

I checked that no plug-in was 32 bit by showing the Kind column in the Finder window. Kind: Pro Tools Plug-In (32bit) will point at the culprit(s.) In my case all plug-ins were 64bit.

So I remove all plug-ins (I moved then to the Unused folder) and restarted Pro Tools, it automatically re-installed the default plug-ins. I then moved back the unused plug-ins one by one, actually manufacturer by manufacturer into the plug-ins folder and tried laughing Pro Tools for each batch until it froze again. In my case that was the WaveShell that caused the hang.

The fix was to update Waves Central, and in Settings select Clear Central cache. On Wave Central relaunch, I then selected Repair. The Wave Shell and plug-ins got fresh installs.

That's it, that fixed the problem for me, back to editing and mixing!

Tips For Location Sound Recording In The Time Of COVID-19

Here are a few tips when recording sound on location.

- Protect yourself: don a mask and possibly gloves, else wash your hands regularly, stay 6ft apart.
- Do not use lavaliers microphones.
- Use directional "shotgun" type boom microphones.
- Position yourself upwind.
- Protect and clean the equipment.

The best equipment at the moment is a shotgun microphone on a shock mount with a long enough boom to be 6ft away from the subject.

Outside you must use a windscreen, that's difficult to clean, so wrap it loosely in a soft plastic bag or a large piece of plastic cling-wrap. The hit on sound quality is not too bad.

Stay as far as your microphone allows (most long shotgun have more reach than short ones), and boom from above. The largest particles fall on the floor, so miking from below is not a good idea.

Try to keep the air / breeze in your back, so that it doesn't carry the particles towards you.

At the end of the session, remove and throw away the plastic wrap.
Before packing, clean the boom and hard surfaces with alcohol or soapy water (check manufacturer guidance.) Remove and discard your gloves or sanitize/wash your hands.

Stay healthy!

Check out the Schoeps Covid-19 page.

Adobe Hardware Recommendations for Premiere

Adobe has published this page of hardware recommendations for Premiere and AE users:
https://helpx.adobe.com/content/dam/help/attachments/hardware-recommendations.pdf

Of interest:

- GPU should have at least 4GB VRAM.

- PP and AE will use all GPUs available (including eGPUs) for rendering and export. More GPU = more speed rendering and exporting. Notice they didn't specify NVDIA or AMD. On Macs, Metal implementation is better, but still not there 100% for what I can experience.

- As before, three drive optimal configuration: System Drive, Media Cache Drive, Media Drive. The fastest the drives, the better. NVMe flash > Sata Flash > Spinning Drive for both System and Cache. RAID Array best for Media.

- Intel i7 and i9 (Quicksync capable, best for h264/h265 encoding/decoding*) or AMD Ryzen recommended. 8 cores optimal count.

- 32 RAM minimum, 128 for high end systems. PP and AE are RAM mongers.


* That's nice and dandy, that said pro editors do not cut with h264/h265 Media.

* For h264/h265 exports with Premiere/AME, I did not see much of a difference between my Mac mini i7 4 cores and my Xeon 6 cores MacPro. OK that was two years ago and maybe I should try again. On the other hand, the Mac mini did smoke the MacPro when encoding with Compressor. See the older post here.

COVID-19

Work slowed to a halt because of the pandemic. Stay safe!

As a reminder:

1) Wash your hands regularly with water & soap.
2) Avoid touching your face.
3) Clean surfaces regularly, especially keyboards, mice, controllers, monitors, phones, cameras, microphones, door knobs, handles, desks, tables, etc.
4) Get outside at least once a day (unless it's not recommended depending on your conditions.)
5) Maintain 6ft distancing with others. (That's a three seater sofa length worth.)
6) Don a mask in public space, keep your distance.

LA County Ressources Page with lots of good infos here: https://covid19.lacounty.gov

Documentary Filmmakers, Do You Want Your Post-production To Go Smoothly?

Here are 10 organizational tips to make sure the post-production on your new project will go smoothly and not slow down to mollasses or cost a small fortune:

1) Shoot everything at 23.976fps. OK, except for high frame rates to be used as slow motion.

2) Stick to the same frame size, format, codec, picture profile, LUT as much as possible. Expose properly, strive for consistency.

3) Take the time to set your camera(s) properly so that the same clip name is not repeated at nauseam across days and cameras, no one wants to deal with a gazillions of "Clip0001".

4) Record Time Of Day time code, and jam-sync your cameras and main sound recorder several times a day. Imperative after powering-off, battery swaps, power outages. If that's not possible, use whatever clock your device has, and manually adjust the timing information on each piece equipment so that they are in close proximity. Watch for the pesky 12hrs. difference.

5) Always record proper temp audio (decent signal, not saturated, not garbled) on all cameras. That's another way to sync the footage in post if timecode is missing or wrong. Use a decent microphone on each camera, do listen.

6) Always record PCM uncompressed audio at 48k and at 32bit or 24bit if you your recorder allows it. Else 16bit.

7) There is no need to record 12 tracks of audio when 11 of them are empty. Learn how to use your sound recording equipment and turn off any empty/useless track.

8) Be generous with Preroll and Post roll. 

9) Offload your footage with a proper offloading software like Hedge, and keep camera cards structure intact.

10) Organize your footage in folders by day: 2020_01_30, 2020_01_31, and by device/card: A001 (camera A, card 001), A002, B001 (camera B card 001), S001 (sound card 001), etc.

Is Vimeo Not Reseting 5GB "Plus" Weekly Quota In Time?

It's Monday January 20, 2020 in Los Angeles, I uploaded my last video on January 17.

Vimeo alerts: "You've used 81% of your weekly storage limit, Upgrade". "Quota 4GB of 5GB, Upgrade". "Your weekly limit will reset on January 18 at 11:50 PST."

"WILL RESET ON JANUARY 18" ??? What? Hello?

Single External Rotating Drives Speed Wall

I often have to explain to friends and clients that no matter the connections on your SRHD (Single Rotating Hard Drive), USB 3, Thunderbolt, whatever, the read/write speed is limited by the drive itself.

See this BMD Disk Speed Test on a Thunderbolt connected 2TB LaCie Rugged portable drive. The port is capable of up to 10Gbps, 1250MB/s data transfer speed.

Lame speed due to the limitations of the hard drive itself. It has a USB-C connector as well, and the speed is exactly the same. As of today, single rotating drive won't give you anything above 130MB/s at best.

If you want more speed, you can only get it with a SSD or a Raid drive array.

As a reminder, the max speed of the various connecting protocols are tabulated below:
USB 2.0 480Mbps (60MB/s)
USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 gen1, 5Gbps (625MB/s)
eSATA 1.5Gbps (187.5MB/s), 3Gbps (375MB/s), up to 6Gbps (750MB/s)
USB 3.2 / 3.1 gen 2 / Thunderbolt v1 two channels 10Gbps (1250MB/s)
Thunderbolt v2 20Gbps (2500MB/s)
Thunderbolt v3 40Gbps (5000MB/s)

A single rotating modern drive is the limiting speed factor using all but USB 2.0 protocols. As a reminder USB 2.0 was implemented in 1996!! eSATA in 2004. Hard drives have some serious catch up to do.