Cannot Make Bootable Backups Of macOS System Anymore With M1 Silicon, macOS 11 Big Sur, And Forward

 I am stunned reading this explanation by Mike Bombich of the new way Apple is treating macOS security on Silicon Macs.

https://bombich.com/blog/2021/05/19/beyond-bootable-backups-adapting-recovery-strategies-evolving-platform

No more cloning your system on an external drive, ready for a quick swap in case of an internal system drive failure. With the help of CCC I was always ready in case of a catastrophe, well not any more!...

According to Bombich and Apple, "An Apple Silicon Mac won't boot if the internal storage has failed".

Read that again. Do you get it? Whoa, the ramifications are huge! A Mac lifespan now equals the lifespan of its internal storage. Since all current M1 Macs have a non replaceable ssd, that means when the ssd fails, the whole Mac is worth shit.

My Macs from 2009, 2012 are still functioning perfectly, I've swapped their boot drives countless times. How long is the life expectancy of a Apple NVMe SSD internal storage??? No one knows. Could be anywhere from 3-4 years to 9-14 years for the most optimistic. If it's the latter, OK. If it's less than that, no good.

Apple Care would extend the warranty after the first year, although you have to buy it 60 days after purchase, for the Mini it's $99 for three years, during which Apple will replace whatever hardware craps out, after that... good luck.

Replacing a Silicon Mini every 3 years I might stomach. Replacing a Silicon Mac Book Pro, iMac or future MacPro every 3 years? Forget it.

Also I've made an habit of starting with a clean install when upgrading macOSes: new drive, new OS, fresh start. It has served me well as all the small add-ons and stray files disseminated everywhere and accumulated along the years were zapped with a clean install. Now maybe that's not needed anymore, maybe that's what the new Apple compartmentalizing means: The macOS itself, being immutable, is not polluted by installs and stays clean no matter what. I hope so.

More reading:

https://tidbits.com/2021/05/27/an-m1-mac-cant-boot-from-an-external-drive-if-its-internal-drive-is-dead/

https://eclecticlight.co/2021/05/28/why-cloning-big-sur-isnt-as-useful-for-an-m1-mac/

macOS Monterey Is In The House, Mac mini M1 With Final Cut Pro 10.6.1 - Part1

 I started using Monterey, it's on a Mac mini M1 with 16GB RAM, 1TB internal ssd.

I have already edited real projects with FCP on it, and I'm running tests.

My current working machine is a Classic Mac Pro 5,1 with 6 x 3.46 GHz cores, 32GB RAM, Radeon 7950 3GB running Mojave 10.14.6.

I have skipped Catalina (10.15) and Big Sur (11) entirely since the cMP is not on the approved list, and I didn't want to risk using OpenCore. I also have a Intel i7 four cores Mini that I use for work, that also has Mojave installed as I didn't want to have mismatched macOSes on my work machines.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

• Boots insanely fast! Seventeen (17) seconds from pressing the power button to the log screen.
• Internal drive speed is nuts. 2800MB/s Read/Write!

• The compartmentalization of the internal drive is something to get used to. APFS introduced with High Sierra (10.13) is evolving. And starting with Catalina (10.15) the System Drive is Read Only! News to me! https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/working-apfs-volume-groups I'm not used to not being able to create a new folder at the root of the disk.
• Monterey is less elegant than Mojave. I don't know when Apple decided to make the change, I prefer the minimalistic icons of Mojave.
• Updating old FCP libraries hasn't been straightforward, often leading to errors:

And after the failed attempt, the Library is definitely corrupted. Make sure you make duplicates before attempting. 

My workaround: Open the library without the Media drive connected (I always store Media outside the Library, on an external drive.) Everything will be offline, but the update will go through without a hiccup. Then mount the Media drive, FCP will reconnect the media by itself, or if it doesn't, Relink the files.

• FCP is super fluid. No waiting time, everything responds very quickly. I dumped my media on a Sata SSD (getting 430MB/s on average) for the small projects I'm currently working on. It's all very fast editing anything, except for non optimized 4K media, R3D specifically. Haven't tried Proxies yet.
• Export times are greatly reduced, especially h264. Exporting to ProRes feels somewhat faster, but not as big a difference. I have to do a real test comparison.
• Compressor is missing some "legacy" Codecs. They are available through Rosetta. I haven't installed that yet.

• Resolve also wants Rosetta installed... Really? Well I don't need Resolve for now, so I haven't installed it yet.

• The Mini does not support eGPU, not a big deal since GPUs have been insanely overpriced for the past 2 1/2 years or even longer. F$*& the hoarders and their stupid bitcoins. Let's see what this M1 is capable of. The old i7 Mini only has a paltry Intel 4000 1.5GB Vram GPU, this new Mini should run circles around it.
• The M1 Mini has a HDMI out for a first monitor, and I can connect my second monitor via a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI adapter. Leaving the second Thunderbolt 3 for DAS. It's working perfectly. If you need a third monitor you're out of luck as the M1 only supports two. That's fine for me.
• It is near silent. So much so that I now find rotating HD's noise annoying!
• Exporting h264 or ProRes doesn't start the fans, the box is not even warm. Compared to the i7 Mini which starts the fans as soon as Safari is open, and becomes as loud and hot as a steel plant when encoding h264 or ProRes, it's amazing!

That's it for now, more soon!

Dolby Atmos Is Now Integrated into Logic 10.7, What About Final Cut Pro Apple?

Logic 10.7 integrates Dolby Atmos Tools directly within the software. No need for additional software, except for some functions that can only be performed with the Dolby Renderer / Dolby Atmos Production Suite, for the most part this is Dolby Atmos production for the masses.

https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC4n6dl9JjQ&t=340s

Additional bonus: Exported Dolby Packages can be used to transport projects from one DAW to another.

Then why is that Final Cut Pro 10.6, just updated with Cinematic Mode (meh!) and Object Tracking (yeah!) still limited to 5.1 surround? Is Dolby Atmos for FCP 10.7? Come on Apple, sync these apps ASAP.

Stop Freaking Out! Blogger is Not Broken.

  If all of a sudden you see all kind of gibberish html code while composing your post instead of the familiar text... Don't freak out! Blogger is not broken!

 You probably clicked by mistake on the button that toggles HTML and Compose view and you are now stuck in HTML as Blogger remembers this setting, so next time you open it and try to write something... you keep seeing the code!

HTML view. Help!!!

Click on the button (< >)and switch to Compose view from HTML view

Compose view. Da pencil, you doofus!

 HTML view looks like a double bracket, Compose looks like a pencil. Just click on the button and switch back to Compose view.

Avid Media Composer Is So F#$*-Up! - Snapping Command/Control + Click Buttons Not Working

 This has been a problem with Avid Media Composer for YEARS.

 For whatever reason, Avid MC (8.9.3 in my case) just ignores Command + Click and DOES NOT SNAP to anywhere in the Timeline. Granted one could turn on snapping in Timeline preferences, but that's cumbersome and not a good way to work, it's much more efficient to turn on snapping on the fly, when and only when you need it, by simply pressing Command.

 Only... It often does not work because some random app is opened at the same time and is interfering with Avid. What?? And according to innumerable users that have been suffering from this flabbergasting misbehavior, any app could trigger it: GMail, Anti-viruses, etc. It's not even well documented. People have spent hours re-installing macOS and MC app from scratch, to no avail! 

 By the way it's not the only thing that gets ignored... Holding Option and dragging a item from one Bin to another DOES NOT COPY the item. Avid ignores the Option key being pressed and instead moving the item.

 What random app causes this? In my case it is Bitwarden! Can you believe it? After I close Bitwarden, Avid behave normally. Control and Option keys do what they are supposed to do. What a wreck.

 Can you just for a moment fathom the antediluvian code that's still at the core of Media Composer? Come on Avid! You can do better!!

Apple ProVideo Formats 2.2.1 Removes Avid Media Composer ProRes Options in Quicktime Export

It looks like the update of Apple ProVideo Formats version 2.2.1 removes Avid MC ProRes codec options in Quicktime Export.

That's not good. There are only a few options left for Quicktime export codecs in AMC now, and ProRes is nowhere to be seen:

Many more options were available in the previous iteration of ProVideo Formats 2.1.1.

It is still available as a stand alone installer on Apple: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2020?locale=en_US

But after downloading, when I try to downgrade/install to version 2.1.1, I get this message:

Of course, no way to downgrade... Then I found this thread on the Avid Forums.

It did point to this workaround for pepps who don't have FCP/Motion/Compressor installed, I do though. I went and downloaded Pacifist anyway.

I opened Apple ProVideoFormats.pkg installer (v 2.1.1.) with Pacifist and saw the five Quicktime components that are missing in my computer's Library:

I then selected only these, drag-and-dropped them into my computer's Library/Quicktime folder. Since AMC is accessing the Quicktime components for its own export settings, I thought no need to mess with the rest.

Pacifist installed them. Now I have the missing v2.1.1. Components into the Quicktime folder with the v 2.2.1. ones, and Avid's own:

I flagged them in RED just in case they start causing some problems and I need to remove them at some point. Again all the rest I left untouched, Apple ProVideo Formats v 2.2.1 is complete on my computer, I only manually added the old, missing, v 2.1.1. QT components.

Now when I Export to Quicktime from Avid, I have again all the variety of codecs, including ProRes:

Yay! Hopefully this workaround doesn't cause any conflicts down the line. I will report here if it does. In the meantime, back to exporting!

Final Cut Pro Error: RequestFrameAt returned: 3 for absolute frame: 312

 Final Cut Pro is flashing an Error on Share via a custom h264 Compressor Setting:

The footage consists of Multicam clips comprised of one HEVC image + stereo audio file, and one multitrack separate audio file comprised of one stereo and two mono tracks.

The Share exports just fine if I do not change anything in the audio panning mode - at the multi clip level, or at the individual tracks level, does not make a difference.

As soon as I change the default "None" panning mode to "Dialog" Amount 100%, which is what I want, I get this error on Share and the export fails.

This audio panning mode "None" exports just fine every time.

This audio panning mode "Dialogue" 100% fails every time.

This error message is not helpful in tracking the problem. Nothing remarkable happens at frame 312 in my case. It's clearly linked to audio.

Now if I export as ProRes (proxy in my case) it goes through the Sharing with no Error massage, but the export is fucked-up. The image is OK, the audio is thrown out of sync from the beginning and stays out of sync until the end. Damn it!