My Final Cut Pro Vertical Videos Exports Look Blurry! Why?? It Has To Do With Custom Destinations

 I was using a previously created custom settings preset to export a vertical video in FCP and my export was really blurry.

 I just updated to Monterey 12.6.7 and immediately thought the update broke my custom presets/destinations.

It only happened with vertical / portrait videos, in this case 1080x1920. Horizontal / landscape videos were unaffected.

See for yourself:

On the left, blurry export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default) and how it should look: crisp. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

This shit happened on FCP Share/any previously created custom presets/destinations, and in Compressor as well if I used any of the previously created custom presets.

Creating a new custom preset worked just fine in Compressor and in FCP as well after adding the presets as destination. Exporting to File, using h264 or ProRes was not affected, just custom presets, and only the ones that I created before (or so I thought) 12.6.7 update.

And it was not just the custom h264 presets, previously created custom ProRes presets were blurry as well, less so, but still visibly blurred.

And it was not a case of a corrupted Project. I created a brand new vertical 1080x1920 Project and the same thing happened.

Horizontal / portrait videos, ex. 1920x1080 below, were not affected:

On the left, export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default.) They both look fine. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

So to me it looked like all custom presets created in Compressor prior to Monterey 12.6.7 were now screwed when exporting vertical videos... 🤬

Or were they?

Not so fast grasshopper!! I was quick to blame Apple on this one, in fact I was the one to blame!

What was the cause of my torments then?

Simple: I created and saved custom presets that LIMITED THE RESOLUTION TO 1920x1080. 

You see the problem? My vertical video that's 1920 pixels tall was resized to 1080 pixels tall, of course it was blurred! On top of this I had modified the Quality settings of my saved presets which COMPOUNDED THE BLUR problem.

And actually, if I had looked at the Inspector within Quicktime Player, I would have seen that the video had a resolution of 608x1080... Way smaller than the Project's 1080x1920 resolution.

And so, that's why horizontal 1920x1080 videos exported just fine with the old presets still. And why creating a new preset, leaving the resolution to the default 4K, exported just fine as well.

That's it, a small thing indeed. So next time your export looks blurry, maybe it's just a setting somewhere in your custom presets.

By the way, last tip on this topic, after it's imported as a destination inside FCP, no matter how you modify the custom preset into Compressor, it will not update as a destination in FCP. You have to go to Add Destination, select the preset you want to update, click Change, and point at/select the updated preset within Compressor's list.

Modifying the preset in Compressor does not update automatically inside FCP. To update a destination, click Change. Select the modified preset and click OK.

That's it. Happy Exports!

Final Cut Pro Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx

I'm getting "Error RequestCVPixelBufferForFrame returned: 3 for absolute frame xxx" on a project involving a mix of XAVC Sony A1, and AVC iPhone footage.

Impossible to export the Projects without getting errors. Duplicating doesn't work, XML round trip doesn't work.

What works SOMETIMES, is to force render the Timeline (I usually never render anything), not just once, but multiple times, because one rendering leaves non rendered frames scattered all over. And from one time to another, the frames concerned are different, and their count is different as well.

Eventually after several Render Selected AND Render All commands, the entire Timeline is rendered and the export goes through.

But then, it does not always work.. What a pain.

Please Apple, FIX THIS!!

Mini M1, macOS 12.6.6, FCP 10.6.6

Apple Pro Video Formats Gets An Update As Well

 

Apple just updated Final Cut Pro to v10.6.6, Compressor to v4.6.4 and Motion v5.6.4, and with them Pro Video Formats gets updated to v2.2.5:

Pro Video Formats

The Pro Video Formats package provides support for the following codecs that are used in professional video workflows: 

• Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ*
• Apple Intermediate Codec
• Avid DNxHD® / DNxHR® decoder
• AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
• AVC-LongG
• XAVC
• XF-AVC
• XF-HEVC
• DVCPRO HD
• HDV
• XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
• MPEG IMX
• Uncompressed 4:2:2

* Requires a Mac computer that supports Metal: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205073 

The list is unchanged from Pro Video Formats 2.2.4. And I'm not seeing a dedicated page with a download link yet, one has to go through System Preferences, Software Update to install it.

Final Cut Pro 10.6.6, Compressor 4.6.4, Motion 5.6.4 Updates

Cheers to FCP 10.6.6. update, release by Apple today. As always out of the blue, although people who follow these kind of things, like Richard Taylor at fcpx.tv, said an update was coming on Tuesday, and there it is.

Like Rich, I wish Apple put more dedication and enthusiasm into developing FCP new features and improvements, instead of branching into a subscription only iPad version. 😩

macOS Monterey 12.6, or more recent. Small update better than no update I suppose. Here is what's new (I'm skipping the iPad blah, because at this point I don't care about it.):

• Automatic HDR/SDR color management with tone mapping. This should be helpful.
• New titles, effects and generators. We'll see how nice they are.
• Color Adjustment effect with presets. Hmmm, kinda like under the previous bullet point isn't it? I hope it's not too gimmicky.
• Again falls under the second bullet point. Scene Removal Mask to remove bkg without green screen. AI powered I assume, we'll see if it's any good.
• ProRes RAW Settings window. That's good. I hope it gives access to all the tweaks available.
• ProRes RAW plug-ins from various camera manufacturers. OK.
• HEVC export up to 8K, hardware accelerated on silicon Macs. I like.
• Export to EXR with Alpha channel. I don't care, but OK.
• Handful of bugs fixed.

Compressor gets updated to v4.6.4. A few improvements: auto center crop, Copy/Paste files now allowed, improved IMF packages, auto surround channels labelling when using command line. What an obscure last entry!

Motion gets updated to v5.6.4. Nothing to get excited about really: auto color processing for better HDR/SDR workflow between Motion and FCP, HDR optimized color processing, no green screen background removal, improved playback/export times on silicon, improved Slice Scale filter, stability improvements.

All right, well I shall update soon as I am in between projects, and I'll report when I get cutting / compressing / motioning on these new versions.

Apple, it's getting boring other here in Pro Apps land... iPad version, who cares? You're getting lazy, imitating Resolve/Blackmagic design, and not leading anymore. Wake up!

Help! Final Cut Pro Thinks My RAID Array Is A Camera Card

 Huh? What?

So today I went Import to try and re-import some media that behaved funky. Doing this I got a surprise: my RAID Array appeared under CAMERAS instead of DEVICES. And FCP started listing all the media files importable (there are 140k+ files on this drive array!), and not showing any of the folders/subfolders.

What? RAID_ZERO Array under Cameras???

A quick search found an article by Larry Jordan from 2015 about this very problem.

Heck, I checked my RAID, and lo and behold... I didn't have the three folders Larry is talking about (DCIM, MISC, PRIVATE) at the root of my drive, I only had a DCIM one. And that was enough to trip FCP into thinking my drive was a Camera/Camera card.

DICM folder at the root of the drive, not good!

I quickly dropped this DCIM folder into another folder at the Root, and now back to normal. 😊

That's how it should be.

Apple Numbers, How To Copy / Paste Text And Adjust Columns

 When Copying/Pasting Text in Apple Numbers, it often creates too many columns, using what feels like random separators. The result is sometimes hair pulling...

Now there is a way to adjust things, but it is not obvious, and you have to be quick to spot it because it quickly disappears unless you click on it right away.

What I'm talking about is the "Table data was imported and can be adjusted." Pop-up Button.

Once you click on this button, you are presented with an Import Settings window in which you can tweak a few things, including how many columns you want in fine. Very useful.

Here is a screen capture sequence so you can see how it works:

Safari Decided to Reset All My Open Windows to Empty Start Pages

 Lovely Apple. I always have Safari Windows open from previous sessions, that reminds me that I have to go and read, or do something about each one.

Today Safari decided to reset all my open windows to empty Start Pages. In the process I lost all my train of thoughts, all the things I was in the process of doing are now lost. Thank you Apple.

I had started Bookmarking a bunch of these pages, knowing that they had accumulated badly, but I wasn't done yet with all of them.

So now I have to peruse through my History and try to salvage what I can. Again, thank you Apple.