Useful Websites For Mac Admins & Advanced Users

 Among others, I rely on these two websites for help related to installation and management of MacOS. I have many Macs, many models, spanning many years.

It's a jungle out there, but thanks to MrMacintosh and TechRechard, my Mac admin life is made a bit easier.

They both offer links to downloadable Apple Installers, and various procedures to manage your Macs. Recommended.

Also, the Mist project on GitHub is an app that facilitates the selection and download of Apple Installers and Firmware updates.

Do you have other sites to recommend? Let me know in the comments.

Premiere "Sorry An Error Occurred" Pro

 

  

Premiere Pro with Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 3G Monitor - Frozen video output

Note to Premiere users - v25.1.0 on Mac mini M1, macOS 15.1.1

For some reason with Premiere I cannot use Primary Audio Device: Adobe Desktop Audio, and Transmit Device Playback to both Blackmagic and NDI. The output video on the Blackmagic USM3G is frozen. It will update if I jump around in the timeline, but it will not playback in realtime instead displaying a frozen frame.

I have to either use Primary Audio Device: Blackmagic, which is not convenient for me, or stay on Adobe Desktop Audio and uncheck NDI output from the Premiere/Preferences/Playback video stream and then it plays just fine.

Just in case someone uses NDI and encounters frozen playback.

This does not work, frozen video output - Both BMD and NDI checked, Primary Audio Device: Adobe Desktop Audio

This works fine - Only BMD checked, PAD: ADA

This works as well, but I have no use for it - Both BMD and NDI checked, PAD: Blackmagic

Adobe Premiere "Pro" Is Such A Sorry POS Software (02)

 Sorry Adobe, your software is so crappy you should be ashamed.

I have a 20 clips for that small project that I want to transcribe. Longest clip is 9 minutes. Select all clips, hit Transcribe.

Premiere crashes after a few minutes on transcribing one of these clips. Boom, error, sorry got to close. All the shit that happened is not saved, sorry user, fuck you. Send the report, sure, whatever.

Fuck you Adobe.

 OK, manually going one clip at a time because Premiere is so crappy it cannot batch transcribe without crashing. Great time Saver Adobe!

Clip 1, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 2, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 3, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 4, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 5, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 6, Load, transcribe, CRASHES!!! Fuck you Adobe.

Relaunch Premiere. The first 5 clips transcriptions are still there. No transcription for Clip 6.

 OK, again manually going one clip at a time.

Clip 6, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save. (FUA.)

Clip 7, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 8, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 9, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 10, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 11, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 12, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 13, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 14, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 15, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 16, Load, transcribe, CRASHES!!! Fuck you Adobe.

Relaunch Premiere. The first 15 clips transcriptions are still there. No transcription for Clip 16.

 OK, again manually going one clip at a time.

Clip 16, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 17, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Clip 18, Load, transcribe, CRASHES!!! Fuck you Adobe.

Relaunch Premiere. The first 18 clips transcriptions are still there. There is transcription for Clip 18. Go figure!?

 OK, again manually going one clip at a time.

Clip 19, Load, transcribe, CRASHES!!! Fuck you Adobe.

Relaunch Premiere. The first 18 clips transcriptions are still there. No transcription for Clip 19.

 OK, again manually going one clip at a time.

Clip 19, Load, transcribe, transcription done. Save.

Finally! Yeah! Best NLE in the world. What should have taken 15min. unattended has taken instead 1hr babysitting stupid Premiere "Pro" all the way. What an amazing time saver waster! Thank Fuck you Adobe!!

And by the way, all the Speaker separation is wrong, like not even close. There are only two speakers, Premiere is inventing a 3rd speaker, mixing up speakers, really a great job. And the transcription is approximate at best, but that'll have to do. I'm not spending another minute on this crap.

Adobe Premiere "Pro" Is Such A Sorry POS Software (01)

 Premiere is so crappy it's unbelievable.

I'm trying to reload a simple project from 8 years back (2017.) Premiere forces to save a new version, fine. Premiere hangs trying to locate the media, with no indication of what it's doing whatsoever, sitting there doing nothing, forever. Not fine!

Fuck Premiere. Hit Cancel, Premiere is missing all the media, opens the Link Media window, fine. If I try to locate media, Premiere hangs miserably after relinking the first media. Super!

Fuck that, hit Cancel.

OK the project opens with all the media offline, at least that. Then "Upgrade Legacy Title" message pops up "The Legacy Titler is no longer supported. Premiere Pro (cringe) will convert each legacy title into a Source Graphic, and all timeline instances will be replaced." Oh great! Click OK.

Relinking the very first clip in the timeline manually, click OK. This is working, great, only 20 or so more clips to relink in this timeline.

Let's try to relink them 20 all at once... Select, select, locate the first file, click OK. The fucking beach ball from hell... Waiting, waiting, waiting, nothing happens, waiting, waiting, waiting, beach ball spinning, waiting, waiting, waiting...

Fuck you Premiere.

Force Quit. So now what? I have to relink clips one by one? What a joke. "Premiere Quit Unexpectedly". Oh really?

Reload the freaking project, again stuck locating media. Click Cancel again. Showing again the link Media window, Cancel.

Selecting the first clip, relink, fine. Select the second clip, relink, hangs! Beach ball of hell, nothing happens.

Fuck this!

Nothing works, what a fucking joke.

Deleting all Media Cache file.

Going into the Finder, media files, deleting all the stupid ".pek" and ".pkf" files by hand.

Relinking one clip at a time, by hand. Great time saver, thank you Adobe!

Final Cut Pro Inconsistent Behavior / Bug When Duplicating Projects Sorted by Reverse Order in a List

 I noticed an inconsistent behavior in Final Cut Pro when using Duplicate Project. I'm currently using FCP v11
that said I believe this behavior predates this version and is present in versions 10s and maybe even more ancient versions.

 This behavior happens only when Projects are sorted in reverse order in the Browser in list mode.

If I have the following list, sorted by Name or Content Created (increasing):

Project01

Project02

Project03

The Duplicate Project works normally.
It creates Project01 1, Project02 1, Project03 1 and the selection stays on the dupe.

If I have the following list, sorted by name or Content Created (decreasing):

Project03

Project02

Project01

After using Duplicate Project, FCP switches/selects the original in the Browser (ex. Project01) instead of the dupe (Project01 1). Both the Duplicate Project and Duplicate Project As commands do this “selection switch". That’s wrong, it should have the dupe selected.

With Duplicate Project As, FCP opens the Project setting window where one can change the name, etc. But if you look in the Browser, FCP has created a “Project01 1” duplicate as expected, but the highlighted one actually switches to the original “Project01”. As a result, if you change the name in the Project setting window and close it, FCP will rename the original Project instead of the duplicated one, which is very confusing. You end up with “Project01 1” and “newprojectname" and the original Project01 seems to have disappeared.
It's weird, and really off-putting and usually I don't notice right away but much latter and it messes with my brain.

Final Cut Pro 11 is out, and it's underwhelming to say the least

 Alright, FCP11 is out, and it's seriously underwhelming. Apple has been asleep at the wheel for a number of years / releases and that's really a pity.

Adobe Premiere and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve are on fast update cycles and are now feeling more advanced than FCP. That's a real shame.

What's new? Not much really: Magnetic mask, basically AI powered automatic masking,  and AI powered transcription.

That's it? Yep.

Note that DVR's Magic Mask was introduced 4 years ago, and it got AI powered transcription for at least a full year. PP has had it for even longer. And we already had third party tools and plug-ins doing these two things very well for many years as well.

So FCP is sadly LAGGING behind.

Well there is also Smart AR conform, Auto Enhance Light and Color, Smooth SloMo, Voice Isolation. I hope Apple is way better at implementing these features than the concurrence, because let me tell you, I am not in a rush to try them out. And if they are not substantially better than PP or DVR, I will feel even more let down by Apple. 

Oh yeah there is also spacial editing and export to Vision Pro. Vision Pro is a lame, dead product. No one likes it. So unless you specialize in outputting programs for VP, this FCP "feature" is going direct to the graveyard, and it feels to me it's pulling FCP with it. Bad feeling.

So yes, that's really it, and it feels like nothing new and ground breaking. Still Apple calls it version 11. Really? 10.9 would have suffice. That's one more nail in the coffin of FCP. What's planned for v12, a new logo?

FCPX came out in 2011, we are now heading toward 2025, FCP will be 14 years old, and to me it has stalled. It is more stable, it is still more enjoyable to use than Premiere and Resolve, but the long list of improvements the community has identified and is craving for is not being implemented. Apple does not care. Apple is drinking the cool aid. 

Both Adobe and Blackmagic are listening to their communities and implementing features that are useful to their users. In turn they feel recognized and appreciated. It's also making the apps more enjoyable to use and more powerful. And to me it feels like they are taking over FCP, and I don't like it.