Variable Frame Rates From Phone Footage Creating Problems In Premiere - No External Playback

 We have to deal with a lot of phone footage nowadays, and the phones are prone to creating clips with variable frame rates, with some hit and miss results in post, particularly when using Premiere.

 Have a look at this phone video clip specs:

Variable frame rate clip from iPhone, seen as such in Media Conch

 If you are like me using BMD 3G Monitor with Desktop Video, with non legit frame rates in Premiere Source window, you get no output. Even though Premiere is content playing back the clip internally, no go with external monitoring.

 Now if you create a legit frame rate Timeline and drop the variable FR clip into it, all is well because Premiere conforms the non-legit frame rate clip to the (legit) Timeline frame rate.

 When bringing such variable FR clips into Premiere, the FR stamping gets somewhat fantastical. In this example I have 5 clips, all from the same phone. They are all recognized in the metadata as 29.98 fps:

All VFR clips stamped as 29.98fps in Premiere

Same thing in the Media File Properties: 29.98. It should be 30fps, but because of variable FR, Premiere stamps them at 29.98.

Same thing in the Media File Properties window.

 For some reasons the first three clips playback just fine on the external monitor via Desktop Video/3G Monitor, the last two clips do not playback at all. Again, I'm talking about the Source window playback, not Timeline playback.

 On closer inspection, these clips show fantastical frame rates when invoking the Modify/Interpret Footage function. The Frame Rate is all over the place:

 Clip 1 = 29.9775

 Clip 2 = 29.9782

 Clip 3 = 29.9793

 Clip 4 = 29.9869

 Clip 5 = 29.9845

 Remember all five clips frame rate is rounded and stamped as 29.98 by Premiere.

 For some reason, only the first three clips will play through external playback in Premiere, not the last two. Maybe 29.97xx is an acceptable frame rate to BMD, but not 29.98xx? Who knows.

 A workaround is to manually stamp all these VFR iPhones clips to the proper 30 fps, (or 29.98 fps) in the selected "Assume this frame rate" and clicking OK. Batch processing is possible.

 Now all clips playback through the Source window / external monitor 3G Monitor device just fine. But it is changing the source frame rate, so it might not be desirable beyond permitting Source Monitor external playback via BlackmagicDesign DV/3G Monitor. You be the judge of that.

PP 25.5.0

macOS Sequoia 15.6.1

Adobe Premiere Pro Dynamic Link AE Composition Loading Forever "Pending" Not Getting Online - aerendercore Fix

 Adobe please fix this annoying behavior of Dynamic Link not working properly, loosing the AE Comps links, and creating havoc in our projects.

 And pleeeaase, the issue is not long or complicated sequences, or other lame excuse you constantly throw back at users experiencing this very problem. And stop it with the "you have a weak computer with sub par specs". OK that might be the case for some users working on a laptop with 4GB of ram, most users though have sufficient specs. An app like Premiere or AE does not need outrageous specs to function properly. If that's your excuse, your code is lame.

 Dynamic Link is a great concept, badly executed. Please improve its reliability tenfold.

 In any case, I'm on Mac M1, macOS Sequoia 15.1.1, PP and AE 2025. Out of the blue my DL AE Comps are being put on "Pending" forever when opening the PP Project. It all worked properly for weeks before going bezark all of a sudden.

 When I try to manually relink or disable / enable the clips I'm getting the beachball of death.

 I tried all the online "fixes": deleting caches, prefs, plug-ins, disabling frame rendering (in AE), leaving AE open, closing it, turning Firewall off momentarily, nothing worked.

 Re-importing each freaking DL AE Comp manually? No thanks. Would have taken FOREVER. Re-install apps, delete whatever dynamic link folder, no go. 

 In the end what fixed it was rather simple and I got the solution from this AE discussion board: https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-discussions/aerendercore-consuming-more-ram-than-allocated/td-p/12957589

 I once again tried to disable / enable one of the DL AE Comp, which caused the beachball of death yet again. Then I openend Activity Monitor, saw that both Premiere Pro and aerendercore were Not Responding. I selected aerendercore process and Stopped it / Force Quit.

 And by some miracle, all the DL AE Comps, and other regular media clips that were also offlined by Premiere (why?) came online. Boom!

 So for now DL is working again with minimal intervention. Just quitting the single aerendercore process did the trick. But for HOW LONG?

 How long until PP craps off again, and leave me in the dirt? Why the instability? What can't we trust PP/AE that our project will open and that we'll be able to work instead of FIGHTING the finicky applications?

 We need stable apps that we can trust, that are reliable day after day after day. Is it too much to ask Adobe?

Apple Mail on iOs Showing Only Inbox Folder, Not Showing Draft, Sent, Junk, etc. With Gmail Account

 For some reason out of the blue Apple Mail on my iPhone stopped showing Gmail subfolders (Draft, Sent, Junk, etc.) and only displayed a single Inbox folder. It also was acting up, being really slow, showing an empty screen, closing by itself, not showing all messages, and other niceties.

I fixed this abhorrent behavior by going into: Settings, Apps, Mail, Mail Accounts, selecting the Gmail account that was acting up, Account Settings, Advanced. Scrolled down to IMAP Path Prefix. In my case it showed a greyed forward slash "/".

I typed "INBOX" instead, (you can type whatever you want really, it's just to populate the space with something), clicked Back, Done.

Then I clicked again on Account Settings, Advanced. Scrolled down again to IMAP Path Prefix. Erased "INBOX", it then defaulted again to the greyed out forward slash "/". Clicked Back, Done.

And... Voila, all the Gmail subfolders are showing again under the Gmail account. Mail is working normally.

Notes on Creating a Bootable Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks USB Flash Drive Installer

  First download the installer app. (Install Mac OS X Lion.app, or Install OS X Mavericks.app, etc.) 

Then right-click on the app to "Show Package Content".

Locate "InstallESD.dmg" under Contents/SharedSupport. Copy it to your home folder.

Insert the USB FlashDrive and Erase it, (MacOS Extended, GUID Partition Map.) Name it MyVolume.

Open Terminal and type:

sudo /usr/sbin/asr restore --source InstallESD.dmg --target /Volumes/MyVolume --erase

Enter your password.

Let the command run.

Validating target...done

Validating source...done

Erase contents of /dev/disk4s2 (/Volumes/MyVolume)? [ny]: y

Retrieving scan information...done

Validating sizes...done

Restoring  ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100

Verifying  ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100

Restored target device is /dev/disk4s2.

Remounting target volume...done

Restore completed successfully.

You now have a bootable USB Installer.

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