Sony's X-OCN Media Works In DaVinci Resolve And Adobe Premiere Pro, But Not In Final Cut Pro. At Least Without The Help Of Nablet's Media Extension.

 DaVinci Resolve and Adobe Premiere Pro can open Sony's X-OCN Media, but Final Cut Pro cannot... At Least Without A Media Extension.

Resolve, OK.

Premiere, OK.

FCP sees and import the XAVC clip just fine, but does not understand and cannot import the X-OCN clips.

X-OCN clips are a no go for FCP (v11.2) as-is.

 X-OCN (eXtended tonal range, Original Camera Negative) is yet another codec developed by Sony in their high-end camera line. Here is Sony's X-OCN page for more details.

It supports up to 16bit video in a variety of compressions, and playback is not computer intensive, so it checks all the boxes, or so it seems.

See this article by Newsshooters.com for a detailed explanation of X-OCN.

Sony's own Catalyst software opens X-OCN, but I don't like Catalyst, and one would use it to convert the X-OCN footage to something FCP understands, say ProRes. But really it's an unnecessary step considering the nature of X-OCN.

X-OCN Clips open as expected in Sony's Catalyst Browse (the free version)

Note that, as deplorable as it is, for Sony Catalyst to read XAVC H-I HQ, it requires activation with a Sony Camera Model + Serial Number. Remember that all three NLEs read and Import the XAVC Clip just fine... As an editor I find this move pretty stupid.

But Catalyst Browse does not want to open the XAVC clip... ???

Camera serial number required. Yeah, sure Sony, I'm an editor.

Anyway, back to what we are trying to achieve, import X-OCN into FCP.

A not so useful chart by Sony of "X-OCN / AVC H Supported Products by Alliance Partners" does not list any solution for dealing with X-OCN media in FCP. It does not specify that a camera serial number is required to open XAVC H clips in Sony Catalyst Browse either.

Resolve and Premiere are perfectly happy with X-OCN clips, and open, import, and work with them just fine. Final Cut Pro on the other end does not understand the codec.

Supposedly there used to be a Calibrated{Q} Sony RAW Decode plug-in that one could buy that allowed FCP to understand X-OCN, but it was back in the F55 days, and it looks like it is not being updated, or it has been discontinued.

Enters Nablet Gmbh and their X-OCN Media Extension for Apple macOS. Currently in version 1.1. It's downloadable here, and is free for the time being. 🙌

Nablet's X-OCN Media Extension downloaded and ready to install.

Read this FCPCafe article detailing how it works.

And here is the Apple documentation about Media Extensions if you are interested.

I will be installing and testing it in incoming posts, and I will try to show the similarities and differences between DVR, PP and FCP+NME. Stay tuned!

Apple's Safari Download Is Execrable

 Safari 18.6 is downright execrable, unreliable, slow.

 I today wanted to download a 7GB file from Wetransfer, Safari first told me it needed 350h to complete. Huh? What?

 I cancel that shit, tried again and it went through an hour of downloading at not so great speed, until it got stuck at 6GB. No progress after that. Super!

 Third time is a charm... You'd think. Nope. 4 hours needed at 400KB/s to download the file at stupidly slow download speed. And the estimated time is not even real as an hour later it's still showing 3h43min needed...

 All right,enough with Safari, Firefox to the rescue. Boom! Downloading at 7.7MB/s. Steady does it. 17min. later the file is on my computer. First try, no fuss.

 Apple, get your shit together with Safari, it's a disgrace.

How To Export An Archive Of Your Gmail Mailbox, And Open It "Offline" With Thunderbird On Mac - PART TWO - Thunderbird Setup

 Allright, in PART ONE of this saga I showed you how to export your Gmail data.

Now in PART TWO, we setup Thunderbird to open and browse the data.

1. Google exported a zip file that we've downloaded on our computer. In my case it's called: "takeout-20251103T234620Z-3-001.zip", and is in my Download folder.

2. Move the file to a location of your choice, in my case I put it in my Documents folder, inside a subfolder that I renamed "Gmail Takeout Zips". Open the zip file, and the following is decompressed: "Takeout" folder, "Mail" subfolder", "Work/Moviola.mbox" folder. All the messages/data is contained in the ".mbox" folder. Remember I elected to export only one of my labels/Gmail folder, so my dataset / .mbox folder is small. If you were to export your entire Gmail data, the size of the .mbox will likely be way larger, and possibly will come in multiple parts due to the file size option/constrain imposed by Google. I previously exported a Work-DVDList folder, so the corresponding Takeout and decompressed .mbox is also present.

4. Create a new Folder in Documents, and name it "Thunderbird Read Gmail Archives". Copy the ".mbox" files in it. You can then eliminate the remaining emptied Takeout folders. Your setup should look like this:

5. Launch Thunderbird. When presented with the Welcome screen / "Setup your existing email address", Click on Cancel.

6. "No email account configured" pops up, check "Use Thunderbird without an email account" and click "Exit Setup".

7. Thunderbird opens on the Privacy Notice page / tab.

8. Go to: File / New / Feed Account

9. Give the account a name, I choose "Mail Archives - READ ONLY", and click Continue.

10. Thunderbird pops a Feed Account Wizard confirmation window, click Done.

11. You now have a "Mail Archives - READ ONLY" feed in the list. Right Click on the name to reveal a pop-up menu.

12. Click on Settings.

13. For the Message Storage  / Local Directory, Click on Browse

14. Select the "Thunderbird Read Gmail Archives" containing the .mbox folders, and click Open.

15. Thunderbird needs to restart pop-up, click Restart.

16. Thunderbird restarts and now in the local directory points at the correct folder:

17. Click on the Mail Archives - READ ONLY feed tab, and the mailboxes show up:

18. You can now browse, search, export individual messages:

And that's a wrap!

How To Export An Archive Of Your Gmail Mailbox, And Open It "Offline" With Thunderbird On Mac - PART ONE - Gmail Export

 Warning! This is a loooong thread, thanks Google, so hang in there!

PART ONE, let's export from Gmail:

1. Click on the Gmail account Icon, click on "Manage your Google Account"

2. When in your Google account page, click on the Data & privacy tab on the left.

3. When in the Data & privacy page, scroll down to get to the "Download your data" area.

4. Click on the Download your data. It will open the Google Takeout page. This is where you can choose what data you want to export. There are TONS of data, and some selection is already made by default as you can see. But we do not want that.

5. So click on "Deselect all". That will deselect some of the data, not all unfortunately, so you have to scroll down and deselect each box manually. Continue to scroll down and deselect all the boxes, until you get to the Mail area.

6. Click to select Mail. By default, "All Mail data included" is selected which will export EVERYTHING. You may or may not want to export your entire Mail content. If you do, you can skip the next steps and go directly to step 13.

7. On the other end, if you want to choose which part of Mail to export, click on "All Mail data included". This will open the "Mail content option" page. And by default "Include all messages in Mail" is selected.

8. From there you can choose to select only some mailbox folders to export.

9. If needed then, deselect "Include all messages in Mail", and scroll down and deselect the default folders you do not wish to export / select the folders you only want to export.

10. For example, I do not wish to export "Archived", "Chat", "Drafts", "Inbox" that are all selected by default, so I uncheck them all.

11. I only want to export "Work/Moviola", so I checked that. I previously exported "Work/DVDList". And I click "OK".

12. Now instead of the default "All Mail data included", it shows "1 label selected", which corresponds to my single selection of "Work/Moviola".

13. Now scroll down and click on "Next step"

14. In the "Choose file type, frequency & destination" you are presented with frequency, file type, and file size options. I leave everything at default. Then click "Export".

15. Google asks for identification, so fill-in your info.

16. When Google finishes prepping the export, you will get an email with a link to download. You can also view the available download sets by clicking on "Manage exports".

17. I have two completed Data backups available to download. The one I want is the most recent, so I click on the top arrow.

18. From there I can click on the Download button to get it transferred to my computer.

19. The Zip file is downloaded onto my computer.

And we are done with the Google Mail export. Go to PART TWO for the Thunderbird How-to.

Adobe Premiere 25.5.0 Crashes When Using "Replace with After Effects Composition" - With Solution

 Premiere 25.5.0, After Effects 25.5.0, Mac M1 Sequoia 15.6.1

SYMPTOM:

Each time I call "Replace with After Effects Composition", AE loads, the Save as window comes up, and I immediately get the beach ball of death, impossible to save the AE project.

SOLUTION:

Force quit AE, Premiere is frozen. Force quit Premiere.

IN PREMIERE:

Preferences, Media Cache, Remove all media caches (Delete.) Select Delete all media cache files (require restart.)

Delete all media cache files (require restart.)

Hold Option while restarting Premiere. Reset options: check all but "Disable third party plugins (one time only.) Continue.

Reset all these but last

IN AFTER EFFECTS:

Settings, Startup & Repair, "Empty All Caches..."

Settings, Media & Disk Cache, "Empty Disk Cache", and "Clean Database & Cache".

Restart AE.

And now "Replace with After Effects Composition" is working as expected.

Adobe Premiere Pro "Frame Substitution Recursion Attempt Aborting After Multiple Attempts On File ... Inserting Black For Frame Number ..." Bug

 Premiere hates you just as much as Avid. In a different way, but just as much.

 Here is the new fuckup:

 "Frame substitution recursion attempt aborting after multiple attempts on file... inserting black for frame number..."

Uh? What?

Of course looking up the problem online is a deluge of "your files are corrupted", or "the media is bad", or "what are you editing on?" or whatever fucking reason, but never Premiere is fucking up, which it is obviously what's happening.

HELLO Adobe!??? Didn't you just came up with Premiere for iOS? Better make Premiere for Mac actually work before adding yet another dysfunctional app to your arsenal.

 Cringe. What is going on Adobe?