human user

Thursday, January 26, 2017

How to playback Blu-ray discs and files on a Mac?

Try Leawo Blu-ray player app: http://www.leawo.org/blu-ray-player-mac/

Free, simple, supports full screen playback and subtitles. Works great on macOs Sierra.

Update:
There is a version for Windows as well.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Drive performances are not made equal - a few speed test comparisons

Some are abysmal! Like this Patriot USB 2.0 32GB flash drive:

Seriously flawed!

Compared to this no name USB 2.0 16GB flash drive:

Useless for most tasks.

Obviously pale in comparison to this (meh!) WD My Passport for Mac USB 3.0 1TB portable hard drive:

That's acceptable for HD work, certainly not fast.

What's a bit better is this WD Red 2TB 3.5 bare hard drive in a USB 3.0 (or eSata dock, or on the internal Sata bus):

Acceptable, OK fast for most HD work.

This G-Drive 4TB USB 3.0 beats it by another a small margin:

Acceptable, OK fast for most HD work.

The old CalDigit 5 hard drives Raid0 4.7TB via eSata is still faster though:

OK fast for most things HD (but NOISY! as in LOUD FAN NOISE)

Monday, January 23, 2017

Is It Possible To Use Adobe Premiere Pro To Check Your DCP?! Well, Yes! Sort Of.

I never tried that before, interestingly enough, PP can open a DCP - j2K and pcm mxf(s) components, and let you bring them into a Timeline and playback!

DCP Playback inside Premiere. Groovy!

I know it does not replace checking your DCP on-site / in a theater / on proper DCP servers, but it's an easy way to at least check for gross error (or lack of thereof) in your encode.
PP performs the XYZ -> YUV correction on the fly as you can see in the screen grab above.

On my MacPro I can playback at 1/2 in real time, with synced audio so I can check that as well. And I can play the whole DCP. I say it's pretty dandy!

Coupled with Easy DCP Player Demo to check for the DCP integrity, it's a step towards controlling the quality of your creation. In Easy DCP Player you can playback the first few seconds, after that the quality of the image is severely degraded, and the audio is muted, unless you buy the full version.

DCP Check with EasyDCP Player Demo (playback quality degraded after a few seconds)

Note that you can also check your DCP in Resolve, thanks to the bundled Easy DCP Creator/Player Demo plug-in, but high quality playback is limited to a few seconds here as well. You can however just scan through without playing just to quickly check how it looks, without degradation.

DCP Playback in Resolve (scanning through the timeline in pause keeps the image in high quality - unlike playing back.)

Why Premiere Pro is so sloooooow at startup (not always, only from time to time...)

Normally PP starts in a few seconds on my machines. Once in a while it takes muuuuuuch longer though. Can someone explain to me why from time to time Premiere takes such a long time to start? Is there some kind of scheduled process that forces PP to validate plug-ins and fonts and whatever else it's doing at startup every week or month or what is going on??

Ah! and now as I started Photoshop... this:

So this morning PP starts without any problems, but Photoshop is giving me the finger...
Allright, downloading the AAM now, let's see what happens.

Well, again I'm stuck with the Error 86 and not able to update Application Manager.

Time for a chat with Adobe.

---
After a remote session with Adobe (44min.), the update went through and the above message is gone. So back to work.

FYI it involved a lot of force-quitting processes from the Activity Manager:

Creative Cloud, CoreSync, CCC Process, CCC Library, Adobe Desktop Service, PC Broker...

Then had to trash Adobe Application Manager from Applications, then trash OOBE from /Library/Application Support, and maybe a few more things I'm not 100% sure, the guy controlling my computer was too fast.
Finally, after all the quitting and trashing, he had me download the Application Manager Installer from Adobe and we installed that. And... Bingo!

Still now with Adobe CC you must have an internet connection open at all times, since you never know when something is gonna get stuck, and the only way to unstuck it is to get Adobe support onboard - via internet/remote sessions.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Adobe Encore CS6 (basic BD screener) works fine on macOs Sierra 10.12.2

I just created a short BD screener with Encore CS6 on Sierra 10.12.2, everything worked, Preview worked fine.

I encoded m4v and AC3 with Media Encoder, imported the files into an Encore project.

Created a new Timeline, dragged files in, set First Play to Timeline/Chapter1 ("autoplay".)

The project checked OK, I built a Blu-ray image, it went through without hiccups.

Will burn with Toast and check the disc at a later time and report.

Final Cut Pro 10.3.2 !!!

Apple updates Pro Apps across the entire line!

The new Final Cut Pro (10.3.2) is out!

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

macOs Sierra 10.12.3 does not recognize some USB devices

I have a problem with a USB audio interface not being recognized under Sierra 10.12.2, and I'm not the only one having this kind of problem:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-10-12-sierra-post-bugs-and-fixes-here.1991731/page-16#post-24143277

https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/65232

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-audio-interface-not-recognized-sierra.1982544/#post-23129064

I confirm that the same USB box is properly recognized under Yosemite and El Capitan (no driver necessary), so it is definitely a Sierra bug.

10.12.3 beta is out, I hope it's being fixed and we'll soon have a public update that solves this issue.

--- Updated to Sierra 10.12.3 and the problem still exists... Please Apple fix this!