Saving Autosaves Into Individually Compressed Archives

If you take a look at the size of your Autosave Vault folder it's likely huge. Mine is 4GBs right now. Every once in a while, when I think about it, I archive it off and save some space.

Why archive it at all you ask? It's nice to have saves along the editing process so you can go back and pull up any changes from long-ago or specific tests or whatever bizarre things clients tend to ask for years later. Another reason to archive them (meaning compress them, also) is since they're essentially just .xml files they compress nicely.

I archive my Autosaves in all those .fcp folders which requires a tiny bit of setup because rather than archive all those folders into one huge archive we're going to batch compress each folder into it's own archive. This way they're still named and individually archived so it's fast to get to them and transport them if need be.

It's not too hard to just right click on the whole Autosave Vault folder and compress it into a .zip archive. On my drive here my Autosave Vault folder is about 4GBs, compressed though it's 291MBs. That's a huge amount of space saved. But it's also messy if you want to just get at one particular project's autosave (.fcp) folder.

Here's what I like to do instead:

1. While in the Finder hit COMMAND + OPTION + G and in the resultant dialog box type "/system/library/coreservices" (capitalization doesn't seem to matter).

2. In the new window that opened up locate "Archive Utility" (it may be called "BOM Utility" or "BOMArchiveHelper" or something like that depending on the version of OS X you're using). BOM stands for Bill of Materials, if you're wondering.

3. Optional: Drag the app (it's okay, really) to your Dock or Sidebar or make an alias of it where you find it handy.

4. Launch it.

5. Hit COMMAND + , (comma) to open its preferences.

6. Look for something like "Use archive format" and set it to "Zip archive". Close the prefs. (Close the Core Services window too, if you'd like; we're done with it.)

7. Now, highlight and drag all the Autosave folders inside your "Autosave Vault" (not the Autosave Vault folder itself) onto the Archive Utility icon and watch the magic. It may take a while depending on how many projects you have and how many files are in those folders.

8. Once it's done you'll have a messy mix of folders and compressed folders. Simply set the window to List view (Command + 2) and then tap the Kind sorting column. Highlight all the "Folder"s and trash 'em with Command + Delete then Empty trash with Command + Option + Delete.

9. Quick Archive Utility.

10. Place those archives wherever you want them. They're tiny and portable and archive nicely to Dropbox or Box.com.

11. There is no step 11 :)


Bonus Tip:

Tell DropBox if you use it to backup your autosave vault and you'll never lose another save. If you use Box.com you'll need to tell FCP to save into Box.com's folder since as of this writing Box.com doesn't understand aliases or even symlinks.

Client Keeps Seeing Outdated Version Through Browser?

I ran into this recently and it threw me for a loop.

A client kept saying that they were seeing the old version of a short video when viewed in their browser via a direct link. I checked it it was the newer version.

We ran through all the cache clearing stuff, relaunching the browser, rebooting her computer and even trying another browser but no luck; they kept seeing (and me hearing over the phone) the older version.

Snooping around (which means calling a bunch of friends) I found out that they too, were seeing the old version. This was insane. Until one friend hit some keys and like magic I heard the new version playing over the phone.

Me - "Okay, what's that worth to me you're thinking, right?"
So-Called Friend - "Yeah, I was thinking a free lunch. I like those."
Long pause...
Me - "Fine."
So-Called Friend - "Any place?"
Me - "Any place."
So-Called Friend - "Cool. Meet me at (his favorite place) for lunch and I'll tell you there."

Evil.

At lunch, he goes, "Put a question mark at the end of your url. It'll trick the ISP into serving up the right version and bypass their cache."

I tried it. It worked. The client's ISP sucks. So I billed my friend's free lunch to the client. Shhhh...

DVD Studio Pro Keeps Burning An Old Version of a DVD

If you've run into the problem of DVD Studio Pro burning off an older version of a project, or a completely different project than you have open and expected to burn, it's likely you have some leftover AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS files in your Documents folder.

Look here: /Users/YOURACCOUNT/Documents/DVD Studio Pro Documents

If you see an AUDIO_TS folder and VIDEO_TS folder these are likely the ones that are being burned off rather than the project you expected.

To verify these are the culprits:

1. Drag the VIDEO_TS folder atop of DVD Player application and hit play.

If it's the the culprit delete this VIDEO_TS folder and the AUDIO_TS folder.

Why did this happen?

Well, it's likely that at some point you formatted and project and DVD Studio Pro dumped the files there, or DVD Studio unexpectedly quit sometime ago.

What if there are no folders there in DVD Studio Pro Documents?

1. Open DVD Studio Pro and hit COMMAND + (COMMA) to open it's preferences.
2. Click on "Encoding"
3. Select "Build/Format" next to the "Show:" menu.
4. The location shown for "Location" is likely where the problem VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders are.
5. Delete 'em.
6. Restart DVD Studio Pro and do a test burn. A simulation won't show you a problem, only a disk image or actual burned DVD will.

Some additional info:

Another way to check to see if DVDSP is pulling the wrong or old files is to hit COMMAND + F for Format. Look at what is shown in under the General tab under Disc and next to "Name:" and compare it to what is shown next to "Name:" in the Inspector palette; if they're different, then DVDSP is pulling old files from somewhere.

A clue that you've solved your problem is if you see this window appear when you hit COMMAND + F (for Format).

Install QuickTime Player 7 in Mountain Lion

I've had a few people ask me if Mountain Lion supports QuickTime Player 7. Apple says it does (your mileage may vary, however).

Here's Apple's page on how to install it.

Adobe Media Encoder File Import Error "Could not read from source" error

Sometimes when you drag a file into Adobe Media Encoder you'll see an error "File Import Error" and something about "Could not read from source".

This usually happens with .mov files for some reason. I'm not sure why, but to solve it temporarily I've just been renaming .mov files by appending .mp4 at the end. These files are in fact .mp4 files but for some reason Adobe Media Encoder seems to get confused if they're named .mov. Go figure.

If you change it to something and it still won't import...I have no idea.

This link from Adobe offers a little more information. Even they admit it's a confusing mess:

"The codecs that are found in Adobe Media Encoder depend on which version of Creative Suite or standalone program that is installed. So, while a codec might be installed in one version of Adobe Media Encoder, it might not be found in another."

Compressor and Empty Batch Name error

Sometimes, albeit rarely, you'll see Compressor toss up an error sheet with something about "Empty Batch Name" when you hit Submit but little further help.

It has to do with how you drag items into the target window.

Make sure you drag the media in there first, then drag in settings. You may see the error if you have multiple media files and drag them all in at once then highlight them all and drag a settings to them en masse. If so, just try again. Compressor's funky like that.

H4N Zoom Slow to Start Recording

Although not a FCP tip here's something I noticed today that may save people's sanity on-set. On an H4N Zoom audio recorder, after a while tapping the REC button will take a long long time to begin monitoring audio, and sometimes it'll go straight to recording (this is with Firmware 1.72).

The solution I discovered was to simply tell it to record into an empty folder. That seems to eliminate the excruciatingly long pause before it starts rolling.

There must be some sort of file or file-tree check before it begins writing or thinking about writing to a card with many files on it. Today was with a Class 10 card so it's likely not a speed issue. My guess is somewhere around 100+ files causes a slow down to turn on monitoring/recording.

So by recording to an empty folder there's no file-tree to check and it goes right to monitoring/recording. New rule: New Day - New Folder.

Hard Drives Wake Up and Spin Up For No Good Reason

With Mac OS X sometimes hard drives that are attached will spin up for no reason, when open/save dialogs appear, when quitting an application or when unmounting a .DMG.

Here's a little tip to reduce some of this, mainly the completely random wakings/Spin Ups.

It involves a little Terminal magic but it's not too bad.

Fast Way to Find Multiple Uses of a Clip

If you've ever edited something with limited footage or too much footage you've probably gone back over it with a client and realized that you've used a shot more than once. Sometimes it's not obvious until you watch the edited piece, especially when you have limited footage and a precise script.

One trick I've used many times is to find the clip in question in the Bin and assign it a color label.

Highlight the clip
Hit Command + Option + any number key. I like using 6 for Green or 3 for Red.

You can toggle this while keeping an eye on the Timeline to see what gets labeled.

Sure there are other ways (like using Find) to locate what clips have been used but having a visual indicator of precisely where they are in the project helps me out tremendously since if they're far apart enough clients tend not to notice.

Perian is going bye-bye

Perian has announced that they're ceasing development. But they're doing the right thing and making it open-sourced on Google Code or GitHub so tell any developers you know.

Perian is really an essential tool to the roaming editor especially those who cut a lot of documentaries where people tend to hand you bizarre formats. Hopefully someone will take up the reins and continue it's development.