Using .EPS files in Final Cut Pro

A client sent me a slew of images the other day and some were CMYK while others were RGB, yet most were .eps files despite me requesting that they send them as RGB .jpg or .tiff to save time (ermagerd duh deadlinez!) [This is the same client who thought we'd edit the video over the course of a normal workday...day...as in single 8 hour day even though we'd shot for over two full days weeks earlier and I still had no script so no VO]

 FCP prefers images to be RGB so I had to convert the CMYK ones in Photoshop (or Pixelmator) but since these were .eps files I had to save them as .Jpgs or .tiffs or something. For some reason some clients really really insist on .tiffs in video projects "They're uncompressed!" they'll tell me. Depending on my mood I'll correct them or just plod along mindless nodding.

Anywho, when you open a .eps file in PS you'll see something like this:

I changed it to something like this:

Since it's a .eps file you can bump up it's resolution while you're here and have something nice a big and hi-res to work with in FCP. Just save it out as a .jpg or if the client is particularly persnickety a .tiff, dump it into FCP and be on your way.

Your Startup Disk is Almost Full

I was editing on a computer that I don't normally use today and suddenly Mac OS X yells that Your Startup Disk is Almost Full, from out of no where.

Being on a machine I've never used before I had no way of knowing what had been done to it. Usually this stuff is caused by caches, render files or someone setting the capture folder to the wrong place, or a surprising amount of the time, multiple exported full-res versions of a project.

I looked around at macupdate and found an app called DiskWave which shows sizes of folders in a pretty simple to use format.

In this case it was Adobe's Cache folders in the user's Library folder, about 5 GBs worth. I trashed 'em without asking the client and went on working.

So if you run out of space this little free app is pretty handy.