Knowledge Base Updates

Apple released several updates to the FCS knowledge base the other day. I'm late, again :)

Final Cut Express: Deleting audio tracks
Final Cut Pro 6: About the Render All command
Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express: Troubleshooting FireWire using direct connections
Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express: Unexpected quit with Panasonic HDC-SD9 AVCHD
Final Cut Server: Changes made to browser headings do not appear in metadata
Final Cut Server: "Original media" appears in version comment field
Final Cut Server: Media in Final Cut Pro appear as "Media Offline" when using a Contentbase device for edit-in-place
Final Cut Server: Some Final Cut Pro projects may not always check out correctly
Final Cut Server: Support resources
Final Cut Server: Uploading and transcoding a file without a filename extension will stop the job
Final Cut Server: Windows client cannot copy files with filenames longer than 152 characters
Final Cut Studio: Kernel Panic with Kona 3 cards on Mac Pro

Artifacts and Fast User Switching

I've been editing on a friend's system for the past few days under a newly created account on their Mac. We've been using Fast User Switching a bit and I've noticed that if I leave FCP running on my login while my friend logs into their account, when switching back to my account sometimes, but not always, the Canvas will display heavy artifacts and skip considerably while playing something from the timeline. The footage was shot to a P2 card as DVCPro HD, 720 24p.

The odd thing is it's not consistent and I can't reproduce it every time at least so far. It may have something to do with this little-acknowledged Quicktime bug 7.4.5 but I'm not sure. Another report of this bug is here.

Phantom Cine QuickTime Toolkit 1.0.5 Update

If you're doing any high-speed video shooting/editing then you'll be happy to hear there is an update to the Phantom Cine toolkit.

Denser, faster, cheaper hard drives.

I'm not one to post youtube videos really but IBM's new technology dubbed "Racetrack Memory" could lead to more storage, fewer failures and faster access to data. Hopefully this will lead to smaller storage devices with less heat, less power consumption and faster access times for video editing.

Sleep your display with Keyboard Command

Try this:

Shift+Control+Eject. If it works your display will go to sleep as if you had turned it off while the Mac runs happily in the dark. Of course, just tap a key (I like Shift) to wake up the display.

Firmware update helps Firewire Problems?

Not only did Apple release another pro-app update today updating FCP to 6.0.3 but some sites are reporting that the recent iMac EFI Firmware update helps with Firewire volumes refusing to mount on some iMacs.

Keep an "AirDisk" spinning

If you use an "AirDisk" to keep shared data on but find it's spinning down annoying here's a really cool way to keep it spinning all the time.

I haven't tried it yet with other hard drives or shared volumes but this may be a solution for pesky external firewire hard drives with firmware which refuses to obey your energy saver settings and spin down no matter what.

Fastest Firewire Yet

Symwave which deals with firewire technology (among other things) announced today the fastest firewire yet.

It's called FirePHY-1600, and increases the speed of regular FireWire to about 1.6 gigabits per second (Gbps) in theory-ish which is twice as fast as FireWire 800.

The cool thing is that it's all backwards compatible with FireWire 800 and 400. And expect people to call it FireWire 1600 any second now. (don't get too comfy as FW3200 is on it's way already)

The true name of this technology is "IEEE 1394b S1600 Physical Layer (PHY)"

They're sending out samples to companies as I type this :)

FCPRescue vs FCP Attic

We all know (hopefully) the freeware app FCPRescue which will backup your FCP prefs and restore them from your backup if they ever get corrupted. The bottom line is that trashing your FCP prefs or restoring a known good set can solve all sorts of strange behaviors and problems.

But, there's a new bit of kit on the block called FCP Attic which is shareware at $15.00 from Chesapeake Systems. I couldn't find it listed at macupdate for some reason. They say it's worth the $15 (up from free I suppose) because of:

Trash, Backup and Refresh your Final Cut Pro preferences with the click of a button. Can be used with all Mac OS X compatible versions of Final Cut Pro (version 3.x thru 6.0.x). Unlike other preference utilities, FCP Attic allows you to choose your backup folder location so you can move your preferences from machine-to-machine with external media.

It's not hard to know where FCPRescue stores it's backup and truth be told, it's not hard to whip up an applescript to perform all of this yourself which sounds like something I'll give a go later on tonight if I have time. I'll post the script here.

Chesapeake Systems also makes something called Multiuser Pro for Final Cut which:

Multiuser Pro brings an Avid-like project window to Final Cut Pro. Create multiple Final Cut Pro users within a single Mac OS X user login. Migrate your preferences easily from machine-to-machine in a SAN environment. Create preferences based on a user or project name... do what they said couldn't be done!

Now I haven't tried out any of their tools but frankly, if you know your way around Final Cut it's not hard to do all of this yourself. In fact, you should know where all the bits and pieces of Final Cut are spread around on your hard drives so you can troubleshoot things manually. But that's me :)

Final Cut Server Ships

After much hullaballoo Apple has finally shipped Final Cut Server. Press Release here.

$999 (US) for one server and 10 concurrent client licenses and $1,999 (US) for one server and unlimited client licenses. The requirements can be found here.