How to keep HD Aspect Ratios when exporting to SD

Apple updated a little article today called "How to maintain aspect ratio when exporting high definition formats to standard definition".

It helps you figure out how to export an HD project to an SD file and still maintain it's proper aspect ratio. It basically says use a Reference Movie for non-IMX formats and create a new preset for IMX exports.

Final Cut Assistant - YAFCT

Final Cut Assistant is YAFCT (Yet Another Final Cut Tool) that will trash your prefs, user settings, etc... but does one interesting thing that I haven't seen other apps do: Deactivate Final Cut Studio. Now, I haven't tried this app but it likely just deletes a certain file that contains the registration number for FCS which is an interesting function to offer.

From their site:

Deactivate Final Cut Studio
If you want to install Final Cut Studio on a different computer, you should first deactivate it on your computer to avoid serial number conflicts.

Use the Deactivate Final Cut Studio command to remove the licensing information without uninstalling Final Cut Studio.

It's similar to FCPRescue from the BeforeTime™ and free so maybe it's worth having around although it does nothing that can't be done manually in the Finder. There is a screenshot here, which shows Final Cut Assistant being a menubar item which is a nice idea.

Maybe one day Apple will just include some of these basic functions from within FCP itself, just like iCal has a Backup and Restore option under it's File menu.

How to Name Projects and Assets

Apple has updated it's standard Knowledge Base article on how to properly name FCS's Projects and Assets.

Basically it's generally a good idea to stick with "0-9 A-Z a-z _ -" when naming project save files and media files, using anything else may cause issues here and there. I like their three categories though:

Tried and True
Best to Avoid
All the rest

That's essentially AppleSpeak for YMMV.

fcPrefsManager

The oddly named fcPrefsManager has been released as a 1.0 app.

fcPrefsManager provides functions to easily manage and backup all you Final Cut Pro preferences. A unique function creates deployment droplets allowing you to copy settings to other systems without the application installed.

You can read more about it and download this free app here. They even have a handy online storage calculator to calculate how much space a given amount of a given codec requires.

I haven't tried it but I like the idea that it can do it's thing without having the app installed via droplets. Luckily, it's free because a simple function like this isn't hard to replicate with a basic AppleScript.

Exports From FCP Fail in QuickClusters

Surprise! From Apple's TA1099 Knowledge Base article.

You will not be able to successfully export from Final Cut Pro using Compressor if your computer is set up as a Compressor QuickCluster, or a "Virtual Cluster." If you attempt to send an item from Final Cut Pro to Compressor in such a case, some segments in the job may report "Failed" and processing of the batch will not complete successfully.

What can you do?

You can work around this issue by first exporting a self-contained movie from Final Cut Pro. You can then use a QuickCluster in Compressor to transcode that self-contained movie.

Alternately, you can export from Final Cut Pro directly using Compressor, but use a single-service instance of Compressor instead of a QuickCluster.

Video Purifier $400 vs JES Video Cleaner FREE

Video Purifier is $396 dollars.

JES Video Cleaner is FREE.

I've used JES Video Cleaner before and it's not bad at all. It is something that's definitely worth having in your toolbox. For nearly $400 I don't even need to try Video Purifier especially when the last version had:

"...a serious bug, which under some circumstances could cause start and stop commpands in playout mode to fail. It could leave both the user and the application in a state of confusion."

And the latest update mentions that the "PPC code has been optimized" although it's listed as just "Intel" under the platform category at Macupdate.com. That leaves me in a state of confusion.

Soundtrack Pro doesn't like 32 Khz Audio, sometimes

Apple has officially acknowledged a known issue for Soundtrack Pro.

Soundtrack Pro sometimes displays the message "An Unexpected Problem: Uncaught exception." This may happen when you process audio with some third-party Audio Unit plug-ins.

The fix is to resample your audio file.

This may occur when you process audio files with a 32 kHz sample rate with these plug-ins, or when you export projects that use them to a 32 kHz file format. When working with Waves, Universal Audio, or TC Powercore plug-ins, if you see this issue, convert any 32 kHz files in your project to 44.1 kHz

How to open iMovie HD projects in Final Cut Pro

A good friend of mine was working on a project in iMovie HD (iMovie 6.0.3) and because of some hardware issues with his Mac was unable to keep working on it while the Mac was being repaired. So he asked me if I could help him in Final Cut Pro. I don't know iMovie at all. I've never even launched it.

iMovie saves it's projects in a file that looks like a single file but it's actually a folder or package. If you have iMovie installed you can second click on it and "Show Package Contents" where you'll find all the footage and music and so forth.

If you don't have iMovie installed you'll just see the file as a standard folder. Inside the folder you'll see two files ending with ".iMovieProj" and "~.iMovieProj". I think the one with a tilde is a backup or something, I'm not sure.

Anyways, if you drop the .iMovieProj into the terminal under the File command you'll see it's actually "XML 1.0 document text". But FCP can't import it even though it's an XML file. As far as I know iMovie HD doesn't have an option to export a project as a .xml file.

The trick? Make a copy of the .iMovieProj file and rename with .xml appended at the end. Then import it using Final Cut Pro's File > Import >XML... command. You'll have to choose "Show All Files" from the Import window, and then after it imports the .xml file you'll be prompted to save the project as a standard .fcp Project file.

You'll see it churn away for a moment or two, then your iMovie HD project will open as normal in Final Cut Pro. The only drawback is that it's very likely you'll have to render ALL of your audio. And if need be, you can Media Manage the project into a new more organized folder.

IMPORTANT: If using FCP's Import XML command doesn't work and you see an error like "Unable to Open Project File" or something about FCP needing a translation file there's another way to try and open the iMovie HD project's .xml file.

First you MUST keep the .xml file inside the iMovie HD's project folder (or package if you have iMovie HD installed, and by this I mean the iMovie HD's save file which is a hidden package/folder). If it's outside of this folder it will often fail to properly load into FCP.

Second, if importing the .xml file fails via FCP's Import .xml menu, and it's inside the iMovie folder/package, just try double-clicking the .xml file (the one you duplicated and renamed by appending .xml to the end) and it should load that way. Then save it out as a regular .fcp project save file.

Also, and I don't know how helpful this is, not having the .xml file extension hidden but un-ticking the Hide Extension checkbox in the file's Get Info window may help.

I don't know if this trick works with Final Cut Express, however.

Aimersoft

There is a company called Aimersoft which apparently has the same software for sale under different names. Total Media Converter and Aimersoft Video Converter are two examples which obviously have the same interface. People have examined the package installers and found the two to be essentially identical, right down to the same Read Me file.

Someone's delved into it a bit deeper and it seems like this company (which goes by a list of different names) has a group of people posting blog posts, comments and reviews (even on bogus review sites they create) to promote their software.

There's info about this mess here.

Open Firmware Passwords

Here's a strange one: A friend of mine was editing some multicam footage and suddenly -apparently without reason- it started to severely choke his mac to the point where multicam footage would only play for about 2 seconds before giving up and announcing dropped frames. Literally two seconds.

I tried everything: rebooting, reconnecting his drives, repair disk, repair permissions, all the traditional troubleshooting steps. None worked. Then I tried a safe boot and it didn't take. The mac refused to boot into safe mode, so on a hunch I tried the firmware boot selector by holding down Option when the Mac booted and was prompted for an open firmware password.

So I turned off open firmware password by booting with an OS X install disc and then ran safe mode and zapped the Pram. The choking was gone. Multicam was working again.

So to determine if it was the open firmware password he set recently, I turned it back on and as I suspected multicam choked again.

Now, I'm not sure why but it's 100% consistent. No open firmware password and multicam works. Set an open firmware password and it chokes badly. He's using 4 separate firewire drives for his footage and media files so my only guess at this very strange problem is that somehow when the Mac boots having the firmware locked is preventing something between FCP and the Firewire bus or the drives.

I'm not sure. Any ideas?