Arriraw Toolkit for FCS updated to 1.0.3

ArriRaw Toolkit allows Mac OS X and Applications to work with ARRIRAW “.ari” image sequences. With this Toolkit, Finder is fully aware of these files, including support for Spotlight, Previews, and basic QuickTime Playback. Other applications that are QuickTime aware, will also work with ARRIRAW file format.

It's only $799.00 (all three Glue Tools Toolkits bundled together are only $1599.00). This is helpful albeit I believe a wee bit overpriced since Final Cut Studio itself is only $999 for the full version. But it is cheaper than buying a ton of hardware to do the same thing.

Title Graphics: DVD vs Blu-Ray

Best Practices for creating title graphics for use in the DVD setting of the Share feature

DVDs and Blu-ray discs scale images the exact opposite from one another (yay) so here's some info from Apple on what to do.

Installing Final Cut Pro 7 on unqualified machines

I haven't (and cannot) test this so if you try this you try it at your own risk.

If you want to install Final Cut Studio 3 on a machine that doesn't meet the minimum requirements you can try this hack which involves navigating to:

Final Cut Studio Installer > FinalCutStudio.mpkg > Contents > Resources > Requirements Checker.app

and deleting "Requirements Checker.app".

Again, I have no idea if this works but it could be helpful.



You could probably also edit the minsys.plist file in there but I don't know what that would do. The important part of the file is probably this:

<key>AELMinimumVRAM</key>
<dict>
<key>block</key>
<string>128</string>
</dict>


(If you don't get the reference in the image then you're young.)

Fixing Corrupted Quicktime Files

Eventually everyone has a Quicktime file go bad that they REALLY need. Most of the time, the data is there, it's just improperly indexed or lacking an index. Here are some options:

01) Dumpster. It's an app that allows you to look at the file in a nice graphical (albeit old-school) way. With it you can view and edit .moov resources.

02) You can try this method using Java. Complex but has worked for some.

03) Atom Viewer. The old saying rings true here, if you don't know what an atom is in the sense of data/files, you probably won't gain anything from this. Plus, it's Windows only.

04) HexEdit. If you spend some time with this and know what you're doing this can save your caboose. (It's like ResEdit...sigh)

05) QT Repair Tool. Don't get your hopes up for this one. It essentially updates a file's clut to work with newer versions of QT.

06) A classic fix if you've lost a file, don't reboot, and look in /private/var/folders/ for a .mov

07) Treasured. They have an app that will analyze your file and if possible, repair it. If it can't it tries to let you know if it can repair it at which point you send it to them or a portion of it and they fix it or send you an app that will. You pay them for their service.

ProKit 5.0 Update

Apple updated ProKit to 5.0 today so run Software Update if you want it or click here: ProKit5

This update improves general user interface reliability for Apple's professional applications and is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Server, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture, Final Cut Express HD, Soundtrack, Logic Pro and Logic Express.

It's causing some users installations to no longer consider their serial numbers valid, so you may want to make sure you have a backup so you can revert. People are saying everything from it's a bug to a consequence of using "unofficial" serial numbers -serves them right-. What I always do before ANY Final Cut Studio update is wait a week or two and see what the forums say. (Aside from the complaints of the price of the Academic upgrade to FCS3).

FCP 7

So FCP 7 is out. There are "100" new features kinda listed here. A more comprehensive list is here.

While most are LONG overdue and common sense I think some people will have issues with the new iChat Theater support because that means that producers can now virtually sit over your shoulder. Good in many instances but bad in some if you ask me.

Also, Apple has begun to unleash a large list of Release and Troubleshooting links, you can find a good list of them here.

Apple's actual support page is here.

Missing Media Thumbnails

Related a bit to the missing audio waveform bug is something I experienced today in FCP. I was on the phone talking to a client when right before my eyes an external FW hard drive decided to unmount itself.

Naturally FCP flipped out and claimed -rightfully so- that everything was unconnected media and colored everything red in the timeline. While I still don't really know what caused the hard drive to unmount itself while nothing was going on, it did remount itself an instant later.

FCP saw that everything was reconnected but for some reason the clips immediately displayed in the timeline still had red missing media thumbnails. Quitting and relaunching FCP and the project didn't help (I didn't try restarting the Mac) so I quit FCP and deleted the two thumbnail caches at ~/Documents/Final Cut Pro Documents/Thumbnail Cache Files/

To find out where yours are (if not default) looks at FCP's System Settings.

Audio Waveforms Not Displaying

There's a long standing bug in FCP where the audio waveforms don't show up in the timeline. There are many threads on this at Apple's discussion board like this one and this one.

I've experienced this bug in version 6.0.6 of FCP and previous ones on my current and earlier different hardware. The only thing that seems to help occasionally when I encounter this bug is to zoom in or out on the timeline and then scrub the timeline so the clips move out of view and then back in. But even this only works about 30% of the time.

I suspect the bug has to do with FCP having trouble with some specific types of audio formats or them being slightly off kHZ (which is another post, luckily QT 7.6.x seems to have addressed it). But one of my friends said it's a little endian problem. Who knows? It's an annoying bug nonetheless.

Default Transition Bug

What's wrong with that image?

FCP has a re-draw bug (as best I can tell) where when you specify another default transition the new and the previous one both get underlined if the one you copied was initially the default transition.

The new one will be the default if you set it to be but the previous one will retain it's underlining for a while.

Also, can you spot the other bug in this image? The 15 frame cross-dissolve is shown as actually being 12. But if you use it by dragging or Command + T into the timeline it'll be 15 frames as I set it. More on this long-standing bug here.

DVD Studio Pro's Inability to Count

DVD Studio Pro has no idea how to count. It's not its fault, it's the OS's really. Here's an example.



And one more:



These images were named automatically (the numerals) when I scanned them in using Image Capture (in your Applications folder, a very handy app if you've never played with it). It appended the numbers after I saved each scan but as you can see they're not in numerical order when you drag them into DVD Studio Pro. They WILL be in order in list view in the Finder but not in DVD Studio Pro so the client had to call me at the last minute to let me know.

I checked the final disc to see if it worked but didn't notice the images out of order. The solution here, until Apple fixes it, is to number your single digit files with a leading zero: 01, 02, 03, 04 which will ensure they're in the correct order when you drag them into DVD Studio Pro and make a slideshow of them.