Free Tool for Matroska Files

Matroska files are becoming more and more popular. What is it?

The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file.[1] It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4 or ASF, but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source software. Matroska file types are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MKA for audio-only files and .MKS for subtitles only.

I'm a fan of open standards and in my other life I use Ubuntu a lot for this reason. So if your client asks for an .mkv file or you need to monkey with them MKVToolnix, a FREE app to deal with Matroska files may be of some help.

Adjusting the Color Corrector Wheels

A quick one: You don't have to click on the tiny button to make adjustments. Clicking anywhere within the wheels is the same as clicking on the tiny button itself.

Also, holding Command lets you drag the button around faster.

FCPkeystrokes

I'm not on Twitter (Wha?) Yup, but I found out there's a keystroke a day at FCPkeystrokes which is cool because I'm quite the habitué when it comes to the keyboard and keyboard commands. Check it out.

X29-Renamer

X29-Renamer is created to take those OS X "unfriendly" long names and truncate them, including and respecting any file extension, to the 31 characters that OS 9 accepts. In addition, to avoid name conflicts, the program will uniquely number each file or folder before the extension up to a maximum of 999.

This FREE software could be handy if someone is still using an OS9 based Avid or worse and you need to share files between the two. ;)

Sanyo H.264 Green MP4 Fix

Sanyo H.264 Fixer automatically "swaps" the H.264 component from the old (7.3) QT with the new one. Nothing is changed, except it can now play videos from the SANYO XACTI HD camcorders. This is a fix for the "green MP4 of death". NOTE: If your video is choppy, it means your computer is not fast enough.

Thought this was interesting although I've never run into this problem but here's a FREE app to help out.

AutoDesk Smoke 2010

Autodesk Smoke is coming to the Mac. It'll be ≈ $15,000.

Hard Drives Keep Spining Down

Western Digital MyBook external drives are notorious for having a mind of their own (firmware) which spins them down seemingly every other minute (actually every 10mins). During a 60min export a friend called and asked me why it was failing repeatedly seemingly in the same location. Could the files be corrupted somehow? Asking about his set up I knew the problem when he mentioned there were two WD external drives connected to the system.

There are a few things to you can do to stop this.

01) Boot into Windows and alter their firmware with Western Digital's own tools. Good luck with this.
02) Pay $10 for No Spin. Which I haven't tried.
03) Install the FREE Keep Drive Spinning but under Snow Leopard it'll require Rosetta.
04) Download the FREE Disksomnia, which I've mentioned before, but in order to download it you must provide your email address (they email you a link to download it...evil) which opens you up to spam, their newsletters and other junk. Also, the Disksomnia installers requires your admin password which I never like. Pacifist shows that all it installs is the app and then sets it as a log-in item.

I don't like log-in items and just need the app. Yay for pacifist.



05) Mac OS X Hints has a Bash Script to keep the drives spinning. Your luck may vary with this.

This has become such a bother for me that I'm no longer using or accepting WD External drives for editing from clients.

Some suggestions I've received are essentially variations on the same idea: Put a media file on the drive and keep it playing in a loop. Small .mov, .mp3, etc...

Syncing Two Mics...after the fact

You know about sub-frame audio editing but let's say the audio has already been edited into your timeline and a re-edit isn't feasible.

FCP (as far as I know) has no simple way to adjust audio in the timeline in less-than-a-frame increments. If you adjust the In and Out points of an edited-in audio clip with Shift held down to alter it by a sub-frame it'll just adjust the length of the clip and reset the In point provided there's space available in the Timeline.

A handy way to get two mics that are ever so slightly out of sync into sync is to apply the AUSampleDelay audio filter to one of the audio clips.

Get your audio as close to synced as possible in the Timeline.

01) I like to turn off Snapping (tap the "n" key), then tap the "s" key for the Slip Tool.

02) Click on the audio clip that you want to get closer to being into sync and after you click and hold, hold down the Command key to enable more precise adjustments. Move your audio clip one frame to the left or the right (trial and error to see which sounds better).

03) Now, head over to Effects > Audio Filters > AUSampleDelay and add it to your clip. Then start adjusting the "in to out delay" number by increments of 1000 or so until your audio is pretty much in sync. This, again, will be some Trial and Error. (some prefer to call this Trial and Improvement...sigh)

What AUSampleDelay does is tell the audio of an audio clip it's applied to to hold it's horses for a little bit before it starts playing. So if the other mic's audio is running ahead of the second mic's audio, you can tell it to wait just a fraction of a second before it starts so they both start simultaneously.

Quick Tip: Hit Command + 5 to get Focus on the Effects Window, then hit Command + F and type in "AUSample" to quickly get to the filter.

Drobo vs 32Bit Snow Leopard

A lot of you out there have Drobos and are running Snow Leopard with Drobo Dashboard; if you are and are running under 32bit there may be performance issues with your Drobo. Mac OS X Hints has some more info on this and a solution.

Clients DVD-R's Lifespans

OSTA says that the average lifespan of a burned CD-R and CD-RW is about 5-10 years. DVD-R's likely have a similar lifespan.

So you have a few options when it comes to storing your digital data:
Optical Media you burn.
Professionally made Optical Media.
Tape Backup
Mechanical Hard Drives
Solid State Hard Drives
RAIDs
Offsite RAIDs and Vaults
and now DiamonDiscs.

Cranberry says they only last 2-5 years so they've come up with an optical burnable disc that they claim lasts 1000 years. Yes, one thousand.

How's it work?

A Cranberry DiamonDisc is a DVD made of high tech stone.
Memories carved on a DiamonDisc will last as long as the pyramids. No reflective surface. No ink layer. No fading. Problem solved. The Library of Congress is studying our technology for storage of the national archives. It’s the only solution for permanent, digital storage.

The hitch is you have to buy an expensive ($5000.00) proprietary burner or send them your data and have them burn the discs for you. Their product page is here.

One thing I like on their site:

We need your money. How's that for transparency? The technology behind the DiamonDisc is so expensive that we cannot make much money selling you the DVD. We need you to subscribe to the DVD vault service so that we can pay the bills.