Pasting Negative Infinity

In the Level setting for audio in the Viewer you can type in all sorts of values to change the level of your audio. But you really can't type in "-inf" if you want the audio from certain channels gone completely while you monitor playback.

But you can drag the slider all the way to the left to "-inf", then highlight and copy (Command + C) then while it's on your clipboard you can paste it (Command+V) into other clip's channel's level settings.

When you paste it into a Textedit document set to plain text, you'll even see that it's "-inf", yet you can't type letters into this box in Final Cut Pro. Weird.

Copy Negative Infinity, then Paste Negative Infinity in spite of ram limitations!

Box.net Corrupted File Warning

I'm not sure of the parameters of this one but it seems that if you upload a .NEF (Nikon Electronic Format) to a box.net account and then download it, it sometimes gets corrupted. I noticed this on a client's machine after they placed roughly ten .NEF files in their account and all of them ended up with a Segmentation Fault: "(com.apple.finder[409]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation Fault" and Finder crash-relaunch on Snow Leopard, by -and get this- just highlighting a .NEF and hitting Command + I (Get Info) in the Finder.

I tried getting screengrabs of the effect but wasn't able to. But I did manage to get a quick snapshot with the client's phone:

It's kinda like an Ib Melchior movie.

What I saw was the Get Info window zooming out quite choppily leaving echoed windows on the screen, then the actual Get Info window was shifted down leaving blank white space above it while it shuddered slightly up and down before the Finder gave up and relaunched.

Playing around with this I had the client zip an individual .NEF, upload it to Box.net, then downloaded it on another machine and tried Get Info after unzipping it. Everything was fine.

I'm not sure where the problem lay but it smells of the old losing-the-resource-fork file problem of the days of yore.

The solution was to just zip the files and then upload, then download them.

Fixing the RT Still Cache is full error message

I mentioned it briefly here but here's how to do something about it.

First off you'll see something like this in FCP 6/7 if you hover over the render indicator in the Timeline:

Actually, the solution is mentioned right there.

If you read the entire message you'll see you need to look here:

Where it reads "Thumbnail Cache" just bump up the Disk and or RAM setting a bit to cover the amount of images you're using in the current project to eliminate the warning, and help FCP a little bit with rendering all those stills.

I've left mine bumped up over the years as projects have caused the warning and left it with no ill effects. You'd think this would be dynamic after all this time but then again, OS 9 had separate application memory allotment settings in the old Get Info window.

Convert Final Cut Pro 7 projects to Final Cut Pro X

There's a $10 app called 7toX [app store link] that claims to convert Final Cut Pro 7's project files to Final Cut Pro X.

"7toX for Final Cut Pro brings your Final Cut Pro 7 projects forward to Final Cut Pro X so you can use Apple’s powerful new professional editing tools to update or finish your older projects. The lightweight application is simple to use, with drag-and-drop support and progress information. 7toX translates important metadata from your Final Cut Pro 7 Project — including bins, clips and sequences — to a new Event in Final Cut Pro X with the highest fidelity of any translation application for Final Cut Pro. In addition, the application provides clear, detailed reporting after every transfer. "

I haven't had much time to play with it but I'll be looking into it more this week and beyond to see how it fares. I wonder why Apple didn't release an app like this or build something like this into FCPX, even as a "beta" feature.

Had Apple integrated this (as a big red flag warning-ized "beta" feature) and waited until Photoshop Layer import, broadcast monitoring and Multicam editing were ready I believe the adoption rate for FCPX would have been MUCH higher and the bad press would have been MUCH lower. Heck, they may have even had Mac Towers still on display in all of their stores. (meaning, today some Apple stores don't have Mac Towers on display anymore...I know!)

FCPX gets Multicam Editing...finally

Apple has finally updated FCPX with a feature it should have had when launched: multicam editing. And to Apple's credit it now supports 64 streams. They also thought it was time to let FCPX import layered Photoshop files and allow Broadcast monitoring.

How long did that take? And why?

I wonder then how many companies and editors who bought Premiere will even notice given that the gap between launching FCPX without these features and then including them in an update was about seven months.

Some interesting bits:

- Multicam will sync clips based on audio.
- Broadcast Monitoring (technically a beta feature as of this post) requires a PCIe equipped Mac or Thunderbolt.

Compressor and Motion both get some minor updates as well.

Importing PDF files into Final Cut Pro

Today I was handed a 100+ page PDF to use in a FCP project. The problem is that FCP doesn't really like .PDF's all that much and if you drag a multi-page PDF into FCP you'll get a short clip that will essentially have each page as a frame. Not terribly useful unless that's what you'd like to see when you hit play.

Here are a few ways to get decent results without too much trouble using stuff you likely already have.

METHOD #01

(Save As... in Preview, better for high-quality requirements like text)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.
02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.
03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP.

Alternatively, if you know the page number of the page you want hit Option + Command + G to bring down the Go To Page text entry box, enter the page number and hit OK. The reason this may not be the best way is that some PDFs numbering schemes are off by a number or two, at least in the few that I've been given to use in FCP: ie.. Page 43 in the thumbnails is actually Page 42 as shown on the PDF.

04. Hit Command + Shift + S for Save As...
05. When the Save As sheet drops down select JPEG for the Format Pull-Down (you can also choose TIFF if you'd like to).
06. Set the Quality Slider to "Best"
07. For Resolution it will likely default to 150 pixels/inch. This should be okay for most situations, but you can bump it up higher if you'd like. I didn't notice too much of a difference between 150 and 300.
08. Tell it where you want to save the file and hit Save.
09. Import the file you just made into FCP.
10. Bring the .jpg or .tiff into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render.

I've have acceptable results for corporate junk using this method. It's not the best quality but good enough for company work.

METHOD #02

(Dragging out a separate .PDF page)

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Shift + Command + D to see the sidebar if it's not already open.

03. Hit Option + Command + 2 to see a long list of Thumbnails. Scroll down to the page you want to use in FCP. 

04. Find the page you want and then drag the thumbnail in the sidebar to the Desktop or folder where you want it to go.

This will create a new PDF of just that single page.

05. Import the file you just made into FCP.

06. Bring the .pdf into the Timeline and Scale it if needed then render. 

The results won't be perfect but good enough for some projects.

METHOD #03

(Making each page a separate image file. Read the Warning about this!)

If you need each page in the PDF as a separate image file here's one quick and dirty way:

01. Open the PDF in Preview.

02. Hit Command + P for Print...

03. After the Print sheet drops down hit the PDF button at the bottom left.

04. Select either "Save PDF to Folder as JPEG" or Save PDF to Folder as TIFF"

WARNING!

Be aware though that when I do this there is no sheet asking where to save the files. For me, and maybe this is some kind of bizarre bug or me doing something wrong, it saved the individual pages as images files in my "-Tmp-" folder, which is inside an invisible folder (not meaning Lion's crazy invisible user folder madness).

How to convert a single audio file to separate ones with a .cue file

A client sent me a link to their FTP server of a VO for a project I'm cutting. It turns out that whatever place they used to record the VO, I guess, just left their equipment recording while the VO talent read the script.

Meaning, it's one giant 400 MB .Flac file.

A, why they sent it as a .Flac file is beyond me.

B, why it's one large file is equally beyond me other than they literally never hit pause during the entire recording session, which is exactly what it sounds like they did.

Hearing the client "direct" the professional voice over talent is priceless btw…

But, at least they provided a .cue file.

Seriously. I know.

So my task was to either complain and loose my job and sanity -imagine trying to explain .flac, .mp3 and .cue files to a client- or just find a way to break them up myself.

One solution would be to dump the audio into Final Cut and just Control + V at all the gaps or actually listen to it all and copy paste into new timelines or make subclips or something else equally archaic. Another way was to use an app to cut the audio when it encounters silence but that would likely lead to it cutting at pauses in long sentences.

It turns out it's easier than I had thought. First off Toast won't due it easily (if at all) which was my first thought and attempt. I didn't make much progress with it -it seems the more Toast is updated the more confused it becomes as to what it's main function is- but I did remember a cool little free app called Max that I had used a long time ago so I did what I usually do when awakening an old app…look for any updates first.

Looking at some software sites I saw that Max hadn't been updated in a while but as a "related" search item I saw the FREE app XLD which is an acronym for "X Lossless Decoder" which I knew of but never had much use for outside of the odd conversion.

Now, while Max would likely work I decided to try XLD because it was more recently updated, by a lot.

What you need to do to break up a single file into separate audio files using a provided .cue file (technically you could make your own) is this:

1. Drag your .cue file onto XLD. It'll launch.

2. After XLD's window appears look at the left column. There you'll see the main recording. Make sure it's highlighted and active and you'll see the list of individual tracks on the right in the main window.

3. Hit Command + Comma for XLD's preferences.

4. In the Preferences window select the Output Format you want (double check the Options button if you need precise control of the output format, say for like a TV station or something), then set the Output Directory to where ever you'd like it. You can also set things like the format of the file name and the Maximum number of Threads here. Close the Preferences window.

5. Back in the main window hit the Transcode button and away you go.

Magisto

So I've been terribly busy lately but I noticed something at CES this year.

Magisto.

What's that?

"Magisto automatically turns plain videos to beautifully edited and produced Movies, perfect for sharing."

Automatically!

Wait…Editing AND Producing? Wow.

Check out their FAQs for some interesting tid-bits like:

6. The clip I got was very short... What happened?
Part of what Magisto does with your videos is take out the parts that are less interesting. By doing this, the clip you will get will be significantly shorter than the original videos that you uploaded. In such cases we advise you to upload more videos or longer ones.


Why not clips that are more "interesting"? That is to say by whatever defines interesting. Isn't "interesting" subjective? Or are they just counting delta-frames or something?


How's all this magic work?


2. How do I create a Magisto clip?
Simple! Creating a Magisto video is a 3-step process so all you need to do is:
• Upload your video (you can upload more than one if you'd like)
• Create a title for your clip, which will appear in the beginning of your video (or not. It's not a mandatory step)
• Select a soundtrack from a variety of music genres and VOILA, you're done!


You're done!

Oh, and it's free.

It's a bit like iMovie's automatic trailer making mode-thing with face-recognition and title slots and what not.

Although with Magisto in my head I can clearly imagine all your footage being uploaded (ie..outsourced) to some third-world country and row after row of chained-to-their-desks slave-editors in front of Windows Movie Maker slapping something together as footage comes in, then only being allowed sips of water from the communal ladle only after they upload it back to you.

What my imagination shows me when I think about how Magisto works.

And this app is for iOS devices.

An iPhone that shoots 1080 and an app that edits it for you. (it's not free to have it edit 1080 footage, only 720 apparently).

I haven't played around with it too much but it's certainly interesting. I've already seen so very many corporate videos shots on Flip cameras or iPhones, iPads and other tablets that are "good enough for what we need" that I'm beginning to think that outsourced video production companies are going to loose a lot of their low-end work in the long run. I've already started to see it dry up for some of my work and even more so for some of my associates.

On the other hand it's fascinating watching a...wait for it...paradigm shift like this taking place in real time.

So there you have it, you can no shoot HD video on your phone and then almost literally hit one button to "edit" it.

And it's free, unlike iMovie for iOS. I believe that everything has a trade-off somewhere, somehow and placing this in the Project Triangle, this being easy and free, means it's not good.

Give it a whirl though and see what you think. Keep in mind that this app requires you to log in via a Facebook account. Not really the best idea if you ask me. I see it as potentially more of a way to collect user data for advertising in the future.

We're done.

Apple Updates Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.2

Apple has updated FCPX to 10.0.2 with:

"What’s new in version 10.0.2:

• Fixes an issue in which a title may revert to the default font after restarting Final Cut Pro X
• Resolves an issue that could cause files recorded with certain third-party mobile devices to play back incorrectly
• Addresses a stability issue caused by changing the start time on a Compound Clip"

Helpful stuff unless you've already moved on to Premiere.

The weird thing is that a place I freelance at switched to Premiere recently jumping (after evaluating) over FCPX entirely which means either I learn Premiere or I don't freelance there anymore occasionally. They've abandoned Final Cut Pro entirely; all 10 edit stations.

Adapter - Another FREE transcoder

I've been busy lately, and part of the reason I've been so busy is clients like to revive long dead projects so they can play them on the latest and greatest outdated video servers at TV stations.

When A client asked for a project that has been planted firmly in the video graveyard several years ago to be converted to "an mpeg two" I eventually got around to it.

Looking around I ran across a transcoder that I hadn't heard of before called Adapter. It's FREE and isn't all that bad for transcoding stuff. Here's the list they provide when they say "Convert anything to anything"

"3g2, 3gp, 4xm, RoQ, ac3, alaw, asf, asf_stream, au, audio_dice, avi, crc, daud, dc1394, s, dv, dv1394, dvd, ea, ffm, film_cpk, flic, flv, gif, h261, h263, h264, idcin, image, image2, image2pipe, imagepipe, ipmovie, m4v, matroska, mjpeg, mmf, mov, mov, mp4, m4a, 3gp, 3g2, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpeg1video, mpeg2video, mpegts, mpegvideo, mpjpeg, mulaw, nsv, null, nut, ogg, psp, psxstr, rawvideo, redir, rm, rtp, rtsp, s16be, s16le, s8, sdp, shn, sol, svcd, swf, u16be, u16le, u8, vcd, video4linux, vmd, vob, wav, wc3movie, wsaud, wsvqa, yuv4mpegpipe"

As always, your milage may vary, but it's handy to know about and since it's free it's worth a shot.