Quickly Name New Files in Open and Save Dialogs

Here's a quick one.

When you're exporting or saving a file that doesn't have the name you want, and you need to name it something based on another file just click on a similarly named (and greyed out) file in the Open/Save dialog to pre-name it that file name.

For example, lets say you have to export 10 different versions of a edited piece and don't want to type in "Video With A Needlessly Long Name 01", "Video With A Needlessly Long Name 02"...you can click on the greyed out, already there in the folder file with the name you want and the OS will name the currently ready to be exported or saved file identically to the one you clicked on so all you have to do is append your numbering convention, 02, B, Alt, whatever you use.

Clients and Peak Meters

Sometimes Clients insist on audio being louder, especially when you have background music with some VO (Voice Over). However, they have no idea with the audio meters mean and have no concept of what db means or why it's shown as a negative. Let alone trying to tell then why peaking is a bad bad thing.

They just like it all LOUD ENOUGH TO HEAR.

Here's what I do. When I know the audio is correct, the voice is around -6 or so, the music is (depending on the project) -12 or -20ish and they want to hear it LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR IT! I quietly hold down SHIFT and nudge the Mac's audio up with the Increase Volume Key.

Shift will mute, while held down, the plonk noise of increasing or decreasing the audio.

They think the audio is now louder (I always try to keep my edit bays Mac's audio at at least two below maximum) and you won't have audio that needlessly peaks.

Another fun Audio volume trick is to hold down SHIFT + OPTION while you adjust the volume which lets you adjust the volume in 1/4 increments per visual block. I'm not sure if you can mute it while doing this though.

Interesting Rumors and News

1. Hardmac says Apple may be working on a new video format.
2. Hardmac also says that bigger BDXL may be more readily available.
3. MacRumors has a rumor that the next Mac Pro will have USB 3.0 and Firewire 3200.
4. TrueType bitecode patents have expired.

Setting Nothing as a Target Track

Here's something that's handier than you'd think.

When you're doing an assembly (say for a feature) and you want the image but not the audio or vice-versa rather than reach for the mouse to unselect a target track (ie...set it to nothing) try this:

For no video target track hit F6 + 0 (zero) or hit SHIFT + F6. Either way works.
For no audio 1 target track hit F7 + 0 (zero) or hit SHIFT + F7. Again, either way works.
For no audio 2 target track hit F8 + 0 (zero) or hit SHIFT + F8. Both function identically.

I find Shift + the f-key to be more convenient for me but see which works best for you. Some people like to keep track of track numbers in their head and Track 0 (zero) is "no target" in their way of thinking which is a great way of thinking about it.

The upshot of this is that since there are two commands that have the same function you can remap Shift+ the F-key to something else if you want.

Importing Apple Pages scripts into Celtx

A client handed me a script (screenplay format, not two column AV, thankfully) that they had written in Apple Pages which is all well and good but the AD needs it in Celtx for whatever she's going to do with it.

Now, I love Celtx because it's simple, feature-rich and FREE (for most of it). And I have no problem with Pages myself; I use it nearly every day but getting something from Pages into Celtx and retaining all the formatting was a challenge.

There's a help page about precisely this here. See Celtx only imports plain text files and formats them as long as certain conventions are in the text file. So you'd think it's as easy as exporting the screenplay in Pages to a text file and then importing it into Celtx. Nope. Course not, silly.

See for some reason completely lost to me Pages does export Scene Headers (Slug Lines) as all capitals even though they're all capitals in the Pages document. I know. Maybe the original author messed something up, I dunno. Even copy and paste will not retain the all caps scene headers even if you paste it into a rich text document or a plain text one in SimpleTex...I mean TextEdit.

So to workaround this issue I did this:

0. Remove all pages numbers from pages and all Headers and Footers (use the Inspector Window)
1. In Pages export the script as a PDF file. File > Export >PDF
2. Open that PDF in Preview. (Scene Headers should still be in all caps)
3. Copy the text beginning with the FIRST INT. or EXT. (ignore the title page and anything before this) by selecting (dragging) from the first INT. or EXT. to some other text then hitting the End key to move to the end of the script and while HOLDING SHIFT click at the end of the script. It should all be highlighted now.

Be SURE that the highlight is from the very first INT. or EXT. till the end. For me it kept auto-annoyingly selecting a "FADE IN:" at the beginning but we'll deal with that in a 'mo.

4. Hit COMMAND+C to Copy.
5. Launch TextEdit and make sure it's set to Plain Text format. (Format > Make Plain Text)
6. Paste the clipboard's contents into the plain text document. COMMAND + V.

For me the FADE IN: that was highlighted when I did the copy wasn't pasted in. Weird. Double check the beginning of the script to make sure (again) that it begins with either EXT. or INT. Also double check to make sure that character names for their dialog are in all caps as well. Celtx uses these things to format the script and tell what's from what.

7. Save. COMMAND + S

8. Do this:

Importing from Pages for Macintosh

• File->Export using the Plain Text Setting.
• Open in BBedit ( the free version will work)
• Delete all formatting characters at the beginning of the script; there will be some arrows or non alpha characters
• Delete all the lines before the first text characters.
• In BBedit, do Edit->Zap Gremlins, with the non-ASCII set to "Delete"
• Use "Convert to ASCII" ( forget where the menu choice is)

Then Save.

9. Launch Celtx
10. Create a new "Film" project.
11. Select Script > Import Script from the menubar.

IT WILL NOT BE PERFECT. But it'll be close. I couldn't find a way to get it to import the script with 100% perfect formatting. The AD will go through and clean it up but for now, on short notice, this is the best I could come up with.

Anyone have any tips or suggestions?

iPhone 4's HD Video

Here's a sample of footage from an iPhone 4 shot at 720/30 in it's native H.264.

It looks good, a bit blown out and jerky but the image holds up nicely even with the complexity of the plants all around. The thing that bugs me -aside from nothing protecting the lens from a pretty massive kick- is that it seems to have a rolling shutter.

You can see it in action by scrubbing a little back and forth in the final second when the camera is looking at the house.

Metadata Hootenanny

Metadata Hootenanny.

What Does It Do? It allows you to edit and search the metadata that can be stored in QuickTime movies (mov files), including chapters. Quicktime files support a large number of metadata options, but the QuickTime Player doesn't provide an easy way of accessing them. Metadata Hootenanny does.

And it's FREE with a pretty cool icon.

Apple's Rumored Magic TrackPad Thing

I suspect this will play a key role in a future version of Final Cut Studio.

Just a hunch.

Adobe Audition on Mac

Someone has posted a video on Youtube that's causing some debate. It looks like Adobe Audition running on a Mac, which if true, and it is eventually released, would be very interesting. I think a lot of users may abandon Pro-Tools if the price point is low enough.

Of course if it's not ever officially released and isn't VMWare or something, I suspect that we'll start seeing many beta versions of this running in studios like some other bits of software that were never officially released and are used professionally even though they're pretty buggy. You know who I'm talking about.

Using Unsupported Devices on an iPad

More and more clients seem to be carrying around iPads now and they like stuff on them that they can look at. Here's a quickie tip from MacOSXHints for getting stuff onto the iPad with the Camera Connection Kit.

Basically just make a folder at root of the device named "DCIM" and put things in there.

The full tip is here and some limitations are here.

Personally I can't stand how the iPad (and iPods I guess) create an ENORMOUS "iPod Photo Cache" folder  when you sync things to the devices (that are sometimes larger than the original files!) but that's another post/rant.