Transitions in Secondary Storylines affect Primary Storyline

This is annoying.

You want to put a transition on some text or some images or video above the Secondary Storyline and it affects the Primary Storyline below. The screen goes black during the transition.

There are a couple of things to try here, and I suspect this is a bug that's triggered sometimes:

1. This happened today to me. Simply re-launching FCPX fixed it.

2. Try putting what's attached to the Primary Storyline into a Secondary Storyline. Highlight it, and all clips associated with it, say if it's a series of pictures or text, then hit COMMAND + G to put it into a secondary storyline. Apply your transitions and see if they only affect the upper Secondary Storyline.

3. Still not working? Try making the content inside the Secondary Storyline a Compound Clip but highlighting them all and hitting OPTION + G. Then dig into that compound clip by clicking on it's name/title/icon bar thingy (no idea what it's actually called, but it's the top of the compound clip, just below the "Shelf" of the Secondary Storyline) and you'll be inside that Compound Clip in another Timeline.

It's like a Nest in old FCP. Apply your transitions then tap COMMAND + LEFT BRACKET to go back to the main Timeline, the one the Compound Clip is inside of.

4. Still messed up? One last thing to try is to Right-Click on the Transition itself and look to see if you can toggle "Transition to/from Black". Usually it's greyed out though for some reason.

BONUS:

- You can Right-Click on a Transition in the browser and open a copy in Motion and try and edit it. I'll save that post for another day, though.

Skimmer stops Skimming

I've had this happen to me often. For some reason or other the skimmer just decides to stop skimming. I think it knows when I think it's helpful and when it's getting in the way so when it knows that I'm finding it helpful it just quits to maintain it's annoyance.

Two things to try to kick the Skimmer in the pants:

1. Simply go to your project icon in the Browser and double-click it. This will reload the project (sometimes so fast you can't tell anything happened) and the skimmer will start working again.

2. You left Transform on. I have a habit of hitting Shift + T for the transform mode of a clip and forget to hit the Done button (or the blue Square icon button in the Inspector in the Transform section) to turn Transform off. While Transform is on, you don't seem to be able to Skim for some reason.

3. The third thing to try of the two things to try is to tap the "s" key in case you accidentally just toggled Skimming off while you try to reconcile some of the legacy Keyboard Commands with the new (and sometimes not only non-sensical but completely opposite) Key Commands.

Version 10.2.2

MediaHuman Audio Converter

Here's a handy FREE app to convert Audio pretty painlessly.

MediaHuman Audio Converter

It's pretty straight forward in use. Drag audio files in, set output format and hit go.

Don't forget to head to preferences and set it's output destination to someplace you'd like first. I set it to source folder, the default is in iTunes' music folder.

Image Capture not showing Photos or Videos on connected Phone

I've run into this a few times. The solution turns out, while simple, is completely non-intuitive.

The problem:

You've connected a client's phone to pull off all the "tons of absolutely great" videos and photos they've taken to "help" with the project. And you, being the editor kinda-sorta have to use them because heck, the client themselves took them just for you for their project.

You connect their phone (or iPad or whatever) to your Mac via the cable and launch Image Capture and nothing shows up. Both the Mac and the phone just sit there. Wonderful.

The solution:

Launch iTunes.

Yep. It'll ask if you want to access the connected device. Hit "Trust" on the phone and they'll show up after a few seconds in Image Capture and you can just highlight them all and drag them off and "forget" to use them later on because they're useless and blurry and shaky.

ProTip:

If you want to "untrust" the phone on your computer or they insist they do (Security! they say, "It's the business phone and our IT guys need it to be secure.") what I think you do, is this mess:

Reset the Lockdown Folder.

Yes. Hard as it is to believe that's how it's done.

If you just want to Untrust the phone you just trusted just now, open the Lockdown Folder and then sort by date created and delete the most recent one.

MediaPreview's 8mm Stock Footage Depot

In the past I reviewed MediaPreview's 8mm Distress Kit which is a pretty cool way to add 8mm film effects to your footage. Recently, they've opened up an 8mm stock footage archive which going by their sample footage has some pretty interesting glimpses into the past. Footage like this is immensely helpful for flashbacks, retro-projected footage for projects, tv footage, music videos or (good or bad) art installations, etc...

You can check it out here. 

Can't Open a PowerPoint to Import into FCP

I ran across this today and the fix is simple.

I have a powerpoint that's a .pptx PowerPoint file. That means it was created in PowerPoint 2007 or later. Now, .ppt is for earlier versions than I think 2007. A client sent me a link to a PowerPoint that was to be used in an edit and for some reason QuickView nor Keynote could open it. Keynote threw out an "Import Error".

I then noticed that the file was filename.pptx.ppt when it should have just been .pptx. Somehow the download  service that they used to send me the file for some reason appended on .ppt to the file.

Changing the file from .pptx.ppt to it's original .pptx file extension solved the problem of opening it in Keynote.

Time Machine has Slow Backups and Slows down the CPU

This isn't really a FCP tip per se, but I was editing -doing a favor which is another way to spell free- at someone's home recently helping them with a project and noticed after a while that their Time Machine back ups were taking forever; it seemed to be constantly running. It was using a bit of CPU and really thrashing a connected drive.

I checked the Console (Applications > Utilities > Console) and typed in "Starting standard backup" into the search box and looked at the times Time Machine had been running. Looking at the times between "Backup completed successfully" and "Starting standard backup" I saw that backups were taking near 50mins, meaning that Time Machine wasn't grinding away for only 10mins every hour.

I looked around a little bit and one thing to try to fix this, other than just turning it off as it's a problem from 10.6.x all the way to 10.8.x, is to perform a Safe Boot.

1. Reboot the Mac
2. Right after the Startup Chime (Bong noise) hold down the SHIFT key, this is called a Safe Boot
3. Wait for a while. You may see not only an Apple logo on the screen above a "Gear" wheel but below that you may see a progress bar as well. Keep holding down the SHIFT key
4. When it finishes booting (and log in if it asks you to) wait for it to settle down, don't launch any apps, then Reboot. This time don't hold down the SHIFT key.
5. Wait for Time Machine to run again or force it to run by selecting it from the menubar and selecting "Back Up Now"

In a backup or two you should see back ups moving along much faster. There's some complicated stuff going on here with UUID's and Deep Traversal but this is one quick thing to try to solve it before you delve into deleting backups or using another drive (which people often think fixes it but just starts a new backup which you could get by formatting your current Time Machine drive) or running repair utilities.

This process is for if you have a Time Machine back up drive directly connected to a Mac. I'm not sure how well or if at all, this would help a slow network backup.

PDF Colors are Black

I ran into this the other day and learned a few things about printing that convince me that understanding the Voynich Manuscript may be simpler than understanding printing "standards".

Ok, you get a PDF from a client and use Quicklook to look at it, or Preview or toss it into FCP 6/7 and some of the pretty colors the so-called "Creatives" over there made are now showing up as black.

This is also a problem on some versions of iOS it turns out but this post is about OS X.

Simple solution? Use Adobe's free PDF viewer.

The under-the-hood solution is that some versions of Mac OS and FCP and Preview don't understand things called Spot Colors. In a way Spot Colors are kind of like RGB and CMYK only they're different.

Bottom line is that in order to display the colors correctly update Mac OS to the latest, say Mountain Lion or open the PDF in Illustrator or Photoshop, you may have to add in a white or whatever background then save it out as a TIFF or Jpeg or something. Then dump it into FCP.

From the other side, a better but more complicated solution is to convert the PMS values to CMYK right in Photoshop or Illustrator.

Basically open the PDF in Illustrator and Save Adobe PDF and for Destination select something like "Document CMYK - US Web Coated (SWOP) v2" or something similar. Don't include profiles, may help. I'm not sure.

Another option is to select Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to CMYK then save the PDF.

What works consistently for me is this however:

Bleh.

Can't Empty Trash Error Code -8003

Several times now I've installed Box.com's BoxSync app only to find out after it's installed that I cannot empty the trash. I use Box.com a lot for clients and turns out they're using it more and more but Box.com's installer needs some work and I've emailed them a few times to let them know with not results.

What happens is you install the app, toss the installer into the trash and hit Empty Trash or your favorite key combo (mine is COMMAND + SHIFT + OPTION +DELETE) and the Mac yells at you about how it can't do that and tosses up an error code of -8003.

Rebooting then emptying the trash doesn't help.
Holding down option when you empty trash (see key combo above) doesn't work.
Trying to securely empty trash doesn't work.

What I've had to do a handful of times now on different Macs with different versions of the OS installed to delete BoxSync (this applies to anything that refuses to be deleted) is this:

1. Launch the Terminal
2. Type EXACTLY and without quotes "cd .Trash" hit return.
3. Type EXACTLY and without quotes "ls -al" hit return and see all the stuff that's in the trash.
4. After you confirm what you want to delete is in the trash type EXACTLY and without quotes "rm " that's lower case rm and a space(bar), then type the first letter, paying attention to capitalization of the file and tap TAB to auto complete it. This is for FILES not folders or packages!
5. Hit return and it should be gone.

If it's a package like Box Sync Installer is then step 4 is slightly different. Type EXACTLY and without quotes "rm -rf " thats lower case rm a space(bar) a dash and lower case rf then another space(bar). Then type a capital B and tap TAB to auto complete it. It should look like this:

rm - rf Box\ Sync\ Installer.app/

Hit return and it should be gone. Finally.

TECHNICAL STUFF:

If you really want to find the offending file and don't have a ton of stuff in the trash you can move items back where they were, meaning back on the same volume, drive, folder or whatever, just not in the Trash. I put stuff from one drive into a new temp folder I name "TRASH THIS!" so they're not loose all over the place on that drive.

Then put them in the trash and delete them one by one. Eventually you'll hit a folder or file that won't delete. Recently I had a file that was actually a package that wouldn't delete and tossed up the -8003 error.

Here's what I did once I found the file that refused to be deleted.

- Launch the Terminal

- Type "cd" space-bar then drag the folder that has that file into the terminal, it'll fill out the path then hit Return.

- Type "ls -al" to list the files. (If you want to get fancy type "ls -FaGlh" for a nicer looking file list in the Terminal)

- Type this EXACTLY, "rm" space-bar, then the first letter of the file that won't delete, then the Tab key. Hitting the Tab key will fill out the rest of the file name saving you from typing or worse, mistyping it.

EXAMPLE:

If the file is called roughcut.mov type "rm" hit the spacebar and type "r" then Tab key. The Terminal will show something like:

rm folder/roughcut.mov

Hit Return and it should delete the file.

If it's a folder, from inside the folder that folder is in (see "cd" above) it's in, add a -rvf to the command. This will show you all the things it's deleting.

-r will delete folders and their contents
-v shows you all the stuff it's deleting
-f tells the rm command to ignore files that aren't really there

If you want to confirm every file before it's deleted I think you can add an "i" to the string of switches like "-rvfi"

Careful with all this, using the rm command can seriously ruin your day if you're not careful. To read more about rm type this into the Terminal and hit enter:

man rm

Suddenly Slow Exports

I noticed today that an export was going along smoothly then suddenly crawled to nearly a halt. Glancing around I just happened to notice that the hard drive the file was being exported to had only a few gigs left on it. Another case of someone putting something into the trash and failing to empty it.

After emptying the trash -and freeing up over 30 gigs of space- the export speed seemed to pick back up to what would be expected. I'm not 100% sure that was the cause, it could have just coincided with exporting (and rendering out since nothing was pre-rendered) a particularly graphic laden section or something.

Using .EPS files in Final Cut Pro

A client sent me a slew of images the other day and some were CMYK while others were RGB, yet most were .eps files despite me requesting that they send them as RGB .jpg or .tiff to save time (ermagerd duh deadlinez!) [This is the same client who thought we'd edit the video over the course of a normal workday...day...as in single 8 hour day even though we'd shot for over two full days weeks earlier and I still had no script so no VO]

 FCP prefers images to be RGB so I had to convert the CMYK ones in Photoshop (or Pixelmator) but since these were .eps files I had to save them as .Jpgs or .tiffs or something. For some reason some clients really really insist on .tiffs in video projects "They're uncompressed!" they'll tell me. Depending on my mood I'll correct them or just plod along mindless nodding.

Anywho, when you open a .eps file in PS you'll see something like this:

I changed it to something like this:

Since it's a .eps file you can bump up it's resolution while you're here and have something nice a big and hi-res to work with in FCP. Just save it out as a .jpg or if the client is particularly persnickety a .tiff, dump it into FCP and be on your way.

Your Startup Disk is Almost Full

I was editing on a computer that I don't normally use today and suddenly Mac OS X yells that Your Startup Disk is Almost Full, from out of no where.

Being on a machine I've never used before I had no way of knowing what had been done to it. Usually this stuff is caused by caches, render files or someone setting the capture folder to the wrong place, or a surprising amount of the time, multiple exported full-res versions of a project.

I looked around at macupdate and found an app called DiskWave which shows sizes of folders in a pretty simple to use format.

In this case it was Adobe's Cache folders in the user's Library folder, about 5 GBs worth. I trashed 'em without asking the client and went on working.

So if you run out of space this little free app is pretty handy.

Separated At Birth the new Mac Pro

So Apple has announced this as the new Mac Pro

I couldn't help thinking of this:

A Simple Way To Keep A Hard Drive Spinning with FCP

I have several hard drives that for whatever reason, likely their firmware, will spin down no matter what you tell them otherwise in system prefs, their own generally useless software or anywhere else.

This old tip still works.

However, here's a super quick and simple tip to keep them spinning while using FCP 6/7:

Tell FCP to autosave to a folder on the drive that spins down.

1. Hit SHIFT + Q in FCP
2. You'll see "Autosave Vault" and a Set button. Push it.
3. Tell it to save to a folder -preferably one you make so the saves are not loose all over the drive- and done.

Almost.

You'll have to figure out how long it takes for the drive to decide to spin down after the start of inactivity. As an example, lets say you figure out it's about 15mins.

Now, in FCP hit OPTION + Q and under the first tab, called "General" at the bottom left you'll see "Autosave Vault" make sure the check box is checked. Then after "Save a copy every" set it to something less than the time you figured out for the hard drive spin down. In this example set it to 14mins or 10mins to be safe. Hit Ok.

Adjust the other options under Autosave Vault to you liking. I like to set "Keep at most" to something between 20 to 40 depending on the importance of the project and how complex it is and the rate of changes I make to it.

This is actually important. Save files for FCP 6/7 are HUGE XML files. Huge. You can easily get into the multi GB range in terms of size. They're highly compressible though which is great. So if you keep too many saves for a project you could potentially fill up a lot of space on a drive fairly quickly.

Saving Autosaves Into Individually Compressed Archives

If you take a look at the size of your Autosave Vault folder it's likely huge. Mine is 4GBs right now. Every once in a while, when I think about it, I archive it off and save some space.

Why archive it at all you ask? It's nice to have saves along the editing process so you can go back and pull up any changes from long-ago or specific tests or whatever bizarre things clients tend to ask for years later. Another reason to archive them (meaning compress them, also) is since they're essentially just .xml files they compress nicely.

I archive my Autosaves in all those .fcp folders which requires a tiny bit of setup because rather than archive all those folders into one huge archive we're going to batch compress each folder into it's own archive. This way they're still named and individually archived so it's fast to get to them and transport them if need be.

It's not too hard to just right click on the whole Autosave Vault folder and compress it into a .zip archive. On my drive here my Autosave Vault folder is about 4GBs, compressed though it's 291MBs. That's a huge amount of space saved. But it's also messy if you want to just get at one particular project's autosave (.fcp) folder.

Here's what I like to do instead:

1. While in the Finder hit COMMAND + OPTION + G and in the resultant dialog box type "/system/library/coreservices" (capitalization doesn't seem to matter).

2. In the new window that opened up locate "Archive Utility" (it may be called "BOM Utility" or "BOMArchiveHelper" or something like that depending on the version of OS X you're using). BOM stands for Bill of Materials, if you're wondering.

3. Optional: Drag the app (it's okay, really) to your Dock or Sidebar or make an alias of it where you find it handy.

4. Launch it.

5. Hit COMMAND + , (comma) to open its preferences.

6. Look for something like "Use archive format" and set it to "Zip archive". Close the prefs. (Close the Core Services window too, if you'd like; we're done with it.)

7. Now, highlight and drag all the Autosave folders inside your "Autosave Vault" (not the Autosave Vault folder itself) onto the Archive Utility icon and watch the magic. It may take a while depending on how many projects you have and how many files are in those folders.

8. Once it's done you'll have a messy mix of folders and compressed folders. Simply set the window to List view (Command + 2) and then tap the Kind sorting column. Highlight all the "Folder"s and trash 'em with Command + Delete then Empty trash with Command + Option + Delete.

9. Quick Archive Utility.

10. Place those archives wherever you want them. They're tiny and portable and archive nicely to Dropbox or Box.com.

11. There is no step 11 :)


Bonus Tip:

Tell DropBox if you use it to backup your autosave vault and you'll never lose another save. If you use Box.com you'll need to tell FCP to save into Box.com's folder since as of this writing Box.com doesn't understand aliases or even symlinks.

Client Keeps Seeing Outdated Version Through Browser?

I ran into this recently and it threw me for a loop.

A client kept saying that they were seeing the old version of a short video when viewed in their browser via a direct link. I checked it it was the newer version.

We ran through all the cache clearing stuff, relaunching the browser, rebooting her computer and even trying another browser but no luck; they kept seeing (and me hearing over the phone) the older version.

Snooping around (which means calling a bunch of friends) I found out that they too, were seeing the old version. This was insane. Until one friend hit some keys and like magic I heard the new version playing over the phone.

Me - "Okay, what's that worth to me you're thinking, right?"
So-Called Friend - "Yeah, I was thinking a free lunch. I like those."
Long pause...
Me - "Fine."
So-Called Friend - "Any place?"
Me - "Any place."
So-Called Friend - "Cool. Meet me at (his favorite place) for lunch and I'll tell you there."

Evil.

At lunch, he goes, "Put a question mark at the end of your url. It'll trick the ISP into serving up the right version and bypass their cache."

I tried it. It worked. The client's ISP sucks. So I billed my friend's free lunch to the client. Shhhh...

DVD Studio Pro Keeps Burning An Old Version of a DVD

If you've run into the problem of DVD Studio Pro burning off an older version of a project, or a completely different project than you have open and expected to burn, it's likely you have some leftover AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS files in your Documents folder.

Look here: /Users/YOURACCOUNT/Documents/DVD Studio Pro Documents

If you see an AUDIO_TS folder and VIDEO_TS folder these are likely the ones that are being burned off rather than the project you expected.

To verify these are the culprits:

1. Drag the VIDEO_TS folder atop of DVD Player application and hit play.

If it's the the culprit delete this VIDEO_TS folder and the AUDIO_TS folder.

Why did this happen?

Well, it's likely that at some point you formatted and project and DVD Studio Pro dumped the files there, or DVD Studio unexpectedly quit sometime ago.

What if there are no folders there in DVD Studio Pro Documents?

1. Open DVD Studio Pro and hit COMMAND + (COMMA) to open it's preferences.
2. Click on "Encoding"
3. Select "Build/Format" next to the "Show:" menu.
4. The location shown for "Location" is likely where the problem VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders are.
5. Delete 'em.
6. Restart DVD Studio Pro and do a test burn. A simulation won't show you a problem, only a disk image or actual burned DVD will.

Some additional info:

Another way to check to see if DVDSP is pulling the wrong or old files is to hit COMMAND + F for Format. Look at what is shown in under the General tab under Disc and next to "Name:" and compare it to what is shown next to "Name:" in the Inspector palette; if they're different, then DVDSP is pulling old files from somewhere.

A clue that you've solved your problem is if you see this window appear when you hit COMMAND + F (for Format).

Install QuickTime Player 7 in Mountain Lion

I've had a few people ask me if Mountain Lion supports QuickTime Player 7. Apple says it does (your mileage may vary, however).

Here's Apple's page on how to install it.

Adobe Media Encoder File Import Error "Could not read from source" error

Sometimes when you drag a file into Adobe Media Encoder you'll see an error "File Import Error" and something about "Could not read from source".

This usually happens with .mov files for some reason. I'm not sure why, but to solve it temporarily I've just been renaming .mov files by appending .mp4 at the end. These files are in fact .mp4 files but for some reason Adobe Media Encoder seems to get confused if they're named .mov. Go figure.

If you change it to something and it still won't import...I have no idea.

This link from Adobe offers a little more information. Even they admit it's a confusing mess:

"The codecs that are found in Adobe Media Encoder depend on which version of Creative Suite or standalone program that is installed. So, while a codec might be installed in one version of Adobe Media Encoder, it might not be found in another."

Compressor and Empty Batch Name error

Sometimes, albeit rarely, you'll see Compressor toss up an error sheet with something about "Empty Batch Name" when you hit Submit but little further help.

It has to do with how you drag items into the target window.

Make sure you drag the media in there first, then drag in settings. You may see the error if you have multiple media files and drag them all in at once then highlight them all and drag a settings to them en masse. If so, just try again. Compressor's funky like that.