Digital Rebellion's Preference Manager's File Format

Digital Rebellion has three handy bits of software for various things regarding Final Cut Studio. One, called Compressor Repair, helps keep QMaster running, another, FCS Remover, is essentially an uninstaller for Final Cut and the third, called Preference Manager, backs up and restores your Final Cut preferences.

Today, I had a call to fix someone's badly behaving FCP install and since they weren't exactly savvy to the inner workings of the Mac when I suggested they trash FCP's prefs they had no idea what to do. So, I began to walk them through the process when I decided to just have them download and use Preference Manager. Playing along at home so I could tell them exactly what to do I noticed in Preference Manager's preferences that it allowed you to choose the directory where the backups were kept. But they were archived in a strange type of file called a .pmb.

Wonderful, I thought, another proprietary file format to worry about. Immediately I decided I didn't like this and lamented the day that FCP Rescue went away. I decided to find out exactly what these .pmb files are and see if they're useful on their own.

I fired up the Terminal, typed in File, hit spacebar and dragged in a newly created .pmb file and hit return to find out it's actually nothing more than a simple "Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract" .zip file.

So, to make these .pmb files useful when you need one and don't have or don't want to use Preference Manager, just append .zip to the end of one and then double click it to unzip it and there are all of your copies of your backed-up preferences.

Syncing Multipclips 1/100th of a Frame at a Time.

When you are positioning your playhead to the sync point of a clip (for example, for a multiclip sequence) that doesn't have synced timecode, or are just trying to get audio in sync or just need more precise control over where the playhead is in an audio clip in the Viewer, hold down Shift.

This will let you scrub and position the playhead in 1/100th of a frame increments. When you mark the In point you'll see FCP move things to the nearest frame to the point you positioned your playhead. It can help when you need precise sync and In point control. But this only works in Audio, not Video.

Multiclip Labels

Here's a quick handy tip.

I use labels extensively in FCP. Red generally meaning bad and green generally meaning good with other colors to indicate variances thereof. However, if you create a new multiclip and then highlight that multiclip in the Browser, then assign it a label, FCP will also likewise label the clips that comprise that multiclip and are also set as Video and Audio source in the viewer (even it they aren't loaded into the Viewer).

I'm not sure how handy this is, but since you can highlight a multiclip in the Browser, give it a label, and FCP will also label the clips choosen for Video and Audio so you can see which are being used -I guess- at a glance without having to open that multiclip and load it into the Viewer. Maybe not practically handy, but fun to know I suppose.

It seems a tad buggy at times, where you have to load the multiclip into the viewer to get some kind of labeling voodoo to reset if it only labels the multiclip itself but overall it works.

Multicam and Changing the Elusive Active Audio Source

This one still has me a bit stumped. Let's say you're editing a three-camera shoot, all nicely synced up and loaded into your timeline as a multicam edit. You've set your main hero audio source to underlay the entire piece and have either edited in real time or using Command + (numbers) once you've set your keyboard layout to multicam, edited your final cut cut-by-cut.

But there's one last thing left to do: you need to change the audio source, not the video source, of only some of the clips. How do you do this? As an example lets say you need to change one clip in particular so it uses another synced audio source. Say camera/angle 3 needs camera 2's audio feed rather than the hero main audio which was connected to camera 1. What do you do?

It took me some playing around but I found a way to do it while keeping everything in sync. I'm not sure if this is the correct way to do this, or it's just something someone forgot to put in a few tutorials but the secret is to highlight the video AND audio of your clip and hit Command + L to Link them.

What's this do? It will let you hit 1, 2, 3 or whatever angle number on your keypad and switch BOTH the video and audio of that clip. Then, once the audio source is from where you want it to be, hit Command + L again and to Unlink the clip's audio and video and then tap the camera angle you want it to be with the keypad.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. We'll say our hero main audio is from camera/angle 1. In our multicam timeline we have a clip that's camera/angle 3 and currently has audio from angle 1 but we need it (for whatever reason) to use and sync to angle 2's audio feed. Here's what you do (assuming you're editing with the multicam keyboard layout which is under the Tools menu):

01) Highlight both audio and video of the clip in the timeline and tap Command + L.
02) Hit the number 2 on your keypad and watch as both Audio and Video sources change in your timeline. (it may take a moment for FCP to update this if you have many angles loaded in the Viewer)
03) Now, our Audio source is correct but our Video source is not, so tap Command + L again to unlink them.
03) Tap the number 3 on your keypad and watch as only the Video source changes in the timeline.
04) Hit Command + S to save.

If there's an easier way I haven't found it yet but I'll keep looking. For now this is mostly painless.

Adjusting Subclips In and Out Points

Some people will tell you that they don't like subclips (Command +U after you set In and Out points of a clip) because they can't adjust their In and Out points after they make the subclip or place the subclip in the Timeline. Maybe they can't, but you can.

It's simple; make your subclip and then highlight it in the Browser or in your Timeline then head up to the Modify menu and choose "Remove Subclip Limits". Done. Now your subclip references the original clip rather than being -as far as FCP is concerned- a separate master clip itself.

You'll notice one thing different when you have a subclip highlighted in the Timeline or in the Browser when you select this menu though:

Make Independent Clip if it's in the Timeline or Duplicate as New Master Clip if the subclip is in the Browser. Essentially both do the same thing and both -as far as your concerned overall- do the same thing as Remove Subclip Limits. Most people, including me, rarely need anything more than Remove Subclip Limits.

Comparing Files

Sometimes we end up with two different versions of a video or file and dont' know if they are, in fact, different. Or, sometimes when we hand off a disc to a client they claim they can't view the video or it's "corrupted". So, here's how to compare files a simple, straight forward and built-into the Mac way.

Method #1 "MD5".

01 Launch the Terminal. (I like to hit Command + Shift + U to open the Application folder, then hit the letter T and up and down arrow from there, then hit Command + O or use Control + F3 if the terminal is already in the dock)
02 OPTIONAL STEP: Hit Command + COMMA to open the Terminal's Preferences and goto Settings > Window > Background Color. In the color window that opens set the transparency to something like 60%. Close the preferences.
03 In the Terminal type exactly, without the quotes "md5" in lowercase.
04 Hit Spacebar.
05 Drag the first of the files you want to directly compare into the terminal window. You'll end up with something like:
md5 /Volumes/HD01/Video/Files/Movies/movie01.mov

06 Hit Return.

After a moment (bigger files take longer) you'll see a number appear as a result. Something like: aa3f30d5e8977965702c4acc83f645da

Now, do the exact same thing with the file you want to compare this first file with. But why did you mess with the preferences to alter the transparency of the window? A quick trick to compare the numbers, since they're so long, is to run md5 in two separate Terminal windows, and since they're transparent -or at least translucent-, overlap them and see if the images of the generated numbers match.

If the numbers are identical, the files are identical.

If you need to generate md5 sums on many files in one directory, from a fresh Terminal prompt, type "cd" then hit spacebar, drag the directory (folder) into the terminal window and hit Return to change it to that directory. Then type "md5 *" and hit enter (that's an asterisk after a space) and you'll see a list of md5 numbers.

Method #2 "CMP".

01 Launch the Terminal.
02 Type "cmp -l" (that's a lowercase letter L)
03 Drag the first file you want to compare into the window.
04 Drag the second file, the one you want to compare against the first, into the window. You'll end up with a long line of paths and directories to the two files.
05 Hit Return and wait a while. There is absolutely no indication that anything is happening while it compares them. If you return to the standard prompt, the two files were identical. If it outputs some sets of numbers the files are different. Be patient, it can take a while to compare large files.

"cmp" will compare the files byte-by-byte and let you know if they are different. The difference it will spew out won't make much sense to the average viewer, but the importance is that it'll let you know they are different.

Use both command-line tools to be even more sure of the files are the same or not.

Firewire is dead

The new spec will support data transfers at 4.8 gigabits per second, or Gbps, nearly 10 times faster than the current standard's 480 megabits per second and six times faster than FireWire 800. It's also 400 times faster than the 12 Mbps offered by the original spec, USB 1.0.

Firewire is dead.

On Further Evil

Another little evil tip for when a client just knows what they don't want but doesn't know what they do is to desaturate the entire project a bit, then after a round of changes you know are or are near the final changes, ramp up the color to over saturate it a bit.

The client will think it "just looks so much better".

Impromptu Sound Booths

If you don't have access to a proper sound booth or simply don't have time to get to one when the client notices a week later that their copy for the VO was wrong, you can record your VO in a car away from traffic without the engine running or inside a closet (preferably with lots of clothes around to absorb sound) or if time is of the essence (like I said, when the client suddenly reads the copy they handed you and hours before airtime they notice their mistake that only they'd know) by placing your talent and microphone under a thick blanket in a quiet room.

Be Evil, & Save Audio Sweetening Till The End

Here's a little evil tip: Save your audio sweetening for the end. Why? Well, have you ever had a client who keeps monkeying with the project making irrelevant changes and basically just toying with the edits for no real rhyme or reason?

What I do is save the audio sweetening and music levels until the very end. After seeing so many versions with poor audio, then suddenly seeing a version with music levels up, audio panned correctly (usually just centered if someone decides it's a good idea to have offset audio channel levels when audio was recorded to "save" the peaks...grrr) the client will think some miracle just happened and often they'll love the version. Evil yes, but so is making dozens of meaningless tweaks over a week.