H4N Zoom Slow to Start Recording

Although not a FCP tip here's something I noticed today that may save people's sanity on-set. On an H4N Zoom audio recorder, after a while tapping the REC button will take a long long time to begin monitoring audio, and sometimes it'll go straight to recording (this is with Firmware 1.72).

The solution I discovered was to simply tell it to record into an empty folder. That seems to eliminate the excruciatingly long pause before it starts rolling.

There must be some sort of file or file-tree check before it begins writing or thinking about writing to a card with many files on it. Today was with a Class 10 card so it's likely not a speed issue. My guess is somewhere around 100+ files causes a slow down to turn on monitoring/recording.

So by recording to an empty folder there's no file-tree to check and it goes right to monitoring/recording. New rule: New Day - New Folder.

Hard Drives Wake Up and Spin Up For No Good Reason

With Mac OS X sometimes hard drives that are attached will spin up for no reason, when open/save dialogs appear, when quitting an application or when unmounting a .DMG.

Here's a little tip to reduce some of this, mainly the completely random wakings/Spin Ups.

It involves a little Terminal magic but it's not too bad.

Fast Way to Find Multiple Uses of a Clip

If you've ever edited something with limited footage or too much footage you've probably gone back over it with a client and realized that you've used a shot more than once. Sometimes it's not obvious until you watch the edited piece, especially when you have limited footage and a precise script.

One trick I've used many times is to find the clip in question in the Bin and assign it a color label.

Highlight the clip
Hit Command + Option + any number key. I like using 6 for Green or 3 for Red.

You can toggle this while keeping an eye on the Timeline to see what gets labeled.

Sure there are other ways (like using Find) to locate what clips have been used but having a visual indicator of precisely where they are in the project helps me out tremendously since if they're far apart enough clients tend not to notice.

Perian is going bye-bye

Perian has announced that they're ceasing development. But they're doing the right thing and making it open-sourced on Google Code or GitHub so tell any developers you know.

Perian is really an essential tool to the roaming editor especially those who cut a lot of documentaries where people tend to hand you bizarre formats. Hopefully someone will take up the reins and continue it's development.

Removing GoPro Cineform Studio's Menubar CodecStatus

UPDATE:

In the latest version of GoPro Studio (v2.5.7 as of this updated post) on OS X 10.11.3, the method easier, yet a bit hidden.

1. Launch GoPro Studio
2. Hit COMMAND + COMMA to open it's Prefs (or go to the menu bar and select GoPro Studio . Preferences...)
3. Uncheck "AUTOMATICALLY IMPORT FROM GOPRO CAMERAS"
4. The annoying menubar icon should be gone.

Sneaky, eh?

The old post below...

If you have a GoPro camera you've likely installed GoPro Cineform Studio. However it also installed a menubar item that deals with codecs and whatnot. If you've never asked for it to be there and don't use it it can be hard to get rid of it as it shows up every time you boot up. I'm not even sure what it's officially called but at the bottom of the menu it reads Check Codecs or something.

If you look at Activity Monitor you'll notice a process running called "StereoModeStatus" which is located in /Applications/GoPro/Tools/StereoModeStatus.app (technically it's inside the package here /Contents/MacOS/StereoModeStatus).

Now I don't like things being installed without my asking and I really dislike not having a way to uninstall specific things or at least permanently turning them off. You can select to quit the menubar item but it'll come back upon a reboot.

Also note that it's standard operating procedure to be able to hold down Command and then drag a menubar item around and OUT of the menubar. This thing doesn't let you Command + Drag it out of the menubar. Evil.

Here's what I did to get rid of the CodecCheck menubar thing.

Before this however, you can head to System Settings and look for "Cineform" pane and under the Process tab at the bottom you'll see "Show Stereo Status Menu". Now while this will hide the menu, it doesn't seem to always prevent the process from running. If you're like me and want the process to never run, continue reading:

1. Launch Activity Monitor (Hit Command + Shift + U to open up your utility folder and then hit A to highlight it then Command + O to launch it).

2. Look for "StereoModeStatus". Highlight it.

3. At the top of Activity Monitor's window hit Quit Process. Notice the menubar item vanishes. Yay!

4. Close Activity Monitor.

5. Navigate to your Application folder. (Hit Command + A to open it) Drill down to GoPro folder then inside there open up the Tools folder.

6. Right click on StereoModeStatus and select "Compress "StereoModeStatus".

7. After a second you'll see a new file called "StereoModeStatus.zip". This is your backup copy in case you ever need this thing again. Once you've confirmed this .zip file is there right click on "StereoModeStatus" (the original, not the .zip) and select Move To Trash.

It may ask you for your admin password to put it in the trash; further evidence of it's evil nature.

8. Empty your trash (Shift + Option + Command + Delete) and you're done.

Name Sequences Appropriately Now To Save Time Later

I was watching the "head" of a group of editors a few days ago and while I waited for some photos to come in ("Can you do that moving pictures things like in documentaries?") I watched this person export a sequence, rename it, then compress it to the various formats the client needed then rename it again.

Then I watched him do it again.

And again.

And I realized what bugged me about it. I tend to name my sequences the final output file name right from the get go.

For example in my Bin, I'd have a sequence named along these lines:

An example would be

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO_V03

So when it's exported from the timeline it becomes:

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO_V03.mov

That way when I transcode it to something like H.264 or whatever (NO...NO WMVs! Not anymore!) it ends up in a handy name, with notations with version number and no spaces or weird characters that occasionally screw up FTP servers and email links and other various and sundry tend-to-go-wrong-unexpectedly-thingys.

I'll even mention what file type it is on the flashdrive/DVD/HD I hand them right in the file name sometimes:

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.h264.mov
tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.animation.mov

Like that.

What the guy I was watching was doing was changing:

Tyrell Corp Nexus 07promotion with New VO

into something like

tyrellcorp-nexus07promo-newVO-V03.mov

by renaming it in the Finder each time.

My advice: name your sequences something that you won't have to edit later to send to the client or their FTP/cloud/server whatever.

QuickTime Player Still Image Export Bug

I'm not sure if I've posted about this before but QuickTime Player 7 (Pro) has a bit of an odd bug in Snow Leopard and later with Preview.

1. Open up a movie and hit Command + E for Export.
2. Under the Export pull-down select "Movie to Picture".
3. Hit the Options button and select any standard image file format, like PNG or TIFF.
4. Notice that the name of the file ends with .pct no matter what.
5. Export the still image.
6. In the Finder, Get Info (Command + I) on the image. Notice it's a "QuickDraw picture"
7. Try opening it with Preview and behold this:

So Get Info on Preview and toggle this tick box:

so that Preview opens up in 32-bit mode.

TaaDaa now the image will open.

But what if you try to open it in Photoshop CS5?

How's that for helpful?

Oddly, if you QuickLook (Spacebar while it's highlighted) the Finder will preview the image.

So what's going on?

QuickTime Player 7 has an export bug relating to exporting still images from video files. It's some combination of the player, the version of the OS (the bug is less buggy in 10.5.x) and later versions of Preview. I suspect that the way the file is written and/or it's format is deprecated now days and likely has been since 10.4 or thereabouts.

The problem (if you're curious) is how PICT files are constructed. Think of them as PostScript for images in a way. When you run the Terminal command "file" on a QuickDraw picture you'll just see "data" as the result. Which is accurate since the data in the image file is (kinda sorta) just coordinates of how to "draw" that image. Wild, eh?

Now, if a client has handed you a pile of these images what do you do?

Three viable options:

1. Open them in Photoshop CS4 - Not guaranteed to work on a given OS however.
2. Use GraphicConverter - Yes, it's still around.
3. Use Preview by switching it to 32bit mode and then doing a batch convert if you have many of these files. Here's a post about that right here.

Now, you may be asking what the best way to export stills from a video file is? I'd suggest MPEG Streamclip which works nicely and lets you export to formats like TIFF, PNG and Jpeg.

Conversion - A Video Transcoder

Conversion is a new video transcoder that's as of this post in beta but it seems promising.

It's FREE as of right now (beta) and transcodes many formats into many (including wmv for those clients) other formats, thanks to it's use of ffmpeg. It claims DVD encoding support but I haven't tried that yet.

Give it a try and see what you think.

Amazing Free Online Toolset for Video and Editors

Michael Cinquin has a pretty amazing page with some handy FREE online tools that you may want to bookmark.

I'm on the road (again) and needed to convert a .srt subtitle file to .stl and his online converter worked beautifully.

Check it out and see if anything is helpful to you and drop him a thank you note if you have the time.

There is help for Final Cut Pro, RedCode, Conforming sounds, Subtitles...and lots more.

Quick Access to Audio Inputs and Outputs

Often I use a USB microphone for quick Voice Overs (for timing) and when I'm on the road I tend to just hook up my Zoom H4N to the laptop and record comments and VO's using it directly into FCP or Quicktime 7.

If you hold down Option while clicking on the volume adjustment menubar item you'll see this:

Instead of the normal volume slider. This is a quick way to access these common settings and get to the the Sound Preferences.

Bonus Tip:

Hitting Option + Volume Up or Down will also take you directly to the Sound panel in Settings.