9to5Mac commentary on Apple’s Inflexibility on flexible working hours

Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac has a great article Comment: Apple’s inflexibility on flexible working seems likely to backfire, is really worth a read. I don’t see this as just applying to Apple but to the entertainment industry as well.

As an editor sure some interaction is great at times, but for the most part I am in a dark room by myself and I am so much more comfortable at home, and even better not having to drive. And I can work on my own computer which is set up exactly like I want. Now certainly there should be some discussion about equipment rentals since we won’t be in the office using their gear or bay (or need to have as many editing bays).

And yes there is something to be said for live screenings, but I really do want to setup a remote workflow so like the one Sofi Marshall talked about and I posted about.  Often times just screening for someone will make me as an editor see stuff that I need to fix, and I think doing a remote session would solve this in most cases.

Sure sometimes editors will need to screen in person, but with Covid-19 and mask mandates returning to Los Angeles on Saturday I don’t want to be in an office even fully vaccinated. And with me having had open heart surgery, I seem to catch everything I come in contact with.

 

Knights of the Editing Table has updated Excalibur to 1.1.3 with ability to mark clip, control track targeting and select all disabled clips

Knights of the Editing Table have updated their awesome keyboard launcher Excaliubur for Adobe Premiere Pro to 1.1.3.

Here is the Change Log for this app that you will quickly find to be indispensable. For current users you download the update from the Excalibur settings app within Premiere Pro.

NEW

Sequence module:
– Add Marker to Clip
– Target Video/Audio Tracks
– Mute Video/Audio Tracks
– Lock Video/Audio Tracks
– Sync Lock Video/Audio Tracks

Selection module:
– Select Clip Above/Below
– Extend Selection
– Select All Clips after/before Playhead
– Invert Selection
– Select All Disabled Clips

Preferences module:
– Display Color Management
– Snap playhead in Timeline
– Selection Follows Playhead
– Linked Selection
– Transparency Grid
– Show Rulers
– Show Guides
– Snap in Program Monitor

Other:
– Multiply, divide, percent operations are added for Position/Scale/Rotation and etc
– Excalibur Settings could be open from a search bar

FIXED

– “Copy Frame to Clipboard” didn’t work on some macOS machines
– “Export Media/Selected Clips” in a search bar used project location as an export path. Now it defaults to Premeire Pro last used export path (which could be controlled with Compass)
– Unnecessary undo step was performed for Duration/Speed command if duration/speed couldn’t be changed or was the same for an affected clip
– Effect presets that used “Vector Motion” (part of Essential Graphics) added additional “Vector Motion” effect instead of changing values of an existing one
– Optimized “Nest Clips” command
– Optimized “Paste Clip on Same track” command
– Optimized preloading of a search bar
– Enter pressed multiple times in a search bar caused Excalibur to execute command multiple times

—–

This app really is amazing and will guaranteed speed you up within Premiere. My biggest problem is working on other machines where it is not installed! Honestly I might be buying multiple licenses when I eventually have to go back to working in an office instead of working from home.

Blackmagic RAW and ProRES RAW compared in video by Sherif Mokbel and article by Jakub Han at CineD

I learned about this excellent video from an article by Jakub Han at CineD, which goes into the differences between the 2 formats.

It is well worth checking out the differences. And it seems that ProRes RAW does seem better, but it doesn’t work in DaVinci Resolve, and BRAW works better in DaVinci Resolve. So it depends on how you are finishing, and I would assume ProRES RAW works better in Final Cut Pro X.

Elgato has updated it’s Stream Deck software to version 5.0 with a store

The software for the Elgato Stream Deck has been updated to version 5.0 with the addition of a store. Jose Antunes at ProVideoCoalition has a great article on it.

Now it is great for them to have a store, but the store is pretty useless to me if it doesn’t have SideShowFX in it, because they make the profiles for pro video users. Now you can find software for streaming in the store, but the Stream Deck really works for Pro Video users, and to not have that software represented seems like a huge mistake.

I still plan on doing an article on Steam Deck and SideshowFX, but have been so busy I haven’t had the time.

Shutter Encoder video compression software

So I came across this compression software on one of my Premiere Pro forums on Facebook, having not hear of it before. Someone was asking for a batch compressor that could set a file size for all your files and this was recommended.

Shutter Encoder bills itself as a converter designed by Video Editors and it does have some pretty impressive functionality in a very simple interface.

It uses the same FFmpeg engine as the awesome Handbrake software, so you know it has impressive results.

It can trim videos without re-encoding, replace audio, rewrap, merge, subtitle, and do so much more. And unlike Handbrake it does all the important pro formats, it even has file renaming and an ftp program for uploads and downloading of web video, and can open multiple instances of the app. And it is donation ware and is for Mac, Windows, Ubunti and Linux and it has a whole slew of presets you can download.

This is an impressive piece of kit that should be added to every editors arsenal, and please consider donating if you use it professionally.

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Film Editing Pro on Multicams or Merge Clips in Premiere Pro

Film Editing Pro has an good article on using Multicams vs Merge Clips in Premiere Pro.

Now like Sofi Marshall I do like Merge clips, but just wish Adobe would fix them, getting rid of meta data and not being able to go back to original clips without exporting an xml and re-importing (and the fact that this works shows that Merge clips still has the data somewhere). And I don’t like single angle clips to be multicam, but they are right that as it is now Multi-cam is slightly superior.

Still might just switch back to using Red Giant (or should I say Maxon) Plural eyes and sequences unless Adobe does something about Merge clips.

BlackMagic RAW has been updated to 2.1 with improved Premiere Pro Performance and M1 Support

Blackmagic Design has upgraded it’s BlackMagic RAW plugin to version 2.1 with M1 support and improved Premiere Pro Performance.

  • Added native support for Apple Silicon on Mac.
  • Added optimised CPU decoding for clips captured by Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K.
  • Added Blackmagic Generation 5 Color Science Technical Reference document.
  • Added support for Panasonic Lumix S1H, S1 and S5 Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Added support for Nikon Z 6II and Z 7II Blackmagic RAW clips captured by Blackmagic Video Assist.
  • Blackmagic RAW Adobe Premiere Pro plugin performance and stability improvements.
  • General performance and stability improvements.

Improvements to performance are always welcome and M1 support is as well.

Adobe adds Speech to Text to the Public Beta

Adobe has added Speech to Text to the Public Beta, you no longer need to sign up to use it. Of course if you you are already signed up you can also use it in the release version.

Speech to Text is so good for doing testimonials I don’t know how i ever lived without it. It is fast and works so incredibly well. And having the script helps with comprehension so my edits just go faster. This is the most impressive feature in years, and it has quickly become essential to my workflow.

Adobe needs to bring back SpeedGrade as Lumetri Pro and have a proper finishing workflow

Now I was a huge fan of SpeedGrade when it existed, and greatly lamented it’s passing when it went away. For those of you who don’t know, SpeedGrade was a professional color correction software much like DaVinci Resolve that Adobe purchased and added to their creative suite for a while, and then gutted it and that is where the Lumetri color panel came from. What I miss the most was that unlike with DaVinci where you render out movies with the grade baked in, the grade from SpeedGrade could be exported a single movie or movies of each shot, but you could also roundtrip to premiere and the entire grade came back to Premiere as the Lumetri plug in on your clips! Not only was this much faster, especially since most Lumetri grades would play back in real time without rendering in Premiere, but it saved hard drive space too and made the whole round-tripping thing a real pleasure.

Sure it wasn’t quite as powerful as DaVinci Resolve at the time, but it was plenty powerful and at the time even beat DaVinci on a couple of things.

Of course by this point DaVinci has vastly moved on from SpeedGrade, but this is Adobe we are talking about, and they could certainly update it (and give it multi-monitor support). And maybe bake in some After Effects tools for masks and tracking and the like.

Now Premiere Pro has the Lumetri Color Panel, but it isn’t near what SpeedGrade was and no where near what Premiere can do. So the Adobe Creative Suit really needs a high end color correction package and it could be the evolution of SpeedGrade or as Randi Altman called it Lumetri Pro (I wish I could take credit for the name).

Randi Altman’s thoughts on Adobe Premiere’s Interface Update

https://postperspective.com/thoughts-on-adobe-premieres-interface-update/#utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss

Randi Altman from PostPerspective has a post about the Input, Output and Home tab in Premiere Pro that I just posted about.

I like his thoughts on import which is a simplified version of DaVinci’s cut page (since you can quickly assemble a sequence) are interesting, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but then the Cut page isn’t really for me or how I work, though I do like some of it, it just isn’t there for me.

And the fact that he asked adobe and they will eventually update everything including the timeline (just don’t learn anything from Final Cut Pro X please) is pretty huge news.

And he is right they need to make Lumetri Pro, which would be a new version of SpeedGrade and bring back the grade just being the lumetri plug in premiere. OMG I WOULD LOVE THAT, I have missed SpeedGrade since it went, and it is really the one thing Adobe is seriously missing a powerful finishing program.