Annoyance in Catalina save dialogue box

OK so I have found a new annoyance with Catalina and it is in the save dialogue box.

Often when I am rendering something in After Effects I overwrite an old render with a new one. But when I make the file, it adds a _1 to the filename, so I open the save dialogue and hit the right arrow to go the rightmost character and delete the two characters. Before Catalina that is how it worked, but now it goes to the end of the .mov so if you delete, you delete the .mov instead of the last 2 characters.

This is a new behavior, and completely changes how I have worked for years. It is a huge annoyance!

After Effects 2020 does not work with an ARRI footage that automatically adds the AMIRA lut in Premiere, THIS IS A HUGE BUG!

So when Adobe first released After Effects 2020, I tried opening a 2019 project that I have been working on and saw some scary results. None of the footage was working properly. This was January 5th, 2019.

I posted about it on the Adobe Forums, but the response from an Adobe employee was it is a bad graphics card or the footage is corrupted. The computer is new and the footage and project work perfectly in After Effects 2019, as well as Premiere 2019 and 2020, which made me doubt the response, as did it when someone else was having the issue.

I then recently went on a job, and all of their footage was shot on Alexa, and when I tried to move the footage to After Effects on Adobe Dynamic Link the footage had exactly the same response as as the footage on my home machine.

And it was all ALEXA footage that when imported into Premiere Pro automatically has the unremovable AMIRA LUT added to it.

So to prove that it was not in fact my footage, but in fact Alexa footage today I decided to to download some ALEXA footage from ARRI, and try that out.

Here is the Alexa LF ProRES footage download page, and I downloaded the first video. I took this ProRES clip and opened it in Premiere Pro 2020 and it imported and automatically added the AMIRA LUT just as I thought it would. I then imported that footage directly into After Effects 2020, and low and behold I am getting the exact same effect.

So this is most certainly a bug in After Effects 2020 to do with ARRI Alexa footage and probably something to do with why the damn AMIRA lut is automatically added in Premiere. Whatever metadata that makes the AMIRA LUT is what seems to be causing this. The footage works fine in every other Creative Cloud version.

THIS IS A HUGE BUG AND NEEDS TO BE FIXED!

More Problems with Apple Music on Catalina

I swear the problems with Apple Music, Apple’s iTunes replacement for Catalina never cease and they don’t get better.

I am stilling dealing with the items in folders showing up out of order in folder iOS sync, but here is another issue that is driving me nuts.

I know that basically they just want you to use Apple Music and not own your own music anymore, but I still own a lot of music, and when I create a new playlist in Music and drag the music I want in it to the playlist the tracks show up for a little while and then disappear. Now the music has been added to the library and I can go find it and then re-add it to the playlist, but why the hell if I add it to a playlist does it then leave the playlist. Honestly Apple What The FUCK!!!!

Apple needs to fix Catalina’s iOS Finder Sync

I was scared when I heard apple was breaking up iTunes and everything has been proved right. The sync is terrible.

To get any syncing working I have to let it sync once, and then click out of the iPhone in the finder make changes and sync if the sync button isn’t greyed out.

iTunes folders are showed in some completely random order in the finder.

In iTunes
In Catalina Finder Sync the same folder

What the hell is this? And the old iTunes applescripts to remove playlists from Folders no longer work.

And there seems to be no way to get custom Ringtones into your phone anymore, only payed ones. WTF!

And if you start a sync their is no way to stop it if say you need to restart your computer. In iTunes you could at least Force quit iTunes, but you can’t force quit iOS finder sync, even restarting the finder just keeps it going. I have turned off all automatic syncing and WIFI sync so that I don’t have to deal with this issue.

OMG iOS sync on Catalina is f***ing garbage!!!

OK so I been having problems with the iTunes replacement Music in Catalina since upgrading, but the worst part seems to be the finder iOS sync! Not only are anything in folders shown in the finder in completely random order, but the sync itself barely every works! if you select any music to sync the sync button gets grayed out! Sometimes if you let it do an initial full sync but make the changes in itunes after a sync you can hit the sync button and it will work, but it is far from assured that this will work.

It usually takes me multiple restarts, and connect and disconnects to get the damn sync to do anything, and I am running a fairly new iMac Pro! WTF!

Apple doesn’t give a shit about you syncing your own music anymore, they just want you to use their cloud music and Apple Music, so they have relegated syncing to the dumpster fire of Catalina Finder sync! WTF!

Adobe Updates Creative Cloud Video and Audio Apps

At Adobe Max Adobe updated it’s video and Audio Apps, as well as 2 new mobile apps (though Photoshop Camera is only in a beta).

Premiere Pro includes the sensei AI powered auto reframe feature. Improved Layers, Faster ProRes HDR, Time Remapping to 20,000%, Audio Gain to +15db, and HDR 10 metadata export controls.

After Effects is a core engine update (woohoo), with Real-time playback of cached previews, EXR productivity and performance, Faster Shape Layers, Enhanced Expressions including speed improvements, Faster Content-Aware Fill, better controls for Motion Graphics, and updated C4D Lite.

Audition has improved multichannel audio effects workflows.

Character Animator and Premiere Rush also have updates.

Adobe has released the app Aero for building AR without coding.

And they announced the AI powered app Photoshop Camera that is currently in beta.

Another huge annoyance with Apple’s Music that replaced iTunes, the Playlists have all reverted back to Playlist view!

OK, so I have another complaint with Apple Music, it’s music portion of the previous iTunes app for Catalina 10.15.

I have spent many years getting my iTunes Library just how I like it, including rating everything with Stars, and setting up my playlists just how I like them. And that has always meant View as Song vs View as Playlist which has been the default for way too long.

In iTunes you set up your default view with all the categories that I wanted, something like this:

And your new playlists show up with that organization once you switch to Songs instead of the damn Playlist view that doesn’t give enough information including track order. And it still does that.

The problem is that for all my existing playlists, and we are talking a FUCKING SHITLOAD OF PLAYLISTS they have reverted to the initial setup of these categories.

This is seriously fucked up! I have literally thousands of Playlists, and to have to change the settings individually for each playlist would literally take forever! WTF Apple! And I have always organized my music into playlists so I have a playlist for every album, but I put the year into the title so I can easily sync and know which year the album was! So I have literally a FUCK-TON OF PLAYLISTS!

I need a way to set the default setting and propagate it to all the existing playlists! FUCK ME!

I posted about this on Apple’s Ccommunities, not that I think there is a solution that doesn’t require me fixing every playlist individually.

Another bug with Catalina’s finder iOS Sync and Folders in Apple Music

OK so I have noticed a major bug in syncing with Catalina’s Finder iOS sync. I have some music organized into folders in Music (the late lamented iTunes music portion) and something has happened to the alphabetical order that it shows in sync.

Here is my music of Big Finish Doctor Who audio as it shows in Apple Music.

All the playlists are in alphabetical order in Music as you can see.

Now in the Finder iOS Sync that is not the case.

This is not in order at all. And the synced files are mixed all throughout in random order! WTF!

This is a huge mess!

I have posted both on Apple’s Discussion site and have submitted Feedback to Apple. And I have also posted on MacRumors forums.

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UPDATE: So 10.15.1’s latest security update seems to have solved this problem. Unfortunately now I can’t get the sync working as it greys out anytime I make any changes.

Catalina Finder IOS Sync doesn’t tell you what stage of syncing

So I did make the move to Catalina after SoftRaid upgraded to 4.8 with Catalina support, and overall I am OK with the split Music, Podcasts and TV apps that replace iTunes. In fact the TV app is superior because it now will play back 4K movies on my iMac Pro.

My biggest complaint so far is with the Finder Sync for iOS. It seems mostly the same, save for a few things I don’t like. First off your apply and Sync Buttons are greyed out while the phone is syncing. So if I connect the iPhone or iPad it starts syncing, then I can make any changes I want, but can’t apply them until the current sync is finished. In iTunes I could apply as soon as I made the changes I want to.

And the problem with having to wait is not knowing when it will end. At least iTunes had text based feedback of what was going, and would tell me that it was in the backup portion which always took forever. Now all you get is a little spinning ball next to the device in the finder which gives no indication of how long the sync is going to take!

And then after that it does give a little indicator to give you some idea of how long it will take, but not text information of what is syncing at that point. You can see the white filling up means how much time it is going to take.

So what did the first spinning thing mean? I am going to have to assume that is the backup. If so it went much faster at least the first time.

And I always sync playlists, and every time you open the program it reverts to Albums. How hard would it be to remember where you were? Really?

64 Bit Mac OS Catalina will disable a lot of apps, the steps I am taking, but still can’t upgrade right now: UPDATE

Apple has released Mac Os 10.15 Catalina, and it is the first to make the jump completely to 64 bit, abandoning the ability to run any 32 bit code. It is always recommended to wait a while to upgrade you system, or even better wait for 10.15.1 to work out some of the bugs. I am very interested in it though as I want to try out SideCar with my iPad Pro and Pencil.

Since there is no more 32 bit code many programs will not run, and you can tell which ones that will be in Mojave. Just to to your apple menu and About This Mac.

Then Select System Report:

Then go to Applications:

Then check the column that reads 64 bit and the applications that say no will certainly not work.

I have a lot of applications that will not work, but most are from old versions of Adobe that I still have installed.

Now I am certain to need some 32 bit application at some point in the future, and if you make the move to Catalina before taking some steps to ensure you can still run the applications you will never be able to.

My first step was to make a clone of my hard drive at Mojave for that I head over to Bombich and get the latest paid version of Carbon Copy Cloner. This is an amazing program I have used for years that will clone a hard drive and make a bootable copy. Now I have an iMac pro, so there are additional steps to be able to boot from an external drive thanks to the T2 security chip (you need to restart while holding down command and r and then change the startup security utility to allow external boot with at least Medium security instead of Full Security).

And to keep running 32 bit apps, since I own Parallels to be able to run Windows Applications on my Mac. Tidbits actually has a great article on how to do this using your Mojave Recovery Partition to create a clean install. Sure you will have to re-install the 32 bit apps to get them to run, but a nice clean install won’t take up the space that a full backup of my system would.

And finally it turns out I can’t upgrade to Catalina right now, as I run an external RAID using Softraid for my OWC Thunderbay. Now it will mount in Catalina, but will run slower and have no ability to recover hard drive that die or basically do anything with it in version 5.7.5. Now Softraid and OWC are an amazing company so they are working on it, but since Catalina is much more restrictive on running system extensions this one is going to be hard. It will first be available in 5.8, then in the new version 6 they are developing. I do hope it comes out soon.

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UPDATE!

Wow, so I got an e-mail from SoftRaid and OWC and they said that they should be releasing 5.8 within 24 hours with Catalina support! AWESOME!!!