Why are there not Ergonomic Editors keyboards?

So I have been an editor for a long time now, and I spend so much time on a computer that at times I get massive Carpal Tunnel attacks. I have figured out solutions, and my main one is to use an ergonomic keyboard. I currently use a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

In fact I own 2. And I carry one to work with me ,as well as Kensington Expert Trackball as I never really got why you would need a wireless mouse or especially trackball.

 Of course at home I still use my last (my 3rd) Microsoft Trackball Explorer, which they stopped making years ago, and now sells for around $200 on ebay for a used one, and will never be replaced as the best Trackball ever made. No idea what I will do when my current one dies, but that is a bit off topic of this post.

So back on topic, I always use an ergo keyboard, and have an Aeron on home to help with my wrists (as well as some exercises with rubber bands I do when things get bad), but I would love to have an Editing keyboard. Yes I know most of the keyboard shortcuts I use on a regular basis, but there are still some in Premiere I don’t know or think about and would love an a Premiere Pro editing keyboard, but they tend to be the standard Apple keyboards, which are flat and have no key travel (I like my keys to click and loved the old apple clicky keyboard) and they hurt my wrists! WHY OH WHY HAS NO ONE MADE AN ERGONOMIC EDITORS KEYBOARD?

I mean most editors spend way too much time on a computer, so you would think someone would do this! So if anyone is listening an Ergonomic Editors keyboard would be AMAZING! AS would someone copying the Microsoft Trackball Explorer, though unless I someday become a billionaire I doubt either will ever happen! Oh well.

Adobe Upgrades SpeedGrade update, but still not multi-monitor support, SpeedGrade needs an interface upgrade now!

Eric Philpott at Adobe blogs has the info on the latest update. While I am excited for some of the updates, especially LumetrinColor changes in Premiere carrying over to SpeedGrade, overall I am completely dissapointed.

I have really come to love SpeedGrade, and it’s ability to put the grade as filters on clips, but the program needs an interface overhaul! The fact that it is still a single monitor program is unforgivable! You need to be able to move the viewer and scopes to a seperate monitor as you see fit! I want my controls and timeline on one screen and 3 scopes and a viewer on a second monitor (the viewer for doing masks, which you really can’t do on an external video display). 
Sure DaVinci is a more powerful program, but the integration with Premiere and not having to render out your grade is amazing, but Adobe needs to stop porting it’s features into Premiere, and fix it’s interface!

Problems with MXF files that have been imported into Final Cut Pro X

So I was given some footage with absolutely no knowledge of how it was shot, or what format it was, but was not worried as I have am running Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Unfortunately I was wrong.

They all appear to be quicktime movies, but will not open in anything, or if they do only audio appears. And when I opened them in VLC it says it is a missing XALG encoder.

The only thing I could find on this issue is this unanswered post at Adobe Forums, and it seems to be my exact problem.

It turns out these are MXF files shot from a Sony Camera, and they were brought in through Final Cut Pro X (which I do not have on this machine), and it wrapped it in an MOV with the XALG encoder. The strange part is I do have the latest version of Motion so that I can get the Apple Pro Codec Updates, so you would think it would have the codec to play the video, but even motion won’t open this quicktime movies.

Luckily I was able to get the person with the footage to send the original cards that the footage was shot on, and was able to copy them over and import the MXF files directly into Premiere Pro with no problem, but I can’t seem to get the MOV’s that Final Cut Pro X to open in anything. I figured Motion would do it, and was thinking maybe Compressor, but if Motion can’t do it I am not spending the $50 on compressor, and certainly not paying Apple for Final Cut Pro again because it made some video footage useless.

This is a huge issue. Final Cut Pro X should not do anything to the files it imports, it should just play them all natively. That it wraps them in another file that makes them unusable by other programs makes me dislike this program even more.

Major problems with El Capitan

http://www.apple.com/osx/

Well Apple recently released it’s next OS X upgrade, OS X El Capitan, and for me at least it has nothing but trouble.

I run a MacPro 4,1, which is rapidly again, but still works well for video work (especially with an NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4GB of RAM of it), and so far my upgrade to OS X El Capitan has been a nightmare.

First off Messages no longer works for me. I cannot log into Messages with my Apple account, it says that I can’t activate my account. I have been trying solutions since it came out, including deleting preferences, resetting my keychain, setting up a new account (and it still wouldn’t work there), and re-installing El Capitan, but still it does not activate. So Messages is just completely broken for me. And I am not running a Hackintosh, nor have I changed mortherboards and lost my serial number (it still shows up in about this Mac).

And then there are the problems with Mail. While my accounts have come over, it seems it has removed the passwords from the outgoing mail servers, and since they are so badly hidden within Apple Mail (in advanced and you have to select custom in a drop down menu to get to them), it is a super pain to go in and re-enter all of my passwords so that I can actually send mail! And this seems to have happened with my mom’s computer as well, and I can’t easily fix it, since I can’t log into Messages to do video chat and take over her computer! ANNOYING!

And while the startup seems quicker now, my finder is very slow and so is iTunes! And my first step on any repair has always been to repair permissions, but you with Disk Utility at least, you can’t do that anymore. That feature has been removed as the system is supposed to do that itself when you install a new program, but I would like to be able to do that myself. Now Titanium software’s Onyx still says it does that, I am not sure you should anymore, though I am going to try it.

Now Alsfot’s Diskwarrior works on El Capitan, but it’s repairs have not helped my system at all. And TechTool Pro needs to be updated to work so I can’t try that.

And another annoyance is that iTeleport Connect, which I use to VNC into my computer from my iPad needs you to enter your admin password every time it starts in El Capitan, so if the machine restarts I can no longer VNC into my computer without first being there to enter the password! I am sure this is a security feature, but I have saved my Machine using iTeleport when some driver screwed up and I was still able to VNC in, but with it not able to log in on it’s own I can’t do that anymore! FRUSTRATING!!!

And that is to say nothing of pretty much the whole Adobe Video suite not working at all in El Capitan! And there is no word from Adobe of an update (other than some word that their previous demo of After Effects running on Metal [of of the new big features of El Capitan] and running 8 x faster will likely not be coming to consumers) that will fix this. Hopefully they are working with Apple and an update is coming, but so far there is no word.

So far El Capitan is a huge bust for me, and I wish I hadn’t upgraded at all. Apple should not have released this until the bugs were worked out, and important software like Adobe’s Creative Cloud actually worked!

Oliver Peters on Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms has a nice look into Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015.

It is worth checking out, and actually pointed out some things I didn’t realize.

I didn’t realize that the grade in Premiere Pro is separate from a SpeedGrade grade, and none of the grading passes over. This is really too bad. I really like SpeedGrade is an awesome Grading program, and it could be amazing with just a little work from Adobe, but instead they are porting some of it’s functionality into Premiere, but dumbing it down to a much more Lightroom like interface, instead of a Pro Grading Suite as SpeedGrade is.

I would be much happier if the grade was in fact the same and passed from one to other so you could use the high end grading controls if you want or the lightroom like controls in Premiere.

It actually kind of scares me that they might just dump speedgrade (no upgrades this time around), when really all it needs are a few little tweaks like multi monitor support to make it really powerful.

A problem with Paste Atributes in Adobe Premiere Pro 2015

I don’t know if this was issue before 2015, but I really noticed it on an edit today.

When you are copying and pasting attributes of a file, it doesn’t paste size correctly if you have unselected uniform scale. I have clips that are a strange aspect ratio so I have to scale the height and width separately, and the only way to paste the attributes correctly is to first unselect uniform scale, and the paste works as you would think. this is frustrating with many clips, and uniform scale should be one of the attributes that Adobe copies when you copy and paste them, but it is not.