Issues I am having with 6K BRAW in After Effects on my aging iMac Pro

So I am in the middle of making 2 short films shot on my BlackMagicDesign 6k Pro, and I am shooting in 6k 23.976 Blackmagic Raw Constant 8:1, and both have serious visual effects. And I have been having issues with running out of memory in After Effects.

Now my machine is getting old, it is a an iMac Pro with the upgraded Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16 GB of RAM, but I only have 64 GB of DDR4 RAM, which I am thinking is the main issue. And I am running of a RAID 5 with 36 GB of mechanical drive space, which has at least half empty. And I have even moved the After Effects Disk Cache to a fast external SSD with a 250 GB cache.

For BRAW support I am using the amazing BRAW Studio from Autokroma. This plug in really is great in Premiere Pro because it allows selection of multiple BRAW clips to allow editing if they are all shot the same, and also to save out a sidecar file easily so any program can see what you have done. It works in Premiere Pro and After Effects and replaces Blackmagic’s BRAW plugin which has more limited functionality.

Still using this I do seem to be having RAM issues with RAM previews where my RAM is running out very quickly and won’t render out a whole shot. I find myself having to restart after effects to get a longer RAM preview, and many times even a computer restart.

Now I am also doing a lot of green screen and using Maxon formerly Red Giant’s Primatte Keyer 6 to key, so that might be also a RAM hog here. I have never had an issue with 4k Alexa ProRES footage in green screen though.

I tend to think it might be the BRAW , as on some shots I used BRAW Studio to do the initial grade and save out a sidecar, and then render them in Media Composer in ProRES HQ. With this footage I get much longer renders. Now I know it is less compressed, as the files are larger, and with the LUT added, there is less to decode, but this is very drive intensive.

And sure the 6K is bigger than 4K, and eating more RAM.

And the new M1 chips with ProRES processor wouldn’t help here, because it is BRAW, and 128 GB of shared memory and video memory doesn’t seem like a whole bunch more.

I am hoping the whole lesson isn’t that BRAW 6K is just too processor intensive.

iPad OS 15.6 fixed an issue with Mail I have been having, if only it fixed safari as well

I have been having an issue with Mail on my iPad Pro of late. For some reason the mail app was having issues loading. I would open it and it would be empty and blank, and take up to a minute to load if it loaded without crashing. This also meant I was unable to send e-mail from other apps unless, I first got Mail itself to load. And this only started recently.

I had tried turning off all my mail except my Apple mail account, and even tried resetting network settings, but mail was not working correctly for the last couple of weeks, and it was driving me nuts. I was about to backup and wipe the ipad, but was waiting for the update to see if it fixed it.

Yesterday apple released iPad OS 15.6 and after updating the Mail issue has been solved, if only that was the only issue that recently cropped up on my iPad.

At the same time as the mail issue, Safari has started losing logins for web sites. Sites that for years have stayed logged in, must be logged in every time that I got to the site. So every time I use bing or google I need to log in again. Super frustrating, and unfortunately not fixed by 15.6.

Scott Simmons at PVC on his single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro, customization, and he is right

Scott Simmons at the ProVideoCoalition has a great article entitled, “My single most loved feature in Adobe Premiere Pro.”

Customization is really the best thing about Premiere Pro.

Of course AVID was the start of this because every editor doesn’t want to work the same way or have the same setup to work on, so being able to have your own setup is so important and AVID premiered this feature in the editing space.

The original Apple Final Cut Pro also had this feature.

The new Final Cut Pro, previously Final Cut Pro X, did away with this and wants you to edit their way. You don’t have as many ways to do things and you really can’t do a lot of customization in the workspace.

DaVinci Resolve has added editing to it’s color correction program and it is great, but it also does not let you customize, it is once again how they want you to edit. Yes you can use one or two monitors, but the windows are all very fixed where they are.

Premiere though is like AVID in customization, but adds to it, especially with so many available 3rd party extensions, like from AESCRIPTS, and it’s extensive keyboard shortcut options.

Scott Simmons is so right that Premiere’s customization abilities are it’s absolute best feature and it is a shame that DaVinci Resolve doesn’t allow the same customization.

AppleInsider on M2 and Beyond what to expect with the M2 Pro, M2 Max & M2 Ultra

Malcolm Owen on what to be expected in performance from the M2 Pro, Max and Ultra. All just extrapolations, but all what we will likely be seeing in the next few years.

If only it didn’t look like the next MacPro is probably a year away, meaning that Apple won’t be making it’s pledge to move everything to Apple Silicon in the next year.

The Apple App Stores have a subscription problem

Both Apple’s app stores for iOS and Mac have a huge problem, and that is subscriptions.

When the store started, it was all purchases, so you bought the app you owned it, but then they enabled in app purchases and subscriptions. Both are used to enable all features in apps, in fact some apps barely function or don’t function at without the additional purchase. And the subscription prices have been going up. It has gotten so bad, that there should be a way to filter out subscription apps, but that would cut into Apple’s profits too.

Apple acts like they are all noble, wanting privacy for their users, but then they hide subscription prices and in app purchase prices in the store.

The price is not shown in the first page, then hidden in a drop in the app info page itself. This info should be displayed on the main page, not hidden. And for subscriptions you should be able to not only filter them out, but set limits on subscriptions when you pay. An example being that you could say yes I subscribe but for only 1 month, and automatically cancel unless I re-subscribe. To have to know how to unsubscribe in the settings app is not putting the customer first, but instead Apple’s paycheck.

The app stores are getting so much pressure from regulators, but for the developer cut to apple and opening up devices, and not for things like subscriptions. The problem with 3rd party apps is already apparent on Android, with a plethora of malware, and how easily it can be installed, to steal your data. And with a phone acting as your digital wallet with ID and Bank Cards as well as your location, 3rd party apps could endanger so much in your life, but then it is not like Apple hasn’t allowed in scam apps that are still available in the app store! And even worse most congress people don’t understand technology enough to properly regulate it, other than who is paying them that is. I have no hope of US regulators making things better, but the EU is pretty consumer oriented, so maybe they will force changes.

App stores need to get better, and the companies are only worried about their bottom lines, not their customers (who become the actual product making the companies money in many ways), and regulators focus on the wrong things. Being worried about Apple’s cut, instead of how companies prey on people with subscriptions. And honestly they are Apple Devices, and an Apple built and maintained store, how can you say they don’t deserve a cut to allow access to their store.

And we have too many subscriptions in our lives. Before i could buy software and could wait on upgrades that weren’t absolutely necessary, now I have to pay or I lose use of the software. And I pay enough for Adobe Creative Cloud and Maxon’s Red Giant Plug-Ins (which have changed their licensing from 2 installs 1 in use to 1 install) and all the streaming services, plus phone bill, cable, rent/mortgage, that I can’t afford subscriptions for all my apps! At least Adobe Creative Cloud gets tons of upgrades, many subscription apps don’t get constant new features so why pay constantly?