Adobe has updated Premiere Pro to 15.4 with Free Speech to Text and Full M1 support

So I woke up way too early today because the air conditioner is not working too well, and I was too hot to keep sleeping and low and behold Adobe has updated Premiere Pro to Version 15.4!

This update brings the amazing Speech to Text out of Beta and into the normal version and out of the Beta program which I have been running for a bit. This quickly became my favorite feature when cutting testimonials, and I am so happy that i is available to all. It also includes new Transcript Editing Tools and the ability to Generate Captions Automatically.

And adds native support for Apple M1 Computers which was previously only available in the beta.

Other new features of Note:

New Titling and Caption Styling Tools.

You can now upgrade Legacy Titles to Essential Graphics. ARE YOU LISTENING AVID?

Color improvements with Tetahedral LUT interpolation. And the beta now includes a colorized vectorscope for more detail in grading.

The Speed of Saving of Team Projects has improved thanks to a new file structure. And in the Public Beta is progressive project loading to work faster, and improved media relinking.

You can now also label colors and clip names and have the option of limiting changes to the current sequence or applying changes to your source media.

Faster Scene Edit Detection.

On Windows you get automatic Audio Device Switching.

And CUDA and OpenCL have been discontinued completely in favor of Metal on the Mac.

Looking forward to running it through it’s paces, this is huge news.

Monitor what’s filling your mac hard drives with WhatSize or DaisyDisk

As an editor at some point you are going to fill your hard drives, and before they get too full you are going to want to clear up some space and to do that you need to see exactly what is filling them up. To do that I have 2 really good paid utilities that you can use to see exactly what is taking up so much space on your mac. These are WhatSize and DaisyDisk.

Now I have been using and continue to use WhatSize as my primary, mainly because I prefer it’s interface. It is more expensive at $14.99, but it has a 30 day trial and works on Big Sur just fine.

Why do iOS mobile sync’s take up so much damn space?

And it also includes a graph form interface if that is your thing, though I prefer the lists view which I find makes much more sense.

DaisyDisk on the other hand is all built along it’s graph view, which is very pretty, but I do find it much harder to use than the column view of WhatSize.

It is very pretty, but column view just makes more sense to my mind.

As an added bonus it also works on M1 Macs already.

Both programs take a bit of time to scan a disk and then give you the results. As I have said I prefer WhatSize, but that is entirely your decision and you can try them both out before you buy, so…

Either way being able to delve into your files and find out what is taking up so much space on your hard drives in a quick and easy way is tool every editor and graphics artist should have in their tool belt.

AppleInsider on how to batch rename files in the Apple Finder

You learn something new every day, I didn’t actually realize that this was now built into the Mac OS, as I have always used A Better Finder Rename (and awesome app with more power than this, but it costs $22.95 unlike this tip but if you do check it out also check out A Better Finder Attribute it’s companion app).

So check out this article by Macolm Owen at AppleInsider.

Every editor will need to batch rename files at some point, and the fact that it is so easy to do in the finder now is an amazing thing.

Woohoo, the negative press worked, Engadget is reporting that Apple has returned the tab bar to Safari in the latest macOS Monterey Beta

Cherry Lynn Low at Engadget is reporting on the latest Beta of macOS Monterey which returns the tab bar to Safari.

And it is on by default, though you can return to the new method if you want to (but why would you). She is also reporting that the tab bar will make a return on iPad OS 15 in a future beta.

I had posted about this and was using it in Safari Technology Preview in Big Sur. A new version hasn’t been released, but I will take a look at it once it comes out, to see if it is improved. Now if only Apple would add the option of tree style tabs, ha one can only dream.

Why is it so hard to find Lossless and Spatial Audio on Apple Music?

Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Apple’s addition of Lossless music up to 24bit 192hz and Spatial Audio (a new Dolby Audio suround mix for stereo headphones, here with Apple’s proprietary chip), but my big problem is finding what music is available. Sure there are Spatial Audio playlists, but no Lossless Playlists but I would like to be able to search by album and spatial or lossless to find music to listen to.

And yes I know most people can’t hear the difference with Lossless, but if it is mixed well I have an Emotiva XDA-1 DAC a good headphone amp and nice headphones, so it does sound pretty damn good.

And I have been impressive with Spatial Audio, at least well mixed spatial audio and my PowerBeats Pro headphones. It does sound pretty damn impressive for bluetooth headphones, much like Dolby on my headphones on my XBOX. Pretty impressive when mixed well.

And there lies the problem, make it easier to search for Apple! I know they are all for simplicity, but simplicity at the cost of functionality is not worth it.

In Apple Mail if I sort by Newest at bottom, why does it have to scroll to the top every time I open the app?

I know this is a weird little thing, but it always bothers me. I sort my mail so that the newest is at the bottom (this was the default for Eudora which I used for many many years as my default mail program). Now Apple Mail if I sort so that the oldest is at the top, every time I open it it scrolls so that the I am seeing the oldest first. Just because I want my newest mail at the bottom of the list doesn’t mean I want to see my oldest e-mail in my inbox every time I open the app!

I know I should switch to newest at the top then, but I hate being told how to do things, and should be able to chose. Honestly it is a lot of why I don’t like Final Cut Pro X, it is a program that forces you to do everything one way, as chosen by an engineer and not an editor. I like when there are many ways to do something as in Premier Pro and AVID. Don’t tell me that the way I do something is wrong, put in many ways to do something and let me chose which way works for me, but especially don’t leave a way in but handicap it!

End of rant.

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.

9to5Mac reports that the next MacBook Pro will dump the touchbar

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac is has the report of a rumor that Apple is getting rid of the touch bar. Honestly I think this is great news. It was a stupid idea. I want keys that are always in the same spot.

Now we will see if Apple every does a touch screen with a laptop. I know Apple says it isn’t good, but being able to use a pencil on it would be amazing.

Honestly I would love an iPad that is actually a Mac, like an old school Modbook. That would be my first laptop in a long time, and it would be easy since they use the same processor now, but I doubt it is coming anytime soon, but I would love to be proved wrong.

And the apple pencil is so damn good , using on a mac would be amazing, and I know I can use sidecar, but it isn’t perfect yet.

Safari’s tab setup for Mac OS Monterey could not be more of an awful step backwards

Now I am running the new Safari within Big Sur in the Safari Technology Preview, and I am on an iMac Pro with a second 27″ monitor, so 2 27″ monitors running at 2560×1440. To me the new safari is only trying to save space, but doing it at the cost of usability.

This is current safari’s bar with 3 tabs
And Monterey’s Safari with 3 tabs, you already lose the title of the web site.
Current safari with 9 tabs
Monterey with 9 tabs, much less legible and even worse with no ICO files
Big Sur Safari with 15 tabs
Monterey with 15 tabs, already you can see tabs stacking on top of each other
And 18 tabs in Big Sur Safari

The tabs in Monterey become illegible and hard to find too quickly and all so the tab bar can take up less space. All well and good for a small screened laptops users, but useless for large displays! And even more useless for power users who have lots of plug ins which also take up space!

And you can’t even activate the old functionality in Safari, only the new tabs are available.

And this is Firefox with Tree Style tabs. They are always legible and you can have so many of them. Once again, maybe not so good for a small laptop, but for a big monitor it is essential. If only firefox would have a true dark mode and allow me to get rid of the light title bar at the top, but at least it means you can read the web site title. Still I wish I could turn the top tabs off and just have tree style tabs.

Of course there is also Vivaldi, which has tree style tabs built in. It is a gorgeous and fast browser, built on chrome, while I would prefer Firefox for it being a different engine and the most customizable browser.

And that isn’t even the worst of it. If you have Safari at default settings, when you switch tabs you get the tabs changing color based on the web site. For some web sites, it isn’t so bad, but for others…

Look how it changes, especially when it hits BBC news, this is completely distracting.

Luckily you can turn this off in advanced tabs.

Just make sure to check Never Use Background Color in Toolbar.

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.