Dennis Sellers at OWC Rocket Yard has a post on how to paste non-formatted text on your mac, and I can’t believe that I never knew the keyboard shortcut Shift-Option-Command-V to paste without formatting.
I always used Textedit to past into and turn it non-formated.
This is huge, I always have issues with pasting formatted text, just as the article talks about.
So I have been a user of the other Digital Rebellion tools, Post Haste, Preference Manager, and Pro Maintenance Tools, but I have never actually used it’s Pro Media Tools available for $99. It does have some tools that I would use on occasion if I had them.
Particularly it’s Batch File renamer with full support for Frame Numbers, it’s ability to manage markers, the ability to manage clup metadata, and especially it’s Timeline Tricks, where you can collapse tracks, remove disabled clips, strip filters and markers (this could be useful in emergencies and the collapse track would be quite useful at times. And it’s ability to scan for broadcast safe on files.
Again a batch of useful tools that if you need them it is good to know about them in the case that you do need them.
So I have talked about Digital Rebellion before and Post Haste and Preference Manager, but they have 2 packages of programs to repair and I have been a user of Pro Maintenance Tools since Final Cut Pro 7.0.
This suite of tools has a tool to Analyze Crashes, Repair Corrupt Files in a project (or at least help you see which ones are corrupt), Look up error messages, Manage Plugins, Schedule clearing of caches and preferences and a plug in installer.
It has a huge amount of tools (though of course Post Haste and Preference Manager are free), and most you don’t need until you do. This has saved me on a few projects where some media got corrupted, so it is a great tool to have around just in case, or to get in an emergency.
Corrupt Clip Finder also has often shown me bad JPEG’s, though I have had the problems a lot less since I stopped using JPEG’s due to corruption issues.
If you are having issues the $129 is quite worth the price of admission.
Stability. Stability seems to be the thing most people complain about with Premiere Pro. I see all the time people complaining about it crashing.
AVID of course is going to have more stability if you do it’s normal workflow of importing footage, because you are compressing into an AVID format and of course that is going to be more stable, AMA of course, using external formats in AVID was not every going to be as stable.
To keep Premiere Pro stable I try to go for less compression, and pick a format and stick with that. Most of my deliveries are ProRES HQ, and if that is the case I want my footage to be be ProRES because it is going to be less compressed than many other highly compressed formats, especially formats like H.264. This wouldn’t apply if I was using a RAW format like ProRES RAW or Blackmagic RAW, which I would use with Proxy’s to speed thing up (though I would use ProRES Proxy and not H.264 Proxys).
So before import, I like to recompress my heavily compressed footage to ProRES HQ (or straight ProRES if that is the delivery spec). Yes this of course takes more time, but I have found that the stability that it gives me means that I save time on the back end, so the up front time is certainly worth it. And I use Media Encoder to it instead of using Ingest in Premiere Pro.
With Ingest you can Transcode, create Proxies, Copy or Copy with Proxies, and it is a great workflow when it works, but I have had bad crashes that have screwed things up and not finish the import or transcode process, so I tend to do transcodes myself before I import them. And yes this means I can’t start working right away, but I think the lost time up front is saved at the end when you don’t have any export issues.
I will talk about the Proxy workflow in another post, but I tend to do that in the program, but let it do it on it’s own, not while continuing to work because of crashing issues I have had. Best to let the machine go overnight, and if you can check it in remotely all the better.
And my compression issues extend beyond just you video files.
Since my early days of editing on Final Cut Pro 4-7, there have been issues with JPG images. Sometimes they are fine, and sometimes they can stop an entire project from opening, and it can happen randomly after working fine. Bad things happen with JPG images so I do not import JPG images into my projects.
Before using a JPEG I convert it to another format. Now I have seen people complain about PNG images causing problems in project, though I haven’t had that problem. I tend to convert to PNG, though the less compressed the better. And if you want to go even better you can go TIFF files, but they can end up being absolutely huge.
To convert images in a batch I use the $39.95 GraphicConverter from Lemkesoft.
I use the Convert And Modify command to convert my images from JPGS.
Setting Convert on the let, and PNG as the format (or TIFF if you would like). The folder with footage to covert is in the middle, and you select hte ones you want to convert, and the to folder is on the right, and you press start selected function.
I feel the same about Audio files, heavily compressed audio files like MP3 or M4A I convert to WAV files using Adobe Media Encoder.
And yes this is all in the “Assistant Editor Stage” before editing gets started. And the net result has been that Premiere Pro has been very stable for me. Sure sometimes I have issues, but since dealing with highly compressed footage, stills and audio before a project the program runs much more stable for me.
Honestly if you think about it, it is like using Premiere Pro more like AVID. You think of it as importing the footage to an AVID codec. And then everything is the same, and so will just run better.
And I often get A & B cameras that are different cameras, and thus different formats. Think about the computer having to uncompress different kinds of formats at once. Of course it is going to do better if everything is all one format.
And more compression means processing power, so the less compressed things are the less processing power you are using, and that can help with stability.
Everything you can do to make the whole thing run easier will mean less crashes and things working better.
When my MacPro 4,1 finally kicked the bucket I was devastated, especially since the new MacPro wasn’t out yet, and I needed a machine to edit on. The solution was the very powerful iMac Pro with the Radeon Pro Vega 64X 16GB. Now that blew my old video card out of the water, but video editing apps can use every bit of power you have and more, so you want to save as much video processing power as you can.
The problem is that the default settings or even scaled settings on an iMac Pro or even an iMac are made to make the screen look amazing, not save on video memory, and for a long time the OS X control panels have removed the important statistics on the display control panel.
Now if you hover over the choices it tells you what resolution it is like and that scaled resolutions might affect performance, but they don’t tell you what the default resolution is actually doing.
This is where the awesome SwitchResX comes in. The app is $16, or $250 for a site license. It takes a little playing to get it all set up nicely (especially turning off all the resolutions that you don’t want).
It runs in your menu bar, and you can customize to remove all the resolutions you don’t want, but when you go into the iMac Pro or iMac’s resolutions you see where I am going.
You can see I have chosen 2560×1440 which is the normal default resolution, but I have not chosen the HiDPI version. HiDPI is what Apple does to make the monitor look great, it takes your resolution and runs it twice to subsample and make it look better, but basically whatever video ram it is using for your primary display it is doubling it to make the display look nicer.
For a video editor this is a huge no no, don’t waste your video memory, it is precious! Make sure to set your display to a non HiDPI resolution so that you are not wasting your video memory!
Of course this isn’t all that SwitchResX can do, you can actually set different resolutions for different apps and have it change as you switch apps. Now I have tried that out and it worked very well, but I have realized I just like one resolution for my 2 monitors, and try and save as much video memory as I can, so that is why I use SwitchResX, and the less video memory you have the more important this is.
I am assuming this will be the same with M1 iMacs, but they don’t exist yet. If they stay like the current M1 macs and share memory with the mac, then it is even more important to use less memory for your display so that you can use more for editing!
Mac Performance Guide has as an article on how the upgrade to Big Sur has been nothing but negatives, except that you need to upgrade to it to get Thunderbolt Hub Support which was added in Big Sur.
I know this site is usually very negative on the coverage of Mac OS upgrades, but the upgrades do seem to add more problems than they add, and usually add hits to performance.
And I have personally held off on the upgrade to Big Sur, though I really do need the Thunderbolt hub support so I can have more drives connected than I currently do.
Of course I also can’t upgrade because where I am currently working refuses to upgrade past Adobe Creative Cloud 2019, and that version does not work on Big Sur, you need to run at least 2020 to run on Big Sur. Now when the built in Speech to Text comes out of Beta maybe I can upgrade, though I might as well hold off for now.
This awesome little plug in for Apple Mail, MailTrackerBlocker hosted at Github is a must install. If you don’t know, companies install something called a tracker pixel into the html of an e-mail they send you, and when it loads the image off their server they can track your location and often more information. These spy pixels should be illegal, but they aren’t so do what you can to stop them!
Honestly I would think Apple would do something about them, and especially on the iPhone and iPad. They are so into not letting companies track, then they should stop this insidious behavior. At least you can do something about it on the desktop.
It is scary how many e-mails have these built in trackers, which you can see once you install this app. Basically every e-mail with html formatting has one.
Now this has been one of the great things about Final Cut Pro X, if you bought it once you own it for good, and that is how DaVinci Resolve works, but Premiere Pro from Adobe is a subscription service.
The question does Apple just subsidize Final Cut Pro X with computer sales, or do they want it to make some money and make it subscription. I understand wanting it to pay for some of it’s development costs, but if they are going to do that I expect updates, and fixes.
Honestly I think a better idea is to have upgrade fees to new versions, not full price, but pay for the upgrade how things used to be. I can justify the subscription to Adobe as I make my living using it, as very few companies edit in Final Cut Pro X. I think they should update the App store to allow upgrades instead of just subscriptions, or full priced new versions.
And with a subscription Apple has better take a long hard look, and start looking into the many issues the program has as I have posted about before. If they go subscription I want them to seriously be developing, and it would be nice to have forums that the developers actually read and work on issues that professionals are having.
It is funny to see so much outrage, and how everyone will now move to DaVinci. Well as a professional, since both AVID and Premiere are subscription, I am totally used to it. I will get a month to month as needed and it won’t bother me, but I won’t keep the subscription around because I see it having too many problems that I just don’t think they will every fix or even care about. If I need it I would get it basically.
It is a good article, if a little too FCP X focused overall. I made my huge post on the problems that I have with extensive use of FCP X, and I wish Apple would deal with them before adding too much else, though collaborative editing might help with some of my complaints quite a bit, but there are still so many to go into.
I totally agree that Apple needs to knock it out of the park with a GPU, but not just for Cinema4D, but also for Premiere Pro (as well as DaVinci). And yea the CPU needs to really stomp ass with After Effects for sure.
An updated XDR display should happen quickly, and the new version should also be the basis for a new iMac Pro.
And yes the Afterburner card needs to be able to decode different codecs as well, not just ProRES, and that should also be either added to the iMac, or make a breakout box with BlackMagic and include the tech in that along with an HDMI out and in.
I really do wish I could afford a MacPro, though with the M1, it calls it into question. Be really weird if Apple ends up with the MacPro as the only Intel Mac, and a medium machine like the article calls for as M1.
In Apple Mail if I sort by Date, and Oldest Message On top, so newest messages are on the bottom (admittedly a habit I developed from years of using the mail program Eudora), when I open Mail the sorting should not scroll to the top, but the bottom.
I mean seriously Apple. I know you want me to have newest at the top, but if you are going to actively try to make me change why not just remove the ability to sort in a different order?