Apple has released iTunes 12.4 and made it even more of a pain to use!

And yet another update to iTunes, with version 12.4, and once again Apple has made things harder to do.

Yes the sidebar is back permanently, instead of having to turn it on, but they have made it harder to use. Instead of tabs that were always up, now you pick, music and videos from a drop down menu. which is much slower than individual buttons. And now if you want to listen to your music list by songs, you have to scroll to the top of the playlists, which is obviously much slower than having a dedicated menu to do it (I think the menu was slow, but having to scroll to the top of the playlists to do is just dumb).

And then Playlists. When you create a playlist it puts it in a playlist format, where you can’t change order or see different ways to sort it at all, and there used to be a dedicated drop down to change it to Songs, so you can edit the order, or see if the order is by track or whatever. I hated having to do that, but now you have to go to the view menu, and go to the sort as Drop Down menu! Much harder and slower! And come on apple, lets us pick our default setting for Playlists! The default Playlist setting is useless! You can’t change anything, which is the whole point of playlists! Let us chose our own default choice, especially if you are going to make it even harder to use!

And now to create a new playlist from a selection of your music you used to right click, and select create new playlists, now you have to go to the add to playlist drop down and go to the top and select New Playlist. Additional drop down menus DON’T MAKE THINGS EASIER, THEY MAKE THEM HARDER APPLE!

And the back button. I don’t understand how it works. If I go to a playlist then to teh Songs in the Library and a new Playlist, and hit back, it goes back to the first Playlist, not the Songs that I was just at that I have to scroll all the way to the top of the list to get to. These items should stick to the top!

I do like that when you make a new playlist it is selected and shown on the left (which was gone as of recent versions), but it makes it hard to get back to sorting music by songs, since that is at the top of the sidebar!

I don’t know why Apple who is supposed to be all about making things easier thinks they have to change things and make them harder or even remove features with an update! First they took away the ability to open multiple playlists, then they made playlists default to an unchangeable playlist view. And now they have just make everything take more steps and be harder (and there aren’t even keyboard shortcuts to make it easier). What is next?

I really wish someone could come up with an interface to replace iTunes that works with the iTunes back end, and lets you customize it and use it like you want to, instead of being forced to do it how Apple wants, which seems to constantly be a harder and harder method! WTF APPLE!

OneRiver Media on NVIDIA GTX 1080 being death nell of high end Mac Graphics

NVIDIA recently announced the GTX 1080, which is half the price ($699) of it’s Titan, twice as fast and draws less power.

Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media talks about the NVIDIA GTX 1080 being the end of the MacPro as a high end graphics and editing system, since there is no longer a PCI based Mac! I do agree. The old PCI based MacPro will only last so much more, and it is already so far behind on modern technology.

So while I would prefer to run a Mac and OS X, I don’t want the ridiculous Trashcan MacPro, and I want 2 GTX 1080’s for a video card (or theoir version of a Titan), and hell I want the Microosft Surface Book as a laptop. Apple is pushing me away from the computer I love!

Apple has killed Quicktime for Windows, and this could be a big problem for ProRes!

So this is a scary thing, Apple has killed Quicktime for Windows, and it currently has major security flaws in it, so if your computer is attached to the internet you should uninstall it.

The problem is that there are many video formats that require Quicktime to run. This includes all forms of ProRes, which has even become a major camera format, as well as Animation (a major format for After Effects) and DNxHD/HR.

Now Adobe says they are working on it, but will likely have to license components to get these to work, so if it ever does it will take a while.

Overall while this seems like a very Apple thing to do, it makes me once again worry about Apple and it’s future in Video. The thing is even if you are not going to release your software for Windows, you want the video to be able to run for cross compatibility, like AVID always released versions of it’s drivers for people who didn’t own AVID. And ProRES is such a great format that it has become a defacto standard across a lot of the Post Production industry, but with this action ProRES will slowly be relegated to a sidestory, In the future cameras are going to be less likely to support it, and eventually it will be a FCP only format (that is if Apple even keeps developing FCP X in the future). Other than the short term why would Adobe support it, if it is literally only able to work on a Mac, that is less than half it’s market, so why bother.

This just shows me how out of touch Apple really is.

PCWorld on the aging MacPro, which is too positive

PCWorld has an article on the aging 2013 MacPro update, which hasn’t seen a single update since it’s release. Honestly though the article is too psitive on what Apple can do if they a new update with new technology.

The Problem is they made an unupgradeable pro Macintosh, and to make a better machine, you have to but a new one. Many people including me, have an old style MacPro that we have continued to upgrade to make it relevant. And the New MacPro can’t do that. You have on hard drive and two custom video cards and that is it. No upgrade other than RAM and external devices. And they have huge issues with external thunderbolt, like drives being disconected for no reason (See this article on MacPerformanceGuide).
Sure a non upgradeable machine means more money for Apple, but not upgrading the machine in 3 years, and making it much less than most desktop pc’s, means PC’s are much more powerful for less money with much better technology! It means pro users are going to consider leaving Mac altogether!
Seriously, does Apple want to lose Pro users? I have been an Apple user since the Apple IIC, but the non-upgradeable MacPro makes me consider moving to PC! At least if they consistently upgrading the unupgradable MacPro with the latest tech, it would make me consider the MacPro, but a 3 year or longer upgrade cycle is not acceptable! I mean Thunderbolt 3 is out on PC, and the latest NVIDIA graphics cards blow anything out of the water made in 2013, not even considering only having AMD video cards as an option, why are these not available on a Mac! Shit I would be OK with a non Xeon i7 Mac Pro with upgradeability, as it would blow my my MacPro 4,1 out of the water!
Apple is obviously not caring about Pro users, and not minding if they leave, which is scary since they are the people that kept Apple alive when it was the worst in the market. Honestly just admit it and give up on Pro users or actually make upgraded pro machines!

Adobe Media Encoder won’t put chapter markers in H264 Video

So this is something that has annoyed me for some time, and has really been annoying me of late, so I have been trying workaround.

So basically the issue is that you can create Chapter Markers in Adobe Premiere Pro in your sequence, which are ostensibly for use in Adobe Encore, but that program stopped with CS6, and after my last hard drive bailed after the El Capitan Update I don’t even have it installed on my current hard drive.

Anyway, back in the day with Final Cut Pro 7 I could export a video with chapter markers and compress an H264 video with chapter markers using compressor. It would make Apple Compatible m4v files instead of a normal mp4 files, but chapter markers would work in most programs and show up on the web in most cases.

Unfortunately Adobe Media Encorder won’t do this, as it only makes straight mp4 files, and since Encore is a dead program, the Chapter Markers in Premiere Pro are pretty much useless.

After much searching, and seeing all the ways people were making chapter markers (most of which are really a pain the ass, and don’t use standard formatting for either the text file, or the timcode), I went back to basically my old way of doing this.

This is to export my video as a ProRES video which includes chapter markers, and then use HandBrake to encode it with Chapter Markers. Now not only this take longer, but also take up more hard drive space, but at least the chapter markers work!

And while m4v is a subset of mp4, it does play in most players including directly in Firefox, though doesn’t show the chapters markers, but at least it plays fine. And I am OK with my chapters only working on Macs, because at least they will show for most people looking at my reel.

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.

iTunes update

So I have been spending all the time I can re-rating my iTunes Library, and so far I am only in D! This is going to literally take forever! Such a pain. And it seems to have been slowing down the more things I rate or make playlists, but that seems to have changed.

iTunes updated to version 12.3.2.35 recently, which allows for 100,000 songs in iTunes Match, and iTunes seems to have sped up again, no more beachballs all the time. Nice! Lets hope it stays this way! This is such an improvement. My almost 50,000 library seems zippy again!

Message now works on my Mac and all it took was resetting my PRAM! Some NVIDIA weirdness though.

I can’t believe I had not tried that, but Apple support got me and now Messages works in El Capitan

There was some strangeness though, and it is to do with my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 670 I mentioned in my previous post. After resetting the PRAM the computer came back up, but all the blue was orange again, and this time I took screenshots, but they looks correct once the problem is fixed! And to fix the issue I had to re-install the latest NVIDIA web drivers, though they were showing as already installed. Next time I will take a physical picture.

10.11.2 El Capitan update did not require NVIDIA web driver to boot (though it looks crazy)

I run a NVIDIA GTX 670 with 4 GB of RAM in my MacPro, and it is not flashed. So when I update the system I have to use VNC to sign into my Mac and update the NVIDIA Web drivers and restart before my Mac shows anything on the monitors (or I have to swap my old GTX 270 and do the Update).

This seems to have changed with 10.11.2. In fact it showed the updating screen before the Desktop, and then came to the desktop. Of course it was not normal, in fact all Blue Colors were Orange! I wish I had though to take screen shots, as after the update I upgraded the NVIDIA web driver and restarted and everything was back to normal.

This is awesome news if this continues in the future, as it makes it much easier to upgrade to the latest NVIDIA web driver. I hope it just wasn’t a fluke.