Scott Simmons at PVC has started a series on a Mac Editor switching to PC, well worth a read

Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition was given a Dell Workstation laptop and has started a series on Editing on it after being used to Mac for years. The article is just getting started on it, but it is an interesting read and I look forward to reading more about it.Personally I never edit on a laptop and do most of my editing on a Mac Tower (or even a QUO hackintosh at one place I work), but with the "new MacPro" (I put in quotes since it has been so long since the trashcan has been released without a single update) I have started to think that my next edit system may very well be a PC Workstation with an NVIDIA TITAN graphics card instead of the MacPro trashcan.

Major problems with El Capitan

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…

Apple has refreshed it’s entire iMac Line, with a 4K 21.5 inch and all 27 inch models now 5K

Apple has refreshed it's entire iMac line. They all sport Thunderbolt 2 ports, and there is now a 21.5 inch 4K display (Starting at $1499), and they have made all 27 Inch Models 5K (at $1799-2299)! AWESOME!And they have upgraded their wireless keyboards, mice and touchpads with rechargeable batteries with a month life that charge and pair using lightning cables.The iMacs are pretty exciting as editing machines, especially with Thunderbolt. I would still prefer NVIDIA graphics over the AMD that Apple now uses across it's line, but they are still good cards.

Apple iOS 9 Content blockers leaves iPhone 5 and 5 C out in the cold

The ability to add content blockers to your browser in iOS 9 was one of my most looked forward to features, but though Apple doesn't mention it, all the apps for content blocking leave out the iPhone 5C as well as the iPad 3 which can both take iOS 9. It makes me wonder what else is left off of the earlier devices. I am betting that the ability to keep playing a video on the iPad doesn't work on the iPad 3, but will have to test and 3 as soon as I can get my wife to upgrade my old iPad 3.

Finally someone else si also getting my “system_profiler quit unexpectedly” crashes in OS X

For a while now I have been getting "system_profiler quit unexpectedly" crashes in OS X, and I get them a lot, but have not always been able to figure out why. I have a thread at Apple discussions on it, and finally someone else has run into the error.And the thing we both have in common is that we both have PC NVIDIA cards as our Graphics cards, so it is quite possible that this is the issue. The other user has reported this as a bug to apple, but since we are not using approved video cards it will likely be ignored.He also has a temporary solution, to disable the system profiler app, but this seems excessive in case you need the system profiler, but if it keeps bothering me I might try it.sudo chmod -x /usr/sbin/system_profile (To revert this, use "+x" instead)This is really an annoyance, and sometimes happens a lot in rapid succession, so I really do wish I could figure out a permanent solution to this problem.

OneRIver Media Blog on upgrading a 2009 MacPro to it’s fullest potential

One River Media Blog has an awesome article on fully upgrading a 2009, 4,1 MacPro to it's fullest potential to make it rival the new trashcan MacPro.This involves replacing the processors with Dual 6 CPU's which you can now get for around $650 (or less for a slightly slower model) installing dual SSD's for a startup drive, an NVIDIA Titan X with 12 GB of Video RAM, 64 GB of 1333MHz RAM, 2 6TB internals and a 4TB internal. This is all doable for around $4000, much cheaper than a new Trashcan Macpro with the added bonus of an NVIDIA graphics card VS the unupgradeable ATI graphics cards in the new MacPro.Honestly if I had the money this is what I would love to do with my Mac! It would give me years more life with my Mac and really make it fast!

The CalDigit FASTA-6Gu3 USB 3 and ESATA PCI card for Mac does not and will not work with Yosemite

So I have a CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 USB and ESATA PCI Card for my MacPro to add USB 3 to my old MacPro 4,1. And it worked great for a long time, but not since Yosemite came out.I checked there web site about it, and it says this:It does not support OS 10.10, so I wrote to CalDigit, and got this response:Dear Jonah,We regret to inform you that the mac OSX platform is no longer supporting the chipset used on the FASTA-6GU3 card after 10.9. Therefore, it has become impossible for us to develop a viable driver for the 10.10 platform that will work with the card. Unless you’re able to revert to a previous version of OSX, you will be unable to regain functionality out of the card’s USB 3.0 ports. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.Regards,CalDigit SupportCalDigit, Inc.It seems you must now buy the Pro version to have OS X 10.10 support.Total bullshit! I am staying away from this company!

Macnn Feature Thief article on Final Cut Pro, iMovie and iDVD

William Gallagher and Charles Martin have an interesting article on Apple and it's changes to it's video lineup. It goes into iMovie, Final Cut Pro and iDVD, and how Apple upgraded the first 2 with less features, but slowly made better versions.My biggest complaint with the article would be on who they polled as they say that most of the people who were angry over Apple's switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X have moved back X (with a cursory mention of Premiere Pro as an alternative).Personally being a professional editor, I did give the initial Final Cut Pro X a try, and hated it. And got a refund and have not gone back. There are some features that I do really like in X (especially it's handling of Meta Data), but since I edit complicated graphics heavy shows, it is the timeline that is the deal breaker for me, and it is the fundamental feature of X, so no matter how many updates they do, the timeline is too unorganized and broken for it to make sense for a 15 track highly organized video project.And of all the editors that I know, I have only heard of one that has gone back to X and really likes it now. And while features are starting to make their move to Premiere Pro, there have only been a few instances I have heard of big houses moving to X. Most of the big houses I know that were basically all Final Cut Pro have moved to AVID at the studios insistence (kick backs?!??!), while most commercial houses have moved to Premiere Pro for it's fidelity with graphics.I just don't see Final Cut Pro X as a viable solution, and with Apple's history of dropping software, I don't trust Apple to keep it going anyway!

JMR Lighting Tower for new Mac Pro

Just saw an ad for this in Post magazine, and I guess they showed it off at NAB this year. The new JMR Lightning Quad Tower for Mac Pro is a PCIE expansion tower via thunberbolt for the new MacPro, that includes four full sized PCIE expansion slots, a built in RAID controler wth 9.6TG capacity, and brings your USB, Ethernet and Audio ports to the front.Very cool. I am sure it is not going to be cheap, but what a great idea! Make a real MacPro out of a new one, if only Thunderbolt was a little faster.

Photos for Mac is broken, no way to delete photos that you have imported! FIGURED IT OUT iCLOUD PHOTOS IS BROKEN

I was just importing my photos off of my iPhone into the new Photos for Mac, Photos being the replacement to iPhoto that Apple recently released, and I noticed a major issue.In iPhoto when you imported your photos you had the option to delete them on import. Well in Photos that option is completely gone. There is only the option to import your photos. Well I just imported 2 gigs of photos, and want to clear up the space off my iPhone. Now I have to what, delete them off my iPhone myself? Well the only way to do that is individually, and this is 300+ photos and videos!And I thought maybe I missed something and imported the photos again, and it happily imported the same photos and put them into my Photo library right next to the previously imported photos! What is going on here?I get that the new iCloud features are to keep all your photos forever and safe, but the idea is to keep your full sized photos in the cloud, so you can access them from anywhere, not to never be able to delete your photos from your iPhone. If that is the case people are going to run out of space really fast!And besides who can afford the iCloud feature? Apple is charging way too much for online space, especially when Amazon lets you store your photos for free!And the removal of a trash can isn't a good idea either? What if you accidentally delete a file? (I was wrong about this, there is a way to view Recently deleted photos, just now a menu item instead of a section on the sidebar)Why has Apple changed to a company that doesn't give you a choice on how you use your Apple devices, you have to use them how they tell you to and there is no other way (exactly why I don't like Final Cut Pro X)?•••• Well I think I figured this out, I had to turn off iCloud Photos on my iPhone, now when I import I get the option to Delete items after Import. So if I was to keep iCloud Photos on, my phone would fill with all my Photos.So now I had to re-import all my photos again (making duplicates in Photos) with the checkbox checked and now I can have it remove the photos from my iPhone, though this doesn't seem to work well as it only did about half the photos the first time, and I am having to do the process multiple times to get the photos off my phone, creating duplicates in Photos every time. And now it seems frozen about half way through!Is this seriously a feature? Being unable to remove photos from my phone? Seriously? This is a joke, if I want to store all my photos in iCloud I don't want to keep copies on my iPhone or it will completely fill up really fast! This is completely broken! FIX THIS APPLE!Not only…