After one good restart Bootcamp Partition is toast

So after coming up yesterday and me running utilities, Windows needed to restart to fix Registry issues, and I never got it back up. It would not let me re-install over the old partition, and it would not let me do anything that would fix it, and the problems seemed to get worse until it is totally tanked, I am going to have to re-install. Activation will require a call to microsoft, but hopefully it will work, and they will let me re-install. Might be a problem because it is an OEM version, but those have to be re-installed.

What a total pain in my ass! I am mean seriously, I can’t believe how they make it to repair windows if there is a problem! The tied down OS is really such a pain. With Mac I can easily use another hard drive with another system install on it and run repairs at least.

After restart Windows was caught in a loop again

So after I ran the utilities Smart PC Care on Windows it needed to restart to finish fixing the registeries, and the computer got caught in a restart loop to Windows install dvd. I zapped the PRAM a couple of times to try and reset the startup disc, but that didn’t work, so i also reset the SMC, buy that didn’t work so I had to open the computer to eject the dvd from the tray and then the computer wouldn’t start at all.


Eventually i reseated all the hard drives and swapped out my PC GTX 670 for my GTX 270 and that managed to boot into OSX, and I set it as the startup disc. 

Windows is going in Automatic Repair again, and will likely fail, wonder if the MBR thing will work?

And today it is Windows 8.1 Bootcamp Issues

So I tried to boot into my Windows 8.1 Bootcamp Partition and it was a no go. Showed the green windows window then went black and restarted back into Mac.

I think the problem is that because of my USB issues I had moved my keyboard and mouse to the USB 3 Ports of my CalDigit SATA and USB 3 PCI card, but I have not installed drivers as of yet in Windows. It was fine without them before because I never plugged anything in, but without the drivers, it sure was not happy, and would not restart. So I need to make sure to install those drivers if and when I get Windows working again.

Now I am lucky in that I also have a separate Windows 8.1 Parallels install, for those times when I don’t want to fully boot into Windows, or do anything Graphics intensive. With that I was able to use a USB Key to create a recovery partition, and let it run it’s utilities to fix Windows, but they didn’t work, neither the auto fix or going to a backup.

So then i downloaded the Windows 8.1 Setup program to try and create an ISO so I could have a Windows 8.1 Installer and wipe my drive except my data (a pain, but I don’t have that much installed), but I ran into another problem. The program only works with a Windows 8.1 Serial number, not a Windows 8 serial number, though it was a free upgrade to 8.1! WTF!

Luckily with a little google searching I was able to download the Windows 8.1 ISO thanks to PC Advisor. You basically have to download the Windows 8 Install program, and enter your license number, and get it to start downloading, then quit the program. Then from the same link download the Windows 8.1 installer and run it, and it won’t ask for your serial. When the program finishes you can either make a USB by clicking install by creating media, or create an ISO, which you can use multiple times.

To do the ISO to a USB stick you need to download the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool, and install that, and point it at the ISO you saved. Once that is done you need to copy a file to it as explained by PC Advisor or it will make you use the same serial number as the one you used to download, instead of whatever one was used for your install (since I have 2 installs).

Once Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool finishes, it is time for me to try again. I will restart into Windows with the Recovery Partition in, and tell it to re-install but keep my data, and will insert my painfully created USB stick with the Windows 8.1 Installer, and then it is time to re-install all of my programs! YIPEE! And I have had to use a 3rd USB key to use Boot Camp Assistant, to redownload the latest Bootcamp drivers so I can get my mac working once Windows does a mostly clean install!

Will update and let you know how things go.

Having usb issues with my MacPro 4,1 2×2.26 Ghz Quad-Core

In the last few days I have been having USB freezes on my Mac, where all my USB ports seem to die, and only a restart can fix the issue. I had thought it was my beloved Microsoft Trackball Explorer that was causing the issue (as it has been known to cut in and out), and so I detached it and switched to my Kensington Trackball explorer that I bring to work, and it seemed OK today. Sure last night I had to use TechTool and restart into my emergency drive, and run diskwarrior, but I figure that is par for the course after a few hard resets. Anyway, the problem happened again today, and I decided to try something different, since I have a CalDigit USB 3 and SATA card, I tired plugging my Kengsington and Keyboard into that, and low and behold those ports still worked. Now I was in the process of rebuilding my iPhoto library, so I didn’t restart, though I should have as the computer totally hung up shortly thereafter, but I did have time to look at a System Report.

The system report was telling, as it showed all of my USB devices, but still showed my trackball and Microsoft Keyboard connected to the USB 2 port as well as the USB 3 port. Hoping it is not a hardware issue, I decided to reset the SMC, by disconnecting power for a minute, and then reset the PRAM 3 times as I restarted. So far so good, but it usually is after a restart.

Hopefully it is OK now, but we shall see.

Is Inside Llewelyn Davis the last film to be cut on Final Cut Pro 7? And my thoughts…

Non-Linear Post has an article on how they used Final Cut Pro 7 to cut Inside Llewelyn Davis. It also mentions how they plan on moving to Premiere Pro in the future. It is actually really sad to think that Final Cut Pro 7 was working well as a feature editing program, and has since been killed, and replaced with the abomination known as Final Cut Pro X.

Final Cut Pro 7 really could have been the future of editing, but Apple killed it. Yes some of the power of Final Cut Pro X would have been amazing added to Final Cut Pro 8, but instead they tried to redesign editing. And while some features are great, many are a mess. The timeline for example. Anything with lots of graphics with Alphas is a mess in non organizable timeline as is audio that can’t be organized. Maybe someday I will have to learn Final Cut Pro X (I did spend 2 weeks with it when it was first released), but for now the future is AVID and Premiere Pro.

The depressing thing is that the studios are forcing AVID on people, and AVID still feels ancient. It feels like it did when I first tried it. And it still feels that slow, and when cutting a 30 minute piece filled with graphics and overlays it is so incredibly slow, with render times that will kill you. And it’s graphics importing, is so slow and such a pain, and the whole AMA thing is still buggy. Honestly Premiere Pro does so much better at playing any form of video in it’s timeline.

I would much prefer that Premiere Pro takeover, as many editors chose Final Cut Pro 7 over AVID to begin with, and it was really taking over, but now we have to go back to the program that’s new features are longer than 27 character filenames? WTF!

Black Magic DaVinci 10 will support the MacPro and it’s Dual GPU’s, and likely so will Adobe Premiere Pro Creative Cloud

Nonlinear has a post on a post from Grant Petty the CEO of BlackMagic saying that the full version of DaVinci 10 will support the Dual AMD GPU’s of the new MacPros. And Premiere Pro already supports AMD Firepros, and hopefully will soon support the duals of the new MacPro.

I will still rather see Dual NVIDIA GPU support, as CUDA would likely be faster, but this could make the MacPro a viable alternative to the current MacPro without the expansion. Still want to see some speed tests though as I would like to see Premiere Pro rocking Dual Titans!

EOSHD on H.264 Codec, ProRes 4444 Quality at 1% of File SIze

EOSHD has an article on the new h.265 Codec which is ProRes 4444 Quality at 1% of the File size. Of course i doesn’t talk about the computer power that is going to be needed. And that is going to need some power. Serious GPU power I am thinking.

Still you can try it right now with Cinemartin’s compressor, but it is not cheap! And the compressor is made for Windows 7, and I have no idea what will actually play it back right now, but the compressor also does ProRes. Would love to give it a try, but it is way too expensive to play with right now.

Phil Hodgetts on Final Cut Pro 10.1 on new Mac Pro and my thoughts.

Phil Hodgetts has an article on running Final Cut Pro 10.1 on the new Mac Pro and what he was able to play back, 5 Red R2D 4K streams at different scales positions and rotations without rendering.

Pretty amazing, though now I want to see what happens when Adobe re-writes premiere for Dual Graphics Card support and what it can do, and even better if they carry that over to PC, so we can see this on dual NVIDIA CUDA cards. I would love to see what Premiere Pro could do using 2 GTX TITANS instead of AMD FirePro cards which are slower than gaming cards (much like NVIDIAs QUADRO line). The nice thing about the MacPro is it seems Apple is charging the gaming price for it’s FirePro cards, so you are paying for the Radeon editions and getting the FirePro.

I know that Final Cut pro X has gotten much better, but I am still not sold on it. I gave my 2 weeks at the beginning and the mess that it made of the timeline really makes it seem not viable for commercial or direct response, nor for anything that needs an audio mixer, as it will take so much longer to mix something that isn’t set specifically for an audio mixer.

Maybe I am biased by Final Cut Pro X 10.1, but all the improvements have not changed the timeline.