I have posted how this is needed in Premiere immediately, but i ran across this article by Scott Simmons at the Pro Video Coalition. I hadn’t realized that Final Cut Pro X had added it, and didn’t realize you can read the metadata in Premiere, just not easily, and it should be appended to the tracks in the timeline just like it is DaVinci Resolve.
This is a feature that Adobe needs to add immediately.
A great article and something to consider because of the lack of pro M1 computers with more than 16 GB of combined ram, and the possibility than sone plug ins or software might not yet work in an M1.
Sofi Marshall, Editor, Writer and Workflow Expert has an awesome post on the Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Worklflow. You can check out her IMDB page to see her experience, which is extensive.
Now I talked a bit about this in my recent post on Work from Home thanks to the Covid-19 Pandemic. And I have been thinking about getting a workflow working because I would like to be able to work from home as much as possible.
And I too loved iChat theater in Final Cut Pro 7. It was amazing technology that worked really well when the entire Internet was so much slower.
As for the Workflow, obviously the BlackMagic Web Presenter has been updated to the Web Presenter HD to include the front panel, but there is another option as well that is either the ATEM Mini or the ATEM Mini Pro which are switchers and include picture in picture abilities.
Now the Mini Pro includes the ability to stream directly to YouTube, FaceBook or Twitch (or I guess you program some others like Vimeo but it isn’t easy, nor is that going to be all that secure) but the Mini for $295 seems like a viable alternative as it has the USB port to act as a web cam and it has multiple sources possible, so if you have a camera with an HDMI port and I have an old GoPro Hero 2 which has mini USB out and a usb for power.
Personally since I have an BlackMagic Ultrastudio 4k, I would hook this up to the ATEM Mini as my main source, and the GoPro as my personal camera, and then I would hook up the ATEM Mini to my Windows Surface and run Zoom on there to save resources on my editing Mac.
The one issue is the single HDMI out on my Ultrastudio 4k, so to get it to my monitor, I would have to take the HDMi out of the switcher which will likely put it on more of a delay from what I am editing, but this would only be necessary when live streaming.
And because of the Ultrastudio I would not be streaming any of my desktop, but the direct output from my editing system, though I would still uncheck disable video output when I background, so the output signal remains as a source.
Now with using my Windows Tablet as the zoom machine, I will have to use it as the audio monitor as well (though that precludes all the setup with Rouge Amoeba’s LOOPBACK which makes things easier) though not sure how great it will sound through the headphone port and have to check audio levels using the ATEM Software Control (which should work fine on Windows).
Best would be to cut off audio to the gopro and use a good mic through the switcher’s microphone ports, but that is of course an extra expense.
And honestly I should probably run the audio out headphone port into my Emotiva-XDA-1 and it’s connected heaphone amp, just so I can control the volume better.
Of course I have to hook it up and try it to see how it works, and if it didn’t I could do it all from my iMac, but that shouldn’t be necessary.
EDIT: Awesome, so Sofi Marshall has done a small update to the post to add the ATEM Mini as an option. Basically it works the same, with the ability to do picture in picture form multiple sources, but it has one downside. The ATEM Mini can only accept 1080 inputs, while the web presenter can accept 4K inputs, and the ATEM Mini is a bit larger as well. Good to know.
EditingTools.io is a very cool web site with some very useful tools online. You might not need them right now, but when you do it is going to be great to remember they are there.
EditingTools.io is a collection of generators, scripts, converters and machine learning applications made over the last years for various projects & productions.
They accept donations to keep their free tools online.
There are some very useful tools for converting or combining AVID Log Exchange files or ALE files.
XML to Splitscreen XML to perfectly do split screens.
A very useful Marker Converter to convert timeline markers from Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Frame.io, SubRip Subtitle, CSV, PDF and more.
A tool to generate an Editor’s Codebook from ALE files.
A Music Cut Sheet creator from XML files (woohoo, awesome if you have to make them).
A Edit Shot List / VFX Shot List from XML.
And so much more. These are great tools to know about in case you need them.
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.
OK so if you saw my last post, I have been issues with my ThunderBay 4 with Raid 5 via full SoftRaid from the awesome OWC. This is different from the discs ejecting post and has to do with AVID Media Composer.
Because I am on Catalina 10.15.6 on my iMac Pro with 3GHZ 10 Core, with 64 GB of Memory and a Radeon Pro Vega 64x 16 GB I am running Media Composer 2020.8.0.55115.0. I have actually been running some assistant editor training courses, as I have never used Script Sync and wanted to learn all the ins and out. Anyway, the course came with a project and it’s own media.
I put the media on my Raid, in an Avid MediaFiles:MXF:1 folder. And when I opened the project which was also on the raid everything is online. The weirdness is when I go to the Media Creation tool and try and select the raid for the render files, and it just doesn’t show up. It is like the drive doesn’t exist, and yes I have tried going to the console and typing alldrives, but it has made no difference.
Now I did find this thread on the AVID forum, which is about this happening with G-SPEED raids, but this is an OWC RAID, but the issue seems to be longstanding and continues.
I have contacted OWC support and will see what they have to say, but I think it is an AVID issue, and it looks like it hasn’t been fixed in a very long time.
Super Frustrating!
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I have put a case in with AVID as well as I think this is an AVID issue and the same as the G-Speed issue in the thread I linked to. We shall see if they do anything about it, but it is something that needs to be looked into.
So news reports have been popping up that 2013 MacPro’s running AVID Media Composer have been not restarting just going black. And the only fix was to re-install the Mac OS to get the system running again. Reports seemed to mostly focus on 2013 MacPro’s but from many rental houses, but also sone other macs were affected. It seemed to be that the user folder was having it’s permissions changed from admin to a normal user.
Well it seems that issue was not caused by Media Composer per se. In fact, according to ProVideoCoalition and Engadget it is a Chrome update that is screwing up the user folder. And it is only on macs that have System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled. This means that in fact AVID is partially responsible, since AVID requires SIP to be turned off so it can get direct access to a Mac’s Graphic Systems. Of course neither Final Cut or Premiere or DaVinci require this, but AVID does.
AVID needs to fix this or work with Apple, because such an expensive and important software shouldn’t require you to lower your Macs defenses. And of course a Company as big as Google should know better as well, but why would they test with SIP disabled? I mean now they need to, but it is not something you would normally test for.
The Verge noticed a job listing for an editor at it’s Beats Music division, but it is asking for someone with experience with AVID MEDIA COMPOSER and ADOBE PREMIERE PRO! Ha! It seems even Apple does not use Final Cut Pro X.
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!