Oliver Peters on Audio Plug-ins for editors
Oliver Peters at his digitalfilms blog has written 2 article son Audio Plug-ins for Editors. Parts 1 & 2 focus on categories, such as equalizers and compressors, part 3 is on the audio plug-ins from FabFilter Software Instruments and 4 is on Free Plug-ins.
You should go to his blog and check out parts 1, 2 , 3 and 4.
Sound is my worst part of editing. So often of late I am working for companies that expect me to mix, when an audio guy can add so much to a mix. Maybe this can help a little with audio if you want to dive into it.
Toolfarm’s top 5 plug-ins for under $99 for Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, AVID, Final Cut Pro X, and more
Toolfarm, the plug-in seller has posted it’s top 5 plug-ins for under $99 for various software. For Premiere Pro, Davinci Resolve, AVID, Final Cut Pro X, Audio and various 3D packages.
Always good to see lists of inexpensive plug ins.
ProVideo Coalition article on Adobe and AVID needing iXML metadata in the Timeline
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.
OWC on which used Mac for Video Users
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’s Ultimate Real Time Remote Editing Workflow and how I am considering adapting it to my workflow
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.
Some really cool online editing tools at EditiingTools.io
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.
Pro Media Tools from Digital Rebellion is their tool for Media and Workflow Management
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.
Pro Maintenance Tools from Digital Rebellion can help maintain, optimize and troubleshoot Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro X and and Final Cut Pro 7
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.
Problems with OWC ThunderBay 4 and AVID Media Composer
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.