Adobe Updates Creative Cloud Video and Audio Apps

At Adobe Max Adobe updated it’s video and Audio Apps, as well as 2 new mobile apps (though Photoshop Camera is only in a beta).

Premiere Pro includes the sensei AI powered auto reframe feature. Improved Layers, Faster ProRes HDR, Time Remapping to 20,000%, Audio Gain to +15db, and HDR 10 metadata export controls.

After Effects is a core engine update (woohoo), with Real-time playback of cached previews, EXR productivity and performance, Faster Shape Layers, Enhanced Expressions including speed improvements, Faster Content-Aware Fill, better controls for Motion Graphics, and updated C4D Lite.

Audition has improved multichannel audio effects workflows.

Character Animator and Premiere Rush also have updates.

Adobe has released the app Aero for building AR without coding.

And they announced the AI powered app Photoshop Camera that is currently in beta.

DJI Osmo Pocket Extension Rod Unboxing and Review as a Jib/Crane

This is my initial unboxing and review of the DJI Osmo Pocket Extension Rod. I am attempting to use it as a crane or jib arm instead of as a selfie rod. It can be used as a crane or jib, but is pretty shaky and certainly needs post stabilization. As a selfie stick it is pretty amazing, but as a jib/crane it needs some nudging as the camera is just so light. Still you can get some usable stuff with some work and post processing.

I actually started this review a while back and have just finished and released it.

The audio is recorded on camera or from the microphone on my iMac.

The Footage was shot in 4k, but I had finished the shots for my wife’s short film in 1080 so this video is in 1080.

The Music are all YouTube tracks, just to keep it from getting too boring without it.

Fix for being unable to sync iOS devices in Catalina’s Finder

So my sync stopped working for iOS devices in the Finder in Mac OS 10.15 Catalina. As soon as I made any change to the sync the apply button was greyed out.

Well I went to my /Library/Preferences/ Folder and removed the com.apple.syncserver.plist and the com.apple.finder.plist file (I am assuming it just one of these) but after removing them the apply button was no longer greyed out and I can sync my iOS devices again. You should then restart the finder.

•••

Update, so this fix is no longer helping me. I just can’t sync anymore. The sync button is OK until I make any changes, then I cannot sync.

Another huge annoyance with Apple’s Music that replaced iTunes, the Playlists have all reverted back to Playlist view!

OK, so I have another complaint with Apple Music, it’s music portion of the previous iTunes app for Catalina 10.15.

I have spent many years getting my iTunes Library just how I like it, including rating everything with Stars, and setting up my playlists just how I like them. And that has always meant View as Song vs View as Playlist which has been the default for way too long.

In iTunes you set up your default view with all the categories that I wanted, something like this:

And your new playlists show up with that organization once you switch to Songs instead of the damn Playlist view that doesn’t give enough information including track order. And it still does that.

The problem is that for all my existing playlists, and we are talking a FUCKING SHITLOAD OF PLAYLISTS they have reverted to the initial setup of these categories.

This is seriously fucked up! I have literally thousands of Playlists, and to have to change the settings individually for each playlist would literally take forever! WTF Apple! And I have always organized my music into playlists so I have a playlist for every album, but I put the year into the title so I can easily sync and know which year the album was! So I have literally a FUCK-TON OF PLAYLISTS!

I need a way to set the default setting and propagate it to all the existing playlists! FUCK ME!

I posted about this on Apple’s Ccommunities, not that I think there is a solution that doesn’t require me fixing every playlist individually.

Another bug with Catalina’s finder iOS Sync and Folders in Apple Music

OK so I have noticed a major bug in syncing with Catalina’s Finder iOS sync. I have some music organized into folders in Music (the late lamented iTunes music portion) and something has happened to the alphabetical order that it shows in sync.

Here is my music of Big Finish Doctor Who audio as it shows in Apple Music.

All the playlists are in alphabetical order in Music as you can see.

Now in the Finder iOS Sync that is not the case.

This is not in order at all. And the synced files are mixed all throughout in random order! WTF!

This is a huge mess!

I have posted both on Apple’s Discussion site and have submitted Feedback to Apple. And I have also posted on MacRumors forums.

•••

UPDATE: So 10.15.1’s latest security update seems to have solved this problem. Unfortunately now I can’t get the sync working as it greys out anytime I make any changes.

A Huge Problem with Mac OS 10.15 Catalina Finder iOS Sync!

OK so I was always worried about them getting rid of iTunes. I have been using it for too many years. Making it 3 apps does not make it any more efficient than one app, in fact I would say it makes it less efficient.

And they have already been changing features, trying to replace Star ratings with heart or no heart after I have been rating songs for years with stars does not work for me.

Catalina though broke up iTunes and moved iOS sync to the finder. Now it still has the same features as the old iTunes sync everyone said, but there is one big one that no one has mentioned that is really messed up!

Now first off I have already said that the new Sync does not give a text description of what is syncing, and while it does eventually show you a progress wheel, it does not show one at first (I can only assume this is the backup stage which always took forever with no indication of how long it takes).

Here my iPad and iPhone are both in that nefarious stage when you have no idea how long the sync will take.

Here you can see my iphone is at least int he progress bar stage, though still less info than old iTunes which told you what it was doing.

Anyway now here is the major problem with having the finder do the sync. If you are syncing an iOS device you cannot restart the computer because it will tell you that that the finder is not done completing the sync! Now with previous versions of Mac OS this still occurred, but you could just force quit iTunes and your computer would restart. You can’t do this with the finder! You can relaunch the finder with a right click in the dock, but the sync continues through this, and I even tried with Activity Monitor and the sync just continues not allowing you to restart. Now maybe there is a process that I don’t know what it is called that I could quit to allow this. Or if I turn off WIFI sync and disconnect the device, maybe it will stop and I can restart, but this is a problem! I am a video editor and there are just times I need to restart, so at the very least their should be a cancel button on iOS sync in the FINDER!!!

I have posted about this at Apple’s Discussions and MacRumors.

A Better Finder Rename 11 for Mac is an awesome upgrade

A Better Finder Rename is a must have app for me. It lets you rename files using various sets of rules, and the latest version 11 is an even bigger upgrade.

You can now add multiple file filterings to a single change making it so different file types have different renaming on a single rename! Wow! And you can save Actions and Presets! And their is now Preview filtering.

This is a must have upgrade for a must have program. I always find it hard to work on a machine that does not have this program installed!

Catalina Finder IOS Sync doesn’t tell you what stage of syncing

So I did make the move to Catalina after SoftRaid upgraded to 4.8 with Catalina support, and overall I am OK with the split Music, Podcasts and TV apps that replace iTunes. In fact the TV app is superior because it now will play back 4K movies on my iMac Pro.

My biggest complaint so far is with the Finder Sync for iOS. It seems mostly the same, save for a few things I don’t like. First off your apply and Sync Buttons are greyed out while the phone is syncing. So if I connect the iPhone or iPad it starts syncing, then I can make any changes I want, but can’t apply them until the current sync is finished. In iTunes I could apply as soon as I made the changes I want to.

And the problem with having to wait is not knowing when it will end. At least iTunes had text based feedback of what was going, and would tell me that it was in the backup portion which always took forever. Now all you get is a little spinning ball next to the device in the finder which gives no indication of how long the sync is going to take!

And then after that it does give a little indicator to give you some idea of how long it will take, but not text information of what is syncing at that point. You can see the white filling up means how much time it is going to take.

So what did the first spinning thing mean? I am going to have to assume that is the backup. If so it went much faster at least the first time.

And I always sync playlists, and every time you open the program it reverts to Albums. How hard would it be to remember where you were? Really?

64 Bit Mac OS Catalina will disable a lot of apps, the steps I am taking, but still can’t upgrade right now: UPDATE

Apple has released Mac Os 10.15 Catalina, and it is the first to make the jump completely to 64 bit, abandoning the ability to run any 32 bit code. It is always recommended to wait a while to upgrade you system, or even better wait for 10.15.1 to work out some of the bugs. I am very interested in it though as I want to try out SideCar with my iPad Pro and Pencil.

Since there is no more 32 bit code many programs will not run, and you can tell which ones that will be in Mojave. Just to to your apple menu and About This Mac.

Then Select System Report:

Then go to Applications:

Then check the column that reads 64 bit and the applications that say no will certainly not work.

I have a lot of applications that will not work, but most are from old versions of Adobe that I still have installed.

Now I am certain to need some 32 bit application at some point in the future, and if you make the move to Catalina before taking some steps to ensure you can still run the applications you will never be able to.

My first step was to make a clone of my hard drive at Mojave for that I head over to Bombich and get the latest paid version of Carbon Copy Cloner. This is an amazing program I have used for years that will clone a hard drive and make a bootable copy. Now I have an iMac pro, so there are additional steps to be able to boot from an external drive thanks to the T2 security chip (you need to restart while holding down command and r and then change the startup security utility to allow external boot with at least Medium security instead of Full Security).

And to keep running 32 bit apps, since I own Parallels to be able to run Windows Applications on my Mac. Tidbits actually has a great article on how to do this using your Mojave Recovery Partition to create a clean install. Sure you will have to re-install the 32 bit apps to get them to run, but a nice clean install won’t take up the space that a full backup of my system would.

And finally it turns out I can’t upgrade to Catalina right now, as I run an external RAID using Softraid for my OWC Thunderbay. Now it will mount in Catalina, but will run slower and have no ability to recover hard drive that die or basically do anything with it in version 5.7.5. Now Softraid and OWC are an amazing company so they are working on it, but since Catalina is much more restrictive on running system extensions this one is going to be hard. It will first be available in 5.8, then in the new version 6 they are developing. I do hope it comes out soon.

••••

UPDATE!

Wow, so I got an e-mail from SoftRaid and OWC and they said that they should be releasing 5.8 within 24 hours with Catalina support! AWESOME!!!

iOS 13.1 on iPhone is messing up badly on playlist artwork for playlists I have synced from my computer

So I have noticed a really frustrating issue on my iPhone X on iOS 13.1 with the music app. I have all of my music organized into playlists by albums and I sync them by playlist, but on iOS 13.1 the album artwork is wrong and consistently changing on many of my playlists.

Here is an example.

The Playlist for Brittany Howard’s album Jaime shows as Tim Michin, but I click on the playlist it shows the proper artwork.

Even weirder is if click on <library the artwork has changed.

And it is again correct once I go into the playlist, but then it changes again when I come back out.

This behavior is incorrect and obviously not supposed to be happening.

I have posted about this at Apple Forums as well, and tried submitting a bug report, but it doesn’t allow pictures an this one you really need to see the pictures to see what the heck is going on.