Oliver Peters at Digital Sky on using FCP X in a Production Environment

Oliver Peters at Digital Sky has an article on using Final Cut Pro X in a full production environment with clients in the bay for the first time. Now he seems positive on the experience, but to me it makes it sound even less ready for a production environment! First off he has to use Final Cut Pro 7 in many stages of the preparation for the project, as FCP X seems less well suited for a project that ever needs to be handed off or moved and doesn’t actually modify the original files for things like changing reel numbers.

Now the metadata features do sound great for finding files once you have spent the time to organize, but I have never had an issue with organization once I have a project ready to edit.

And things like this give me even greater pause.

Due to the “rubbery-ness” of the magnetic timeline, it did appear that removing transitions at the beginning and end of spots and removing the slomo clips caused some shifting of the spots within this string of six spots on a single Project timeline. No sync issues, but definitely not as locked into position as with an FCP 7 timeline.

This program still is not even close to ready for primetime, and I am not sure it ever will be. I have said it before, but if they had added some of these features onto a 64 Bit Final Cut Pro 8, people would love it, but by taking so much away, and trying to force people to edit in a very strict way they have shown how little they understand of the world of editing, where no 2 editors do things the same exact way!

Surgery Update 3 Weeks Out

3 weeks out out from Surgery as of yesterday, and mostly doing pretty darn good.

I walked today for 45 minutes, around the big block of my neighborhood, which is my longest single walk yet. And I could easily walk farther if only my back didn’t hurt so much, as it is so incredibly out and in pain. They tell me it was from being in a horrible position on the operating table for 5 hours. The amazing thing is I couldn’t have done that without stopping 3 times before the surgery, so i am vastly improved on that front.

My chiropractor said he could he adjust my back with that little adjustment hammer after 4 weeks, but I will probably wait until 6 week when my sternum is supposed to be mostly healed. Of course only if I can take the pain for that long. My back pain is the worst part right now!

My lungs are also doing better, with most of the liquid out I think. For the first time in weeks when Kelly beat my back last night and I coughed, I didn’t go into a deep hack, but had to keep coughing on my own.

Now for the bad, and that would be the wounds from my chest tubes. My left one was getting painful yesterday, and I finally took of the steri strips and it was way too moist and still open, so I have had to leave it open, and it mostly will dry up and close, and stop hurting. The problem is even walking I sweat so much that it got wet and opened up again, and is just slowly drying out and closing up against now. I am having to clean it with betadine and alcohol allot, but as of yet it is not infected. Just need to keep it closed and dry so it will heal!

3WeeksChestTube
You can see the one on the right is yellow. That is the scab when it is wet and has opened up again.

The one on the right also has been leaking on and off, but it is not puss, so it is not infected. Likely it is because the scabs are so incredibly deep, and they need to move out of the way to be able to heal underneath, so it is likely leaking to try and push some of the scab out so it can continue to heal.

Honestly the chest tub holes are the worst part right now. It seems like not only did they not tie the initial stitches tight enough, but they took them out after only 2 or 3 days, when they should have been in for a week, so I think that is what is causing most of the issues.

The hardest part right now is the low sodium diet. It is actually horrifically frightening to look at ingredients in a grocery store and see just how much salt is added to just about everything we eat! There is so much salt around that they say a 3500 MG diet of sodium is low sodium, though I have likely been doing under 1000 mg. And the one real help has been Mr Dash seasonings (in many flavors) as it has no sodium and does add a whole lot of flavor. Otherwise I don’t know what I would do. And really I fucking want a RUEBEN!!!!!!

MacRumors on the new MacBook Pro’s Retina Display

MacRumors has a very interesting look at the new MacBook Pro Retina display and some features I didn’t know about. It seems you can increase the apparent resolution of the 15 inch display by decreasing the PPI. Normally the display is equivelent of a 1440 x 900 display at full PPI, but cna be changed to 1680 x 1050 High-Res or 1920 x 1200 and you just lose pixel density, but would be awesome for editing.

Also the loss of the glass cover is supposed to reduce glare by 75%!

Of course it is now coming out that it has no user upgradeable parts and soldered RAM, so buy it with the Max RAM that you will need because you won’t be adding anymore later!

Had issues with CUDA and After Effects CS6 11.0.1 Update but FIXED THEM

After updating to After Effects CS6 11.01 I started getting an error message about CUDA not working.
AE-CudaWarning
Strangely CUDA was still working fine in Premiere Pro CS6, so it had to be the AE Update.

And I am running the latest CUDA.
CUDA
The thing is it just wasn’t showing up in After Effects and was using CPU instead of CPU for CUDA.
AE-Cuda

I tried trashing After Effects preferences, but that didn’t work, so I found and downloaded the standalone 11.01 update installer and that fixed the issue for now.

Forbes says new MacPro’s in 2013

Forbes says new Model, designs for MacPro in 2013. It seems that after the uproar over the MacPro non-update that Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an e-mail to a customer saying that there will be new designs and models of MacPro in 2013.

Franz,
Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.
We’ve been continuing to update Final Cut Pro X with revolutionary pro features like industry leading multi-cam support and we just updated Aperture with incredible new image adjustment features.
We also announced a MacBook Pro with a Retina Display that is a great solution for many pros.
Tim
Of course having to wait till next year after a 2 year wait fucking sucks, but at least it looks like the MacPro has a future. And it better include NVIDIA cards and external Retina Display monitors, as well as Thunderbolt and USB 3!

Surgery Update, no stiches for now

So the nurse came by yesterday and she talked to my surgeon’s main nurse, and for now I don’t have to go get stiches. They have stiri stripped my open chest tube wound after seriously cleaning it out with both beta dine and alcohol. And she left an opening in the middle for it to dry and for to beta dine it 3 times a day, but she will be back today to check on it again.

The Orange on the strips is the betadine.

And here is the whole wound, which is looking so much better, and the bump at the top is almost gone. Honestly the main incision is not going to be nearly as bad a scar as the 2 chest wounds!