Blackmagic RAW and ProRES RAW compared in video by Sherif Mokbel and article by Jakub Han at CineD

I learned about this excellent video from an article by Jakub Han at CineD, which goes into the differences between the 2 formats.

It is well worth checking out the differences. And it seems that ProRes RAW does seem better, but it doesn’t work in DaVinci Resolve, and BRAW works better in DaVinci Resolve. So it depends on how you are finishing, and I would assume ProRES RAW works better in Final Cut Pro X.

Elgato has updated it’s Stream Deck software to version 5.0 with a store

The software for the Elgato Stream Deck has been updated to version 5.0 with the addition of a store. Jose Antunes at ProVideoCoalition has a great article on it.

Now it is great for them to have a store, but the store is pretty useless to me if it doesn’t have SideShowFX in it, because they make the profiles for pro video users. Now you can find software for streaming in the store, but the Stream Deck really works for Pro Video users, and to not have that software represented seems like a huge mistake.

I still plan on doing an article on Steam Deck and SideshowFX, but have been so busy I haven’t had the time.

9to5Mac reports that the next MacBook Pro will dump the touchbar

Chance Miller at 9to5Mac is has the report of a rumor that Apple is getting rid of the touch bar. Honestly I think this is great news. It was a stupid idea. I want keys that are always in the same spot.

Now we will see if Apple every does a touch screen with a laptop. I know Apple says it isn’t good, but being able to use a pencil on it would be amazing.

Honestly I would love an iPad that is actually a Mac, like an old school Modbook. That would be my first laptop in a long time, and it would be easy since they use the same processor now, but I doubt it is coming anytime soon, but I would love to be proved wrong.

And the apple pencil is so damn good , using on a mac would be amazing, and I know I can use sidecar, but it isn’t perfect yet.

Chris Zwar at PVC an overview of his must read series on After Effects & Performance

Chris Zwar has posted an overview of his 18 part in depth series on Adobe After Effects and performance. He has been writing these must read articles since 2019 and every pro after effects user should have a look. It goes about as in depth as you can on what After Effects does and why it can be very hard to speed up.

Shutter Encoder video compression software

So I came across this compression software on one of my Premiere Pro forums on Facebook, having not hear of it before. Someone was asking for a batch compressor that could set a file size for all your files and this was recommended.

Shutter Encoder bills itself as a converter designed by Video Editors and it does have some pretty impressive functionality in a very simple interface.

It uses the same FFmpeg engine as the awesome Handbrake software, so you know it has impressive results.

It can trim videos without re-encoding, replace audio, rewrap, merge, subtitle, and do so much more. And unlike Handbrake it does all the important pro formats, it even has file renaming and an ftp program for uploads and downloading of web video, and can open multiple instances of the app. And it is donation ware and is for Mac, Windows, Ubunti and Linux and it has a whole slew of presets you can download.

This is an impressive piece of kit that should be added to every editors arsenal, and please consider donating if you use it professionally.

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Open source audio app Audacity has been dubbed spyware after new owner starts user data collection

9to5Mac is reporting the news on the latest versions of Audacity.

I would recommend not using Audacity from it’s current owner. This is an app that should not even be online and is stealing user data, WTF!

Now a Temporary-audacity is a fork of the audacity code which removes Sentry Telemetry and Crash Reporting, but you need to build it from the source code. Hopefully they will build a version that is easy to install for all OSes, but it will not be as easy as the main version, but at least it can exist because of the opensource nature of the source code.

Now Mashable is reporting on the company refuting that it is spyware. Don’t trust them though they want to steal your data, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be saying you have to be older than 13 to use the software.

EDIT:

So according to Engadget Muse is updating’s it’s privacy policy and won’t be selling any of the user information it collects. And it claims it needs to do this to add the automatic software update it is adding.

Honestly yes they need to update that atrocious privacy policy, but I don’t want them collecting anything unless I expressly allow it, and an offline program doesn’t need to know anything about my computer. Sure I could just use little snitch to block it, but i want a program fork on principle now.

Film Editing Pro on Multicams or Merge Clips in Premiere Pro

Film Editing Pro has an good article on using Multicams vs Merge Clips in Premiere Pro.

Now like Sofi Marshall I do like Merge clips, but just wish Adobe would fix them, getting rid of meta data and not being able to go back to original clips without exporting an xml and re-importing (and the fact that this works shows that Merge clips still has the data somewhere). And I don’t like single angle clips to be multicam, but they are right that as it is now Multi-cam is slightly superior.

Still might just switch back to using Red Giant (or should I say Maxon) Plural eyes and sequences unless Adobe does something about Merge clips.

Safari’s tab setup for Mac OS Monterey could not be more of an awful step backwards

Now I am running the new Safari within Big Sur in the Safari Technology Preview, and I am on an iMac Pro with a second 27″ monitor, so 2 27″ monitors running at 2560×1440. To me the new safari is only trying to save space, but doing it at the cost of usability.

This is current safari’s bar with 3 tabs
And Monterey’s Safari with 3 tabs, you already lose the title of the web site.
Current safari with 9 tabs
Monterey with 9 tabs, much less legible and even worse with no ICO files
Big Sur Safari with 15 tabs
Monterey with 15 tabs, already you can see tabs stacking on top of each other
And 18 tabs in Big Sur Safari

The tabs in Monterey become illegible and hard to find too quickly and all so the tab bar can take up less space. All well and good for a small screened laptops users, but useless for large displays! And even more useless for power users who have lots of plug ins which also take up space!

And you can’t even activate the old functionality in Safari, only the new tabs are available.

And this is Firefox with Tree Style tabs. They are always legible and you can have so many of them. Once again, maybe not so good for a small laptop, but for a big monitor it is essential. If only firefox would have a true dark mode and allow me to get rid of the light title bar at the top, but at least it means you can read the web site title. Still I wish I could turn the top tabs off and just have tree style tabs.

Of course there is also Vivaldi, which has tree style tabs built in. It is a gorgeous and fast browser, built on chrome, while I would prefer Firefox for it being a different engine and the most customizable browser.

And that isn’t even the worst of it. If you have Safari at default settings, when you switch tabs you get the tabs changing color based on the web site. For some web sites, it isn’t so bad, but for others…

Look how it changes, especially when it hits BBC news, this is completely distracting.

Luckily you can turn this off in advanced tabs.

Just make sure to check Never Use Background Color in Toolbar.

Fstoppers on getting perfect color with X-Rite Color Checker and DaVinci Resolve

Fstoppers has an article with a video on the awesome X-Rite Color Checker (why doesn’t Premiere support it?) of which I personally use the Passport edition.

I do find that sometimes it doesn’t work (and I have yet to figure out why) but when it does it gives an awesome baseline for every shot. You just have to convince the camera department to shoot it every time the lighting or setup changes.

Still this is an awesome tool and one everyone should shoot with.

Some videos by Daria Fissuon who wrote black magic design training on DaVinci Resolve 17

Daria Fissuon literally wrote the DaVinci Resolve 17 Training Guide, and she has some great tips and tricks for using DaVinci.

From Casey Faris

Aslo from Casey Faris’s YouTube Channel

And this one from Craig Beckta at FStoppers which I need to watch again, because she goes into how to setup and export your videos to deal with the Mac Color shift, which is huge!!!!