Amazing article at Frame.io on Batch Syncing Audio in Premiere Pro

 Sofi Marshall (who wrote the amazing article on setting up for remote editing with Premiere Pro) has another must read article on Batch Syncing Audio in Adobe Premiere Pro.

I too prefer Merge Clips to multi-cam clips if there is only one video track because it acts more like a clip, but the problems are very frustrating. Why there is no batch ability for Merge Clips is beyond me, and why not ability to flatten back to source as you can do with Multicam?

But the biggest gotchas are with Proxy and Audio.

If you are going to be doing Proxy always do it before you Merge Clips otherwise it doesn’t work.

The number one issue with Merge clips for me has been that it breaks AAF export and removes all the audio clip metadata. And her solution to export an FINAL CUT PRO XML and re-import and it will fix the audio tracks and return audio metadata is awesome (and if you get rid of the video you can just cut this audio in for your mix). Sure it is an extra step, but a quick one that will work easily, but remember to switch off linked selection before deleting video or you will have more problems with your sequence.

Now the thing that Sofi Marshall doesn’t mention that is a huge got you for Merge Clips, is that using Merge clips breaks Project Manager in Premiere. So if you need to use Project Manager, then Merge Clips is not your solution and maybe just stick with Multi-Cam clips.

And I have always done Merge Clips in a different way than she does. She uses Multi-Cam Batch to sync all of her clips, then goes into each Multi-Cam sequences and merges clips, using the multi-Cam batch to do the syncing.

Personally I just sort each folder by Media start and select the audio and video that corresponds (with similar start time code) and right click and merge clips.

And from the dialogue sync by audio and remove cameras audio.

My only complaint with this method is the weird sort issues of Premiere Pro’s bins, that even though I am sorting by start timecode, the new merge clips jumps to the top of the bin after it’s creation, and until I make a new clip won’t sort into timecode order. I never figured out if this is a feature or a bug, but to me it is a bug, if I am sorted in a certain order, I always want every clip to sort that way and anything else is just confusion.

Now there are literally a ton of threads on issues with Merge Clips at Adobe Voice, and I hope anyone who reads this will click on many of these to try and get Adobe to work on these issues.

Bloomberg on new Apple Silicon for MacBook Pro, Air, Mac Mini and the MacPro

Bloomberg is reporting on rumors of the new versions of Apple Silicon. There will be a redesigned MacBook Pro, then MacBook Air, new lower end MacBook Pro and finally the Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

The next M1’s will support 64 gigs if RAM with 8 high energy cores and 2 energy efficient cores and either 16 or 32 graphics cores. The M1 currently 4 high performance and 4 efficiency with 8 graphics cores.

The chips for the Apple Silicon MacPro will have 20 and 40 core with either 16 or 32 high performance cores and either 64 or 128 core graphics. 

Let’s hope the MacPro doesn’t top out at 64 gigs of combined RAM, but the rest of the specs sound impressive.

If performance scales with the cores, the performance will be impressive.

HandbrakePM has been updated to 2.3 with M1 support, it is a batch version of the compression tool handbrake

 The open source video transcoder Handbrake has always been an awesome tool for compressing video, and should be in every video pros arsenal.

It’s lesser known sibling HandBrakePM, which is based on Handbrake (so uses the Handbrake CLI or command line interface) to do batch conversions. And it has been updated to include working on M1 processors. You should have Handbrake already installed for it to work.

You might not think you need this, but someday when you have a bunch of files to compress you will realize just how useful this is.

Adobe Speach To Text Early Access was not working yesterday, and I realized how quickly I have become addicted to it, it makes Testimonials so much easier!

 

#SpeachtoText @AdobeVideo  

This is what when I tried using the Transcribe sequence in Premiere Pro for a while yesterday. And I realized I don’t ever want to cut a testimonial without the transcription.

It is amazing I can start making selects on my first pass with the transcript. And my comprehension is better. Man this is a feature I can’t live without.

Unfortunately it looks like their 3rd party cloud infrastructure took a hit today.

I am pretty sure Adobe is going to have to expand their infrastructure because this is going to be a popular feature.

Arrow from Knights of the Editing Table copies a frame to your clipboard in Adobe Premiere Pro

 

The awesome Knights of the Editing Table has released a new plugin Arrow for Adobe Premiere Pro that will copy a frame to clipboard with a keyboard shortcut, and it is free, and you can save the image as well to a location that you chose.

And for users of their amazing keyboard launcher for Premiere Pro Excalibur, you don’t need this because it was added to the last update.

Adobe Speech To Text Early Access is absolutely amazing for editing testimonials

#SpeachtoText @AdobeVideo

So I applied to the Adobe Speech To Text Early Access program and was granted access, you can read about it and apply here.

I am editing testimonials and an assistant already cut down sequences so just the best bits are in a sequence.

All you have to do is go to the captions workspace and hit the Transcribe Sequence and it renders and uploads the audio track, and very quickly transcribes. I have had it take 3-7 minutes depending on length.

It then very quickly auto transcribes. And yes it has some errors, that are easily fixable. Basically I duplicate the sequence after transcription and make a cut version that I can cut out the pieces I want and cut them into another timeline. You can immediately jump around or search in the transcription, and just having the transcription follow along on the sequence helps my comprehension of what is being said.

This is truly life-changing! This is the most amazing new feature I have run across in an editing program.

And you can also export a txt file with the transcription though it doesn’t contain the timecode or the speakers, and I would love to see the ability to add in the timecode and to add the speakers for more than single speaker transcriptions. Currently the export txt is grayed out in Premiere Pro 2021, but works in the beta.

Transcriptions have always been helpful to find specific things in a long testimonial, but having them connected to the sequence where you can literally jump to an individual word is beyond amazing!

Adobe Updates Audition with M1 in version 14.2 Support and Premiere Pro with Text Gradients and Improved Captions in 15.2

 

Adobe updated Audition to version 14.2 with added M1 Support, the ability to Strip Silence and a new Loudness meter. 

Adobe also updated Premiere Pro to 15.2 with Text Gradients in Essential Graphics, Label Color for Captions and Improved Caption Trimming, the same new Loudness Meter as Audition, improved Canon XF HEVC performance improvements and Direct X12 Display support on Windows.

BlackMagicDesign updated DaVinci Resolve to version 17.2

 

BlackMagicDesign has updated DaVinci Resolve to version 17.2

These are the new features for the Studio Version.

What’s new in DaVinci Resolve 17.2

  • Dramatically improved application startup performance.
  • Live save is now on by default.
  • Support for custom naming for individual timeline clips.
  • Support for adding transitions by double clicking or dragging to viewer.
  • Support for decoding AV1 clips on Windows.
  • Accelerated AV1 decodes on supported Intel, NVIDIA and AMD platforms.
  • Support for decoding MKV clips.
  • Support for exporting IMSC-1 compatible TTML captions in IMF clips.
  • Support for option to include project name subfolder in media management.
  • Support for pasting HDR and color warper attributes in the Color page.
  • Support for Fusion template bundles.
  • Support for applying and managing crossfades in the Fairlight timeline.
  • Support for a batch fade and crossfade editor in the Fairlight page.
  • Support for persisting Fairlight edit mode between application restarts.
  • Support for moving audio clips to match timeline timecode position.
  • Support for setting handles when performing audio only renders.
  • Support for controlling track processing order in the Fairlight mixer.
  • Support for accessing Fairlight patch and link in the edit and deliver page.
  • Ability to show or hide specific audio I/O ports for patching in Fairlight.
  • Support for Fairlight console firmware 1.6 with full FlexBus mixing support.
  • Improved waveform displays in the Fairlight timeline.
  • Improved auto scroll behavior when dragging clips in the Fairlight timeline.
  • Support for ACES color science 1.2.
  • Support for selecting per-clip ACES DCTLs from context menu.
  • Support for new IDTs for the Canon EOS-R5 cameras.
  • Option to use white point adaptation in project settings for RCM workflows.
  • Option to use white point adaptation in Resolve FX color space transform.
  • Support for codec passthrough when rendering IMF JPEG2000 clips.
  • Support for trimming Sony Raw and XAVC MXF in media management.
  • Support for reading gyroscopic metadata on Sony Venice clips.
  • Ability to update RMD metadata files for R3D clips.
  • Improved spatial and temporal deinterlace quality.
  • Improved curves range display for position and zoom on the edit timeline.
  • Improved color management for Blackmagic RAW Gen 5 color science.
  • Improved decode performance for 8K H.265 clips on Apple Silicon systems.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to import custom frame sequences.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to delete timelines.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to query current page.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to add generators and titles.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to specify render alpha options.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to switch layout presets.
  • Improved scripting API with the ability to quit the application.
  • Improved iXML data support with AAF export workflows.
  • General performance and stability improvements.

Blackmagic Design has reduced the price of ATEM Mini Pro and ATEM Pro ISO by $100 each

 

Now I think you only need the $295 ATEM mini if you attach it as a web camera to stream your edit live, but if you want your edit to be live on YouTube or to record it you could go for the mini pro.
Still the Web Presenter may in fact be a better solution for streaming for me. Since I have the $495 Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4k, I have spare SDI ports and that way I could stream a 4k sequence as the ATEM MINI only accepts up to a 1080 60p sequence while the Web Presenter accepts up UHD 60p sequences though streams out at only 1080 60p. Of course I lose the ability to see me in a picture and picture via a gopro.

Remote File Sync for Editing workflows on Remote Systems

 Since I have been looking at work from home solutions for remote video editing, I have been looking at some solutions for file syncing. This would require media and files at remote and local to start, so that you aren’t eating all of your bandwidth copying files, and would of course be easiest with a large single storage solution that you have set to fully sync.

With Premiere Pro I would also recommend using Digital Rebellions Post Haste to set up a file structure that you follow for all projects that so that it is the same on all systems.

Once you have the project setup on a single system, you should duplicate that onto remote hard drives and then you can use a program to sync the files. Now I wouldn’t expect collaboration with the same project files, but this could mean that you sync to a remote file share, and keep your graphics and project files updating not only for backup, but for remote access if necessary.

For Mac Backup there is ChronoSync for $49.99 per license. For Mac or Windows (or FreeBSD) you can use Resilio for $59.90 for a single license, $99.90 for a 5 family member license or $30 a month for Business. Or for Windows you could use ViceVersa for $59.95 for one license, going down for 2 or more licenses.

Now this would be basic solutions, without file remote project management, and if you made changes to projects on both systems it would cause issues, but could easily help for simple setup and even work with assistants using different project files to transfer things back and forth.