BeatEdit V2 for Premiere Pro is a very useful plug in for editing to the beat

For the editors who aren’t musicians or just want a quick speed up to their editing workflow, BeatEdit V2 is a Premiere Pro script from mamoworld tools available at AEScripts (which I will talk about in the future).

BeatEdit detects the beats in your music and generates markers for them in your Premiere Pro timeline. Create automatic edits in sync with the music, or let BeatEdit assist your manual editing process.

This is an awesome and quick to use tool. Great for creating an edit of photos or just to give you edit points on the beat.
Any time you are editing to the beat this will speed up your workflow, and the $99 will be worth it in a few jobs.
BeatEdit is in the Window Menu Extensions

This is the window. You select a music clip in your timeline and hit load music.

This will load the track and after a few seconds.

The drop down at the top lets you chose sequence or clip markers.

And here you select how many beats get markers, I chose every 4, but should have done more.
You then hit the create makers button.

And you get this result.

There is much more it can do and this video will explain the rest.

I have run into a problem with the script though having to do with the new world scripting engine of Premiere Pro, so to use it you need to switch to the old scripting engine (which will stop the text entry script Excalibur from working) and unfortunately it doesn’t have a way to quickly turn new world on and off.

So you will have to activate the old scripting engine and restart to get it to work, and to get any extensions working that use the new New World Scripting Engine. 

First hit command -F12 to call up the Premiere Pro console.
Then from the dropdown menu at the top select Debug Database view.

Now type in “newworld” and it will show the following 2 commands, AME.ScriptLayer.EnableNewWorld and CriptLayerPPro.EnableNewWorld and make use to set them both to true. A quick restart later and you will have re-activated the New World Scripting Engine.

Adding motion blur to slow motion shots in Premiere Pro with ReelSmart Motion blur from RE:Vision Effects

 

ReelSmart Motion Blur

So another plug-in that you don’t need until you do, and when you do it is great to know it is there.

Now the main use for this plug-in is for work with 3D imagery. If instead of rendering Motion blur in a 3D image, you have the 3D artist render you a motion vectors pass, then with this plug-in you can add motion blur after the fact and have full control over it, which is a huge thing, and absolutely necessary, but that is only scratching the surface of what this can do.

This plug in can automatically track every pixel in an image and add realistic motion blur, and you can control the amount. Blur can also be removed. This doesn’t sound like much but it really is. Especially if you are given say footage that is high speed which then has very little motion blur, and you are running at normal speed. The footage just won’t look right because of the lack of motion blur, and adding in motion blur can make the footage look normal and correct.

Now once again there are 2 versions, the normal for $109.95 and the pro for $269.95, the pro lets you do object separation using matts, track points, alphas and simple splines and the aforementioned 3D motion Vector Input.

Once installed it shows up in your Re:Vision Plug-ins folder
If you have a good GPU turn on GPU to speed things up and you can control the amount of blur by using the blur amount control. This Goes up to 10, or can down to -2 to remove motion blur.

I have made a quick little video using the same footage of my Shar Pei Boba Fetch as the last video on Re:Vision Effects Twixtor. This time I show the 59.94 footage playing at normal speed in a 23.976 timeline and then adding in more motion blur, we have it at the default .50 at 1.0 and at 2.0.

Once again not the ideal footage or a demo, but some of my own footage, so I can use it, and you can certainly see the effects.

The best way to slow down your video, Twixtor from Re:Vision Effects

 

Twixtor

While Premiere has the ability to slow down your footage, and it has a newer higher quality version called Optical Flow (called Pixel Motion in After Effects). It is certainly better than plain frame blending, but it is not the highest quality slow motion you can get. For the highest quality post slow motion the answer has always been the expensive but worth it TWIXTOR from Re:Vision Effects.

Clip speed in Premiere Pro is in the Clip Menu.

This brings up the Speed Panel, and for best results select Optical Flow from the drop down menu.

Twixtor comes in 2 versions, Standard and Pro and is available for a variety of platforms. The version I use is the After Effects/Premiere Pro version. The standard version is $329.95 and the Pro version is $595.00, both fairly expensive, but as I have said quite worth it.

The Pro version gives you the ability to really tweak what the auto track does, lets you use matte’s and alphas to enhance your tracks, as well as splines, and the ability to work with motion vectors from a 3D system. If you have a really important shot to slow down the Pro version is certainly worth the extra money, though you may get away with the normal version. And they have video based tutorials for their effects on their sites, and they are really worth going into to learn the ins and outs.

Twixtor shows up in your Video Effects RE:Vision Plugs-Ins (RSMB is ReelSmart Motion Blur which I plan on talking about in a later post).

The first thing to realize when working with twixtor is it works based on the whole clip as it can see it, so to specify the in points you need to Nest (in Premiere or Pre-Compose in After Effects) and in the sequence the sequence needs to be longer to work on the extent of the clip, so you might want to double or triple your clip in that nest/pre-comp.

This is the clip in the sequence with playhead parked on first frame

First frame of clip I want to slow.
Twixtor Effect Added

Speed Changed to 20%

First frame becomes first frame of clip.

So nest your clip in timeline

If you want clip longer as slow, you need to lengthen it, so double clip next to open. Since I want 20% speed, I duplicate clip 5 times.

Put twixtor on Nest in original sequence.

Here are the settings I am using. I always use GPU as I have a decent one and that speeds things up, but it is much slower within Premiere than within After Effects. Different settings will give you different results, so play around for sure. I ususally got for Motion Weighted and Smart Blend, and add a little Motion blur Compensation though it really slows things down. I have also set my Image Prep to Delinearize.
I did a video to demonstrate, it is UHD and shot 59.94 but is in a 23.976 Sequence, I have shown the footage as if 23.967, then slowed down, then slowed down to 20% using Premiere Pro’s time interpolation with Frame Sampling then Frame Blending, then optical flow and with Twixtor. This isn’t ideal footage, but Twixtor still looks the best. Of course this is recompressed by YouTube, but you should get the idea.

PremierePro.Net by Jarle Leirpoll is an awesome resource

 

I was watching a Maxon series on Red Giant Universe, and one of the presenters was Jarle Leirpoll, who I hadn’t heard about. I quickly went and checkout out his web site Premiere Pro.net and it is an awesome resource.

He wrote a book on Advanced Premiere Pro Editing Techniques called The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro.

And he has a Free PDF book on making MOGRTs or Motion Graphics Templates in After Effects for use in Premiere Pro. 

Certainly a resource to check out.

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.

EDIT: OK so maybe the Web Presenter is the better solution. It has SDI, and I have SDI to spare on my Ultrastudio 4k, and it accepts up to 2160 60p video  and exports up to 1080 60p. The ATEM mini and Mini pro accept up to 1080 60p video, so it wouldn’t accept a UHD sequence direct from Premiere, but I would also lose the ability to have a camera on me via the switcher. Hmmm.

 

 

Why is Mac OS Finder iOS Sync so inferior to the previous iTunes Sync

 I have said this before and I am sure I will it again, but why when Apple split up iTunes to make Music, Podcast and TV apps and moving iOS music sync to the finder did they make it so far inferior to the previous sync?

Now I know they want you to pay for Apple Music to get your music there, but they were already getting you to pay for music through them. I think they just don’t want you to sync your own music libraries anymore, they want you to just stream your music.

And why is it worse. Well first off if you plug in your iOS device and go to it in the finder, and try and sync any local music (going to the Music tab and selecting any songs or playlists the sync button switches from blue and and press-able to grey and not press-able).

Before any changes it has a sync that you could hit, but not if you make any changes.

This makes the whole iOS thing seem broken, but there is still a way to sync, but you have to get through the whole syncing process once, which can take a very long time. And all it shows for status bars, is a little circle in the sidebar and a syncing thing on the bottom, but both are extremely slow.

The sidebar shows the whole process.

And this is just showing the backup stage, but no indication of how much of the synching this is.

Of Course in some steps you get this wheel, which is pretty much as unhelpful as you can get.

And this process can easily take 30+ minutes.

One it has done a full backup and finished. You can then go into music and select what music you sync and hit sync (it will not be grayed out this time) and only then will your local music sync. And it has to do a whole other sync to get your music over.
Honestly What the Absolute Fuck??!?!?
And even worse sometimes it doesn’t work after 1 sync and you have to do another sync before you are able to move your music over. Really?!?!??!? FUCK YOU APPLE!!!
iTunes never did this.

And with iTunes I could use Wifi Sync. Now I am sure you are saying that you can use Wifi sync with Music, and yes you can, but you can’t stop it.

With iTunes if you had to stop any iOS sync you could force quit iTunes. Sure not an ideal solution, but it worked, and say you could restart or shutdown your computer.

With Music if you have WIFI sync on, you can’t restart or even quit the finder to get it to stop. The only way to get it to stop is to hard reset the computer, which is beyond not ideal.

You can least stop the cable based sync by unplugging the iOS device!

And don’t even get me started with Apple Music. If you sync your library with Apple Music you can get into tons of trouble. There are more forum posts about what this can do to your library than you can read in a lifetime. It has been known to overwrite all your music, replace it with lower quality music, or even different music. And without syncing Apple Music, you can never save any of their music, other than marking it as liked.

Honestly you should be able to keep your streaming music separate from your local library and not be forced to commingle them. And if they do commingle there should be no way that Apple can mess up your local library (which is why they should be kept permanently separate). 

The best solution would be able to have local music and streaming music apps that are separate. So nothing can screw each other up. I want to keep my music that I have ripped higher quality and not have anyone touch it or screw it up!

And Apple could now care less about people who have their own music all they care about is people who buy or rent music (yes paying for streaming music is renting music).

In Premiere Pro and AVID as well, the most important thing to remember it to save all the time

 

Now some people will go without saying that saving is important in editing, and yes there is an auto-save.


And you do want your auto-save set as it will save your ass some time because of a random crash, but more important is to get yourself saving as much as possible.

It has become such second nature to me that I just hit command-S all the time, in fact when moving to Final Cut Pro X, I kept dinging the computer as there is no save, it is just supposed to save every time you make a change, but I am so ingrained to save that I kept trying to do it anyway (and it isn’t like final cuts lack of a save has always worked for me, as I have crashed and lost quite a bit of work in Final Cut Pro X as well).
And sometimes saves can take a while, especially fi the project is huge, but it is always worth saving as much as possible because otherwise you will crash and lose something, and you never want to do that.

So remember to save all the time and often, don’t let it fall to the auto save.

A Keyboard based Launcher for After Effects, check out Andrew Kramer’s VideoCopilot FX Console

 

So recently I wrote about the awesome Mac keyboard based launcher LaunchBar from Obdev, and now I am writing about something Andrew Karamer wrote from Video Copilot wrote for After Effects called FX Console, which is the same type of thing for After Effects, he calls it a Work Flow Plug In, and it is free.

It blows away that this is listed in their Products, but must be searched for. They really need a free section for his awesome free products, to go along with his amazing paid products, that I will write about later.

This plug in just adds a quick new way to use a keyboard to add effects & presets, and create FX Shortcuts, and export Snapshots as PNG. This is a must use plug-in that will always speed you up, and once again when I get on a machine that doesn’t have it installed, I feel stunted.

Anything that speeds up your workflow is always a good thing, and this can speed up your workflow each and every day. And because of this I would easily pay for it, but it is free. So there is no reason to not download and install it.

DaVinci Resolve Ext Matte issues in Color Page

OK so I am running into some issues on  DaVinci Resolve right now using an Ext Matte in a color correct node, and I am wondering if I am doing something wrong, if this is how it is supposed to function.
I have some shots that were shot just as the sun was going down at the end of a shoot without enough lighting. So the exterior is way too dark, and it has to match the daylight exteriors. Now I tried to do matte’s in DaVinci and even tried the new smart mask on the people, but I found I could get a better matte in After Effects with the Roto Brush. The matte is the exact same size as the shot in the sequence in the show, for this shot 1 second and 10 frames, so I made a matte that started at the first frame and is exactly 1:10 in the frame, but when I add the Ext Matte to the shot, while the scale matches up, it certainly does not match first frame to first frame.

So I unchecked Lock Matte to be able to  adjust the clip manually. And had to adjust the zoom, tilt and offset to get it to work. I don’t get why I have to set the offset to -14, since the matte is the same length as the visible portion of the shot in the sequence, and the full shot is much longer than 14 frames. SO I AM TOTALLY CONFUSED BY THE OFFSET.

 

Even weirder to me than the Offset though is the tilt. I had to set it at -571 to get it to line up (and why can’t there by a match for position, but change the offset?) and that is weird to me, because I have below the transform for that clip within the edit panel. The zoom matches at .6, but the position is -150, so where does the -571 come from? I should be able to match the 2 clips by using the same numbers, not completely different numbers! WTF!

Not sure what I am doing wrong here, but if anyone can explain to me why the offset and tilt are like they are it would be greatly appreciated.

My favorite keyboard launcher, LaunchBar will speed up everything outside of your editing and graphics software

 

So I have written about LaunchBar in the past, but now I am writing about it as something to speed up your workflow when using editing or graphics software. I have been using the amazing LaunchBar from Objective Development for years, and whenever I am in an office using a computer there I feel stunted by not having it.

Now LaunchBar is a tool that does so many things, but my favorite is to the ability to launch application using keyboard shortcuts, and it will learn your shorcuts quickly to speed things up. You hit a quick keyboard shortcut, which brings up LaunchBar and then you type your keys and if the application shows up hit return or push to the down arrow and select what you want to launch. After selecting the thing a few time LaunchBar learns and moves your choice to the top of list.

So to launch I hit Command-Space and the last app I launch shows up, if I want to launch it, just hit enter and it launches.

Or more powerfully you type the initials of an app, and LaunchBar will give you a list, and you select what app you want.

If I want Word, I try Wo or MW.

Then select the App and return and it will learn your initials and move the app up the list and eventually to the top.

This way I can launch any application without ever touching the mouse, and this is HUGE! IT WILL SPEED UP EVERYTHING YOU DO ON THE COMPUTER OUTSIDE OF YOU EDITING OR GRAPHICS APPLICATION!
And Launchbar does so much more. You can do calculator functions, instant web searches, go to web sites, create e-mails from contacts, merge files, check your ClipBoard History, and it is all customizable.
LaunchBar is the so worth $29 or $49 for a family license. It speeds up everything I do on the computer and it can speed things up for you as well.