Luminoir

http://www.spherico.de/filmtools

Marker tool is a great find, it allows you to transfer markers from clip level to sequence level with many options.

Been busy of late working on the Creative Cow print article, look out for it in 6 weeks or so on the Creative Cow magazine.
In the meantime, I’ll be updating with more tutorials and writing in the near future.

From the Creative Cow forum

Mark Peysha on Jul 30, 2008 at 3:40:01 pm

Hey Dustin,

Thanks for your entry on automator.
Have you ever heard of anyone making an interface with automator, so that for instance you could trigger your mac to perform an automator function remotely?

Thanks

Mark

————

There are a couple of ways to achieve this.
First of all, you need to build a workflow of the script that you want to execute.

This won’t be easy because you want to make sure it runs regardless of the situation the computer you’re running it on is currently in.

The best test of this is to restart and see if it runs correctly from a fresh boot.
This might even mean including commands to start FCP, etc.

Now the part you’re interested in is how to trigger the script remotely.
First of all you need to have remote access to the computer.
If you have a static IP, this is easier.
You only need to VNC, or login to your fileshare through your IP.

However if you have a dynamically assigned IP, you can use a VPN or have your router forward your ip to a DNS for you to access. I recommend the VPN route, I use hamachix for this, it’s as easy as setting up an IM client.

You can trigger the script by creating a workflow that searches a folder on your hard disk for files of a specific name.

For example, you could share your documents folder and have the automator “Find Finder Items” action look for filenames that contain “Export”

If you login to your fileshare remotely and create a text file in that folder named Export, it’ll trigger the Automator workflow to run. Then it’s just a matter of placing the actions you want run, after the “Find Finder Items” action.There are many ways to trigger an Automator script remotely, but I would say, focus on getting the script running locally without a hitch first, before you consider remote triggering.

Please note that these posts are now shortened versions and the full versions are up on Creative Cow.

Standardized filenaming conventions (What we can learn from Bittorrent)

Get Fast FAST

Be Replaceable, Have A Life

The following post is also being reversioned into a print article for the Creative Cow Magazine.

Working with Video Game Footage

That’s the reason the posting here has dried up somewhat, this blog will be more of an opinion/tech geek out space and I will link to my tutorials on Creative Cow from here.

Thanks for the patience and check out my 3 articles in the latest issue of the Creative Cow Newsletter.

There are some tools I use to make my life easier. YMMV and there may be other software that works better for you. If so, leave a comment on what you think is better and share your favourite time savers (or wasters)

Just yesterday, I left a long export of a quicktime movie to go with a Video DVD that needed to be burnt of the file. Instead of waiting around for it to complete and burn the DVD thereafter, I opened Toast, left the file open dialog on the folder where the file was being exported and logged in to my VPN via hamachi.

From home, using hamachi as my VPN tunnel, I used Chicken of the VNC to control the office PowerMac running Vine Server. This allowed me to set the DVD encode and burn to go from home and be ready to be delivered when I get into the office.

I once VNCed into work to make changes to an edit while my director was at the machine and he quit FCP in a panic thinking it was some kind of virus when he saw the mouse cursor moving and making changes to the cut.

I called him, told him what I was doing, laughed at him for a while, and used Quicksilver to display in large letters “Ghost in the machine” on the station after that. Quicksilver, by the way is the very first thing I install on any mac. Great application launcher and look out for a tutorial on getting the most out of it soon.

Other great apps to make your life easier are Billable for invoicing, Buddi for simple budgeting and accounting, Celtx for pre-production, writing and organization, Clonetool Hatchery for harddisk cloning, Data Rescue 2 for every harddisk that Diskwarrior can’t save, Little Snitch to firewall your vulnerable network, Flock is my new favorite browser, iBackup to backup your settings, IceClean to keep your system zippy, Kext Helper to install your drivers, Pacifist to install your packages, Peerguardian to protect you from snooping network intrusion from the MPAA and RIAA.

I recently had my venerable Quad Core MacPro replaced with a new Octocore machine, because I use processing power like that.

Anyway, the Geforce 8800 GT seems to have an issue with support Quartz Extreme only on my secondary display.

My system profiler essentially shows Quartz Extreme as Supported on Display 1 and Not Supported on Display 2. When Mirroring is turned on, both displays exhibit the same symptom that made me first check the card, windows being dragged in the display in question moved jerkily and caused an increase in CPU usage.

FCP still runs though, but to play it safe I’ve placed both the Canvas and Viewer on the Quartz Enabled screen. Attempting to use NVinject and Natit drivers to supercede the default Nvidia drivers had no effect.

Anyone else on a Geforce 8800GT with similar problems? If you’re receiving a system with this configuration, check it carefully before the vendor leaves. I hope my case is an anomaly but FCP seems to work for now so I’m sticking with it until Apple or Nvidia reverts with a solution.

——–

Update:Installing latest version of Kona’s Drivers 5.1 NDD Drivers resolves the issue. Probably caused by hardware conflict between AJA display output with the secondary display.

Tags: FCP, hardware, MacPro

Here’s a bit of software for those of you that need a little PIP (Picture in picture)  action.

It only does quarter screen PIP, but it’s free and beats manually doing it in the motion tab.

http://web.mac.com/piero.fiorani/PieroF_FCE_Effect/Quarter_PIP.html

Here are some other useful free plugins available.

stibs’s

Too Much Too Soon Free Plugins

50 point Bezier Matte

Andy’s Plugins for Final Cut Pro

Digital Heaven’s Grid and Guides

I’m sure there are heaps more that I’ve missed so drop me a comment if there are any other gems that you know of.

I was trained on the Avid Meridien platform and my first time using FCP was on my very first job which I took on part-time while I was in my final year at Film, Sound and Video in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

My employer at that time had a G4 running FCP v1.2.

It was slow, unstable, crashed a lot, lacked realtime effects support and dissolves needed to be rendered.

Suffice to say, it failed to make much of an impression. It was an interesting mix of a NLE with some motion graphics capability but lacked many of features we have been spoiled with on the Avid.

In the interim, I worked on the Avid Meridien based systems and transitioned to the Adrenline when that line was EOLed. I became overly familiar with the Avid error messages to an embarrassing extent.I remember a producer quizzically looking at me when I started explaining to her about DRAGON Error messages, BUFFER OVERRUN and UNDERRUN codes.

Progress

During that time, under the auspices of Apple’s ProApps department, FCP improved. Enough for Walter Murch to decide that he could do Cold Mountain on it. Before that, Rules of Attraction, Full Frontal and The Ring had also been cut on it.

It was a necessary response from the company now that Avid had decided to migrate to Windows XP for the Adrenaline, Mojo series of Media Composer. Apple no longer had a video killer app solely available on the mac platform.

Apple had to get marketshare back somehow set that in motion by purchasing Keygrip from Macromedia and renaming it Final Cut Pro.

Apple’s G5 became the biggest dongle in the world for the new fastest growing NLE.

Avid’s regression

Avid still had a dominant installed userbase and felt no need to compete with Apple on the basis of their disruptive price point. DVXpress was deemed to be their equivalent product line, but the restriction of it’s maximum output resolution to DV25 without additional hardware meant that it’s usefulness would be restricted to the hobbyist/prosumer/budget/boutique production house.

Avid’s workflow for footage originating on tape is first class.

The media management tools, offline/online media reconnection all save us loads of time by storing it in the omf media database and enabling simple and mostly painless media management.

However, importing files to Avid, has always been a pain for the exact same reason.

Importing video files in particular is akin to pulling teeth. The files have to converted to omf media on import before they can be used.

If the current show I’m editing was done on the Avid, I would easily be converting up to 80% of my footage.

Also, the disruptive price point of FCP meant that a lot of boutique production houses were sprouting up. Final Cut Studio meant any one man operation with $2500 had the tools (not unnecessarily the skills) to compete with a production house with an Avid and graphics department.

This has resulted in the freelance editing market shifting from 80% Avid, 15% FCP, 5% others in 2002 to what seems to be a 70% FCP, 25% Avid, 5% others pie. (These numbers are obviously not scientifically gathered, it’s just me asking other freelancers the percentage of jobs they do on each platform.)

Apple’s complacency

Apple hasn’t really been pushing the boundaries of what FCP can achieve. The impression that Avid seems to have given up on competing with them for the budget/boutique user demographic seems to have left them free to their own devices. Both companies neglected to have a booth at NAB.

There are numerous bugs that have existed from the first version I used (v1.2) to this very day.

Particularly annoying are the edit to tape compression error, the keyframe editor redraw bug, inconsistent render file linkages and the fact that every point update breaks the project file.

I think the problem with FCP is that the Proapps team seems to find it cooler to add new features than fix existing bugs.

The Future

I hope Avid continues to try to compete with FCP.

Competition is necessary for innovation and I think the best work we’ve seen from both developers were when they were fighting for marketshare. It would be great if Quantel, Sony (Vegas/xpri), Media 100 got back into the mix. The key to FCP’s sudden increase in marketshare wasn’t Avid users throwing away their Meridien and Nitris Boxes. It was the multitude of new users investing in hardware/software that was no longer priced out of their reach.

This market is ever expanding and it would be a great pity, not to mention a missed opportunity, if other companies allowed Apple complete dominance of this space.